I got up 3 times during the night, the last time about 5:30
and was awakened at 7am by the alarm.
Teresa informed me she didn’t sleep well last night so we went back to
sleep.
We woke up again about 9am and Teresa called Walter and
asked him to pick up dog food and bring it to the finca.
Teresa left for the sideroad at 12:15 and 5 minutes later
Walter called. I told him Teresa is
walking up the hill. That was the extent
of my Spanish. He kept calling back and
finally I answered again and asked if Teresa was with him. He replied that no he is in Caldas. While still talking to him I grabbed a couple
dog biscuits and headed up the hill. I
was a little surprised that the terriers followed me. As I was passing Guilermo’s house the path
was unusually quiet (no dogs). I looked
back and saw Guillermo come out of his house followed by Teresa and the killer
dogs. The latter came right up to me and
I gave each of them a dog biscuit with the terriers standing not a foot away. Tony almost grabbed the second dog biscuit
before the boxweiler got it. Today I
almost managed to pet the black dog but I did briefly pet the boxweiler. Walking back down the hill the fenced dog
started barking and the two teams of dogs got a little aggressive with each
other. Guillermo had given Teresa some
kind of large plant cutting and we walked back to the finca.
I’ve decided to do TripAdvisor reviews for the hotels and
restaurants we visit on my brother and company’s trip this coming
January/February. The others can help me
rate the places for my reviews.
About 1pm Walter showed up with a large bag of dog food and
I paid him 60mil for it and the delivery.
We opened it up and gave each dog some food. Unfortunately both Tony and Peter were eating
their share inside the finca. Tony ate
his food so rapidly that he was done and then he wanted Peter’s food. A fight ensued, and soon they were both
bleeding with blood on the floor and on the legs of a couple chairs. That was repeated at least twice before we
got them both out of the finca. Peter ran
up the hill and Tony was right by his side waiting for Peter to look at him. We have to get Tony fixed soon and if that
doesn’t lessen his aggressiveness I think we’ll have to give him away or have
him put down. A few minutes later I
found Peter on the side of the finca with blood all over his fur mostly by his
face. His eyes and tongue looked
undamaged and I cleaned him up a bit with a piece of toilet paper Teresa gave
me.
Teresa talked to a cousin and then asked me if we could
visit her in Cisneros this December 30th. I see by a map that Cisneros is 33 miles (as
the crow flies) northeast of Medellin. Teresa said all her aunts on her father’s
side live there. I reminded her I need
to pay my health insurance but I don’t know if banks are open on January 1st,
the 2nd is a Saturday (half day for banks), Sunday banks are closed,
so we have to ask Natalia when she wants me to pay it. On second thought I think Teresa wants to fix
Tony first and then visit later in January.
I’m getting more insect bites today, maybe because Chucho
cut the garden yesterday.
Teresa and I took a nap from about 4 to 5pm.
I finished reading a free Nook sample titled The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got
that Way, where author Bill Bryson states “The ways of dealing with matters
of number, tense, case, gender, and the like are wondrously various from one
tongue to the next. A Welsh speaker must
choose between five ways of saying than. Finnish has fifteen case forms. Imagine learning fifteen different ways of
spelling cat, dog, house, and so
on. In English ride has just five forms (ride,
rides, rode, riding, ridden); the
same verb in German has sixteen. In
Russian, nouns can have up to twelve inflections and adjectives as many as
sixteen."
"Sometimes languages fail to acquire what may seem to us
quite basic terms. The Romans had no
word for gray. Irish Gaelic possesses no equivalent of yes or no. They must resort to
roundabout expressions such as “I think not” and “This is so”. Italians cannot distinguish between a niece and
a granddaughter and a nephew and a grandson.
The Japanese have no definite or indefinite articles corresponding to
the English a, an, or the, and they do not distinguish between
singular and plural as we do with, say, ball/balls
and child/children. This may seem strange until you reflect that
we don’t make a distinction with a lot of words – sheep, deer, trout, Swiss, scissors – and it scarcely every causes
us trouble."
"But it is harder to make a case for the absence in Japanese
of a future tense. To them Tokyo e yukimasu means both “I go to Tokyo” and “I will go to Tokyo”.
To understand which sense is intended, you need to know the
context. This lack of explicitness is a
feature of Japanese – even to the point that they seldom use personal pronouns like
me, my, and yours. Such words exist, but
the Japanese employ them so sparingly that they might as well not have
them. Over half of all Japanese
sentences have no subject. They dislike
giving a straightforward yes or no. It
is no wonder that they are so often called inscrutable.”
Bill Bryson also states “…children
in the first five years of life have such a remarkable facility for language
that they can effortlessly learn two structurally different languages
simultaneously – if, for instance, their mother is Chinese and their father
American – without displaying the slightest signs of stress or confusion.”
I wanted to watch something different so I watched the 1934 German
Nazi party film Triump des Willens (Triumph of the Will).
When it got dark I went outside and moved the dog’s blankets
onto the porch. Luna started giving
Peter a hard time – why, because he’s hurt?
Then Peter started following Tony around like he’s taunting
him. At Teresa’s suggestion I put Peter
in the shed out back by carrying him to it (I guess I didn’t touch any wounds)
and then pretending to throw in a dog biscuit to get him to go inside.
The Colombian Peso has fallen to 3,173 to the dollar and has
been there for awhile today so I’m guessing that’s the close for the holiday weekend.
Teresa mentioned us having dinner with Laura in Parque
Lleras on December 31st but the question came up as to where we
would stay for the night. She mentioned
the hostal across the street from Triada
but I told her that a standard room with private bathroom there is $60 per
night.
Teresa and I watched Unknown
(6.9) on Netflix, a good action film that she enjoyed.
I took 2 sleeping pills at 11:05 and we went to bed at 11:30.
T-shirt of the day: All you need is me.
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