Monday, June 25, 2018

I slept through the night, only waking briefly one time, not getting up, and falling back asleep quickly.  I finally woke/got up at 6:30.  Did I sleep so well because I took a small half of melatonin last night?

I watched the first 20 minutes of the Today show and left for the gym.

The tattoo girl must have gotten a new tattoo because the lower half of her left calf is covered with what looks like saran wrap.  I did all of my exercises in an hour and 45 minutes.  I Whatsapp’d Jose to see if he was still working in Baranquilla.  He informed me he had been vacationing, not working, in Baranquilla.  He invited me to join him for coffee at a restaurant called Tostao in Poblado.  We arranged to meet first in Parque Poblado at 5pm.

I made a new batch of iced tea.  This time I pre-mixed some room temperature water with 10 packets of sugar so that it will already be dissolved when I add it to my tea.  I still need to find some real lemons here, though.  What they normally have here are what we call limes.  The only real lemons I’ve seen are called imported lemons at Euro and they must be a seasonal item because I haven’t seen them for months.

Laura and I left the apt at 1:30 and we had lunch at Bartolos.  After we finished eating Rhon stopped by and I helped him put Chuck’s number into his cellphone.  Laura received a message that she passed the English test.  Yay!  The university also mailed her the certificate so she doesn’t need to go there to get it.

Laura left to get her certificates printed and I went to the bookstore where I exchanged my paperback for another plus 2mil.  I stopped at Exito and bought a large bag of Fab laundry detergent so Teresa can do laundry.  Then I stopped at the nearby copy center where I had 10 pages printed for 2,000 pesos – again half the price of the larger copy center.

I was back at the apt by 3:20.

I left again at 4:05pm and caught a bus as it was leaving the Envigado downtown bus stop.  On the way I met a tall gringo named Dale from North Carolina.  He said he’s been visiting Medellin for 8 years but he’s flying back to the States tomorrow.  I was at Parque Poblado by 4:40, 20 minutes early, but found Jose sitting by himself checking his cellphone.  He took me a block south of Envios Market to a new café called Tostao (Spanish for some version of “to toast” like “toasted”) right behind the bus stop I often use.  He bought fancy coffees and cereal croissants for each of us for 10,000 pesos.  I had my small chess set with me (good idea because our table was pretty small) and I showed him how to set up the board, the pieces, how they all move and we went through 3 practice games.

Afterwards we walked to McDonald’s less than a block from Oviedo where we had cold fancy coffees.  I bought this time.  

During our talk I learned that the Platinum Cine Colombia card has to be renewed each year – by purchasing 35 tickets.  Yikes!  He told me he loves the series The Handmaid’s Tale (8.6) that he watches on Hulu and a funny movie called Chewing Gum (7.7) that he saw on Netflix.  He said the Cabify app is better for taxis than my other apps.  He helped me install it but we hit a snag because my telephone number is no longer my own – hard to explain that.  We got past that by sending the approval code to my Facebook account.  The next problem is that I couldn’t get a clear photo of my Cedula to send to them to prove my identity.

About 7pm we caught a bus from the Oviedo bus stop back to Envigado.  We even got seats in the back.

Traffic was light and I was back at the apt by 7:30.

Teresa came back at 8pm and watched one of her favorite programs – Desafio (challenge) – kind of like the US Survivor series.

If your dictionary told the truth: Orgasm (n.) The meaning of life.