Last night I went to bed right after posting my blog
entry. It was raining so hard I put in
ear plugs but still had a difficult time getting to sleep probably because of
the late night Cokes or maybe the excitement of the game was still with
me. It was worth it to see my Chicago
Bears beat the Green Bay Packers. I woke
up at 5am, took 1 Excedrin Migraine and got up at 5:40. I must have gotten some sleep though because
I don’t feel particularly tired this morning.
I think there will probably be a nap in my near future sometime today. I thought it stopped raining about 3am but
it’s still raining slightly even now at 6am.
At 7am I was having breakfast of café con leche and arequipe
sugar donut at Paisa Pan on San Juan.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, every week, if not every
day, some local merchant slips several advertising flyers under the front
door.
Yesterday, the girls next door slipped the following 2
hand-made flyers under the front door of our building:
“Tienda” means “store” and I’m guessing the girls’ family
name is “Mapiz”. The large flyer states
“Mapiz shop offers fantastic sweets” and lists a number of candies and their
prices. It also includes their address
and telephone number. They apparently
also have weekly specials, this week being Tinto and something called “Sugo”,
and this weekend being Tinto and Sodas.
Lastly, the girls’ names are Maria Paula and Valentina (Mapiz?).
The second flyer states they also have free delivery. Cute!
I guess they know who their best customer is!
I stopped at Exito and bought another month’s supply of
Tamsulosin for 40,500 ($21.32). I then
tried to purchase their Exito umbrella with the 1,000 free points they gave me
plus 8,250 pesos ($4.34) but now I understand I have to wait until the 1st
month is over to use the points.
The following article was posted to Colombia Expats forum
yesterday:
Obamacare 911- What US Expats Need to Know About Coverage & US Taxes Abroad
I included it as a separate posting.
The following is one expat’s response to a question about getting
a job teaching English in Colombia:
Yeah, I will also wish you luck, but I feel I must point out
the reality. I hope you secure a job before you arrive, for there is a good
chance you might have to join the car-washers at the traffic lights. I know
some folks have struck lucky, and managed to find something, but not everyone
is that lucky. There are very many people who think "I'll go down to Colombia, and
it will be easy, as I am a native speaker". Not always so. I recently
pointed out on here, a comment from one of the schools here, thanking all the
applicants for their interest. But there were over 1,500 applicants for just 3
or 4 jobs. The best jobs demand that you are a qualified teacher, and are also
lucid, and have a good command of the English language yourself. You would
never believe how many "native speakers" can't even talk properly or
spell. You only have to read through these boards to see what I mean. If you
doubt whether that is important, just imagine yourself as a parent. If you
heard an English teacher trying to teach your child the language, but was not
totally literate himself, would you want to pay all that money for your child
to be taught by him? No, of course not. So a lot of people who want to teach,
but are not really up to it, find that the available jobs pay crap money for
working all the hours under the sun. Minimum wage here is about US$ 300 per
month. The average rent in a cheapish apartment could be about US$ 300 - 400
per month, plus service/admin charges of another US$ 50, so you end up with not
enough to pay your rent to start with. So my advice would be to ensure you have
enough money in case you can't get a job. Traffic lights are not very nice
places, especially if you have to try and muscle into someone else's territory.
He will defend his patch to the death. Just a few thoughts to bear in mind.
Otherwise, good luck. Colombia
is a lovely place, but not if your luck runs out. There is not a lot of
sympathy, but lots of hard luck stories, (about 5 million of them).
Lunch was the 7mil special at Likkes and then I picked up my laundry.
At 2:30 while sitting outside the corner store I finished The Hunt for Red October. From 3:30 to 5:00 I was reading my Nook
outside Exito. Like most books it’s a
little different from the movie. The
movie made some significant changes to allow Jack Ryan to look more like a
hero. Then I started reading Patriot Games, also by Tom
Clancy. I counted 1 Panasonic, 4 Samsung
and 1 Simple (sp?) TVs that went out the door while I was watching today. Gloria came by about 4pm and said
“hello”. She said she had a headache and
I felt bad that I didn’t have my pill case with me with the Excedrin Migraine.
From 5:15 to 6:15 I was sitting in Fresco Pan having my dinner.
First I had my usual ham & cheese pastry with café con leche for
less than 2mil and then a Pan de Salchicha (hotdog) – what we would call “pigs
in a blanket” – with another café con leche again for less than 2mil. I told the girl working there that tomorrow I
would tell her what we call Pan de Salchicha in English – meaning “pigs in a
blanket”.
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