I went to bed at 11pm, got up once during the night, and
woke up at 6:15 feeling pretty good.
Another interesting morning in The City of Eternal Spring:
While I was enjoying my morning coffee I heard some
commotion down the street. There were
about a dozen people standing around and there was a taxi stopped on the
street. It was unusual enough that the
neighbors across the street came out to find out what was going on. About 10 minutes later all the people were
gone but I saw 2 policemen with a motorcycle and a man in a purple shirt
sitting on the curb. At that moment a
police car arrived, they put the man in the car, and it sped away. The 2 men got back on their motorcycle and
left. (Later John told me they caught a
thief.)
After my workout, shower, and breakfast I walked over to
Calle 44 (aka San Juan)
and found an ATH ATM on the street. (On
the way I saw the dog lady walking ahead of me; of course walking a dog.) Besides some small change, I only have a
50mil bill and I don’t think they will like that later for my 5mil
haircut. I went inside and was happy to
see that it has a small slide lock so there is at least a little privacy. I put in my debit card but when I pushed the
“debit” option it didn’t respond. Just
to make sure I was doing it right I pressed the “credit” option and it took it
but of course it was rejected later because it isn’t a credit card.
I brought it
all home and dropped it off. I I
walked across the street and bought one of those sugar donuts for 500 pesos (25
cents). Walking down the street I came
to a Davaviendi bank and stepped inside but they didn’t have any ATMs so I
left. I turned right at the next corner
and found the Tienda D1 store that Beatriz took me to last weekend. (I know I’m being redundant here because
“Tienda” means “store”.) The signage on
their plastic bag translates to “D1 Stores all! Highest quality at the lowest price.” I
bought another package of the arequipe cookies that Beatriz and her daughter
like, 2 more packages of the same granola I bought before, a larger 12.3 oz.
bag of granola cereal with strawberries for 3,150 and another 50 pesos for
another bag to carry it in for a total of 7350 ($3.87). And you have to put the stuff in the bag
yourself.
I stopped at
Jhon’s office and had him confirm the message I’m hearing in Spanish on my cell
phone is telling me I don’t have any minutes left. He wants to go to lunch together at noon. Again, I saw the dog lady waiting for the man
to come out of the building next door.
This is the guy Jhon says she is hung up on. I think he looks like Bluto from the Popeye
cartoons. I stopped at the corner store
and bought another 4mil worth of minutes for myself and 2mil for Beatriz, just
in case. I went across the street to
Viva Mall to take some money out of the ATM.
I took 20,000 pesos out of the Davaviendi ATM and then wanted to take
the smallest amount out of the ATH ATM but it was all dark, obviously out of
order.
I realized I
had forgotten the index card with my haircut instructions in Spanish so I had
to go back to the apartment to retrieve them. This time I got a new guy named Carlos to cut
my hair. Again they cut it too
short. I don’t know what I have to do to
get just a trim! And this time they
charged me 10mil for a 30 minutes haircut while last time they charged me 5mil
for a 1 hour haircut. Go figure! I asked the owner to come out and I told her
in Spanish, “Please, I’m not a Colombian man, I’m an American man. This is too short. Next month when I come back (it will probably
be more time than that, it’s so short) please only cut a little.”
You know
those tram rides you see at the zoos? A
very similar one just came down the street, playing music with 4 “cars” loaded
with parents and children. Interesting!
I checked the
US
movie releases and there isn’t anything new I want to see. I would still like to see The Millers and Elysium that are still in US theatres. I checked the Medellin theatres and … Uh Oh, Red 2 isn’t
playing at Los Molinos anymore. Beatriz
and I were going to go see it tomorrow night.
Also, interesting is that Los Molinos now comes up as Mills for some
reason. Did they change the name of the
mall? But it is playing at some place
called The Treasury which looks like
it is in the area of El Tesoro where the man lives that I bought my laptop
from. I think I know what happened. Google is automatically translating the
websites from Spanish to English and Los Molinos translates to Mills. If I scroll fast enough I can even see it
before and after the translation. Now I
see The Treasury is the English translation of El Tesoro. That’s the mall where we used the ATM machine
so I could pay for the laptop. I also
see that Jurassic
Park 3D is coming on
August 30th – next week, so there’s another movie I would probably
like to see.
I had lunch
with Jhon at noon at Likkes. Probably
because of the donut I had I wasn’t very hungry so I only had a salad, beans,
and juice for 4,500 ($2.37). Both Jhon
and I had a 10mil bill the owner couldn’t change so Jhon paid with his money,
in effect, buying me lunch.
I went to LM
and bought a small bag of potato chips and a medium Pepsi from Frisby and
studied my chess book for a few hours.
I stopped at
Jhon’s office and while I was waiting for him to log off his computer, I saw Franklin walking on the
sidewalk across the street. I waved to
him and he came over and with Jhon as interpreter I learned more about
him. He is a retired mathematics teacher
who lives in Bogota and is visiting his daughter
here in Medellin. He is leaving Tuesday to go back home but he
will return in January. He is looking at
apartments here because if he can sell a few lots he owns in Bogota he would like to move here. Most of our discussion was taken place at the
corner store. After we each finished our
drinks we went our separate ways.
When I got
home I realized I forgot to buy milk. On
the way back I told Jhon to always remind me when I’m leaving the corner store
“do you want to buy milk?” Lol.
When I was
paying for the milk the young man who works there said that now we are
“amigos”. Interesting. I guess I should ask my new “amigo” what his
name is.
It’s about
time to leave for the Bears game so tomorrow I’ll post more info about tonight.
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