Tuesday, February 9th, 2016

Today is my son’s 29^th birthday.  Happy birthday Jim!  Unfortunately I won’t be able to send him his gift until my next trip to MBE.  And he still hasn’t received his Christmas present.  I won’t be able to take care of that until I get internet back in the finca.

It’s been 3 weeks and 5 days without internet.  Teresa spent some time this morning on the phone with Une.  I think we’re going to stop at their office in Envigado today.

We left the finca at 1:10, I gave the black dog 2 dog biscuits and we were on a bus after just a 3 minute wait.

At Carbón de Leña Teresa ordered mazamorra and fish and I had their chicken shish kebab again.  I asked her to help me next time to order a baked potato instead of French fries.  In the meantime I stopped at an ATM and then the drugstore where I bought this month’s Tamsulosin that went up by 3,000 pesos.  They didn’t have Immodium so I had to stop at the new Pasteur drugstore next to the park.  Laura arrived about 20 minutes later.  I had given her money to pay the Direct TV and Une bills.  She had the bill and receipt for Direct TV but not Une.  Teresa sent her back to the apartment to get it.  She returned about 20 minutes later and reported that she must have thrown it out.  She was also supposed to take the remainder (about 20,000 pesos) of the 150mil from paying the bills to add minutes to the cell phone.  I didn’t get a text message as I usually do and she didn’t have the receipt for that either.  I made it clear I was very displeased with that.

Using my temporary internet connection, I downloaded The Martian by Andy Weir, checked the status of my Cedula (it’s ready for pickup), checked the currency exchange rate (COP=3396), emailed a Happy Birthday to my son, emailed my accountant in Virginia, and got caught up on my emails.

Teresa went to Une to check on my internet problem and I went to the park to play chess.  I noticed a couple men were playing with their own pieces and plastic board and in another location there were painted squares to make a board.  I believe this is their reaction to the fact that the permanent boards are right under the major pigeon pooping area.  I found an opponent and won 2 games against him.  

We stopped at Cosechas where Laura bought us a juice to share.

Teresa told me that Une will call us about our internet problem.  Right!

I understood Laura had found a place that offers English lessons for less than EAFIT University charges.  We took a bus to San Fernando Plaza by the hotel where my son and his cousin stayed their first few nights in Medellin.  The place was called Colombo Americano and I noticed right away they had a nice English bookstore.  I saw several books I had already read on my Nook.  We talked to an English speaking Colombian about their lesson packages.  They have 6 different locations in Medellin and at first I understood Teresa and Laura believed she would be moving from location to location.  Once I got that problem corrected they agreed to give it a try on a month by month basis.  Her group lessons are from 10am to 11:40am Monday thru Friday starting next Monday.  The charge is 342,000 pesos (about $105) a month plus another 60,000 pesos ($18) for a National Geographic workbook.  The workbook references a website – NGL.Cengage.com/life that I’ll check on later when I get internet again.  They don’t take cash so I charged everything to my debit card.  In the future we’ll probably make payments to their Bancolombia account.

We stopped at Jumbo at Santafe CC where we picked up some needed items.  I noticed in the soda aisle a few cans and 1 case of Dr. Pepper.  I remember reading somewhere that it was coming to Colombia.

We said goodbye to Laura and we took a taxi to Poblado station.  We were soon on a bus back to the finca.  When we arrived at 9pm Teresa pointed out an insect about 1 ½ inches long on one of the plants and its eyes glowed in the dark.  When I turned off my flashlight they were still glowing.  What is that – luminescent? Fluorescent? Phosphorescent?  Lacking internet I can’t look it up.

We watched another DVD movie that Laura had left for us so we didn’t get to bed until about 11:45.  I’m back to taking just 2 sleeping pills and they seem to be working.

T-shirt of the day: My boyfriend is better than your boyfriend.