Thursday, April 28th, 2016

Today’s the day!  Tonight at 8pm Eastern Time is the 1^st round of the NFL draft.  My Chicago Bears have the 11^th pick.

The workers showed up about 7am so I got up at 7:30.

I found my Citibank debit card last night.  The thieves had completely overlooked a location where I hid my US passport, driver’s license, and Citibank card.  Unfortunately, I’ve already cancelled the card and ordered a new one.

Today’s a very foggy, overcast day.  Hopefully that will keep the heat down.

It was 62 degrees with 100% humidity when we left the finca at 9:55.  We got past the G-dogs undetected, and were on a bus after a 10 minute wait.  Teresa forgot her sunglasses again but she ended up not needing them because it turned out to be overcast/cloudy all day.  

At the new real estate agency, hereafter referred to as Agency #2, I showed them my driver’s license, passport and my last 2 month’s bank statements.

Laura went to Wilson’s apartment where she dropped off a form for him to complete.

Laura and I walked down to a copy center where we made 2 copies of everything.

They all helped me fill out a form for me that was in Spanish. 

Laura went back to Wilson’s apartment and brought back Wilson’s completed form.

We had lunch at Carbón de Leña.  Teresa had the special of the day – Mondongo - Laura had a casserole, I had their pork shish kebab, Teresa and I shared a mango juice with milk and Laura had some kind of juice.  The total came to 34,500 (about $12).

We walked a couple blocks to Western Union but it was closed until 2pm for lunch.  At 2pm I went inside alone to retrieve the money my brother sent me.  Since this was my first time here I was happy there was a woman there who spoke very good English.

We walked to Agency #1 where Teresa gave me some papers to copy.  Laura went around the corner with me and we waited our turn to have copies made.  While we were waiting there was a man there with what looked like camouflage tattoos all over his face and neck.  He also had dreadlocks.

Teresa went to get her nails done and I went to the park to play chess.  I quickly found an opponent and I won the game with a single pawn advantage.

We said goodbye to Laura who had to get to her 4pm English class.  Teresa and I walked down to La Abuela Isabel where we shared a slice of cheesecake with glasses of milk for 8,700 (about $3).

It started raining lightly.

Back in Agency #2 at 4pm we met the man who was going to take us to see more apartments.  He went, as usual, on his motorcycle and we took a taxi.  The first apartment was about 20 blocks east of downtown and it only had 2 small bedrooms.  What’s so hard about remembering that we’re looking for 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms?  Next we went about 10 blocks south to a gated area and I was surprised that it was a townhouse.  It had 3 bathrooms with everything except the bedrooms on the 1^st floor.  The bedrooms were again small and we’re too far away from everything so we declined.  The realtor checked his cell phone and finally found one closer to downtown.

This apartment was on the first floor next to a small store.  It had 3 large bedrooms but only one (but nice) bathroom.  It was clean and looked newly painted.  Two of the bedrooms had very small closets and the largest bedroom didn’t have any closet.  What?  The kitchen floor space was large but with small counter space.  I would have designed the apartment space differently – for example, take a few feet of the kitchen space to add closets to the bedrooms.  There is only one door (the front) and it appeared to be made of pretty solid wood but I was happy when Teresa suggested we add an additional metal gate.  It appears to be walking distance from Parque Envigado, the 2 main roads toward Medellin and an Exito grocery store.  It costs 1,300,000 a month, we only have to sign a 6 month contract and we pay month by month.  Teresa talked to a man working in the store next door and it appears we are in Estrato 4 so we won’t have to pay extra for the utilities – (Estratos 5 & 6 subsidize Estratos 1 & 2).

We walked to Exito where we picked up a couple bags of groceries.  While waiting in line we ran into the owner of Agency #2.  Teresa talked to him about the possibility of trading the finca for the apartment.  We took a taxi to the highway and after a 5 minute wait we were on a Tratam bus back to the finca.  It was still raining as we walked up the hill and we got past the G-dogs undetected.  We arrived back at the finca at 7:45.

In the 1^st round of the NFL draft the Chicago Bears traded up 2 spots and then selected outside linebacker Leonard Floyd.

T-shirt of the day: Fashion is my addiction.