Monday, December 2nd, 2013

It’s actually just after noon on Tuesday as I write this so there will probably be fewer details than usual.

Sunday night at 8:30 the firecrackers started but I put in my earplugs, went to bed at 11pm and got to sleep rather quickly.  I got up several times during the night with my first case of diarrhea in the time I have been here in Medellin.  Maybe I ate too many chicken wings last night.

I met Reina at LM at 10am and first we went to BanColombia in Exito to pay my medical insurance.  There were 2 very long lines; on is for general transactions the other for preferential transactions (like for old people like me).  I told her it was better that we stay in the general line because there were 3 tellers for it and only one for the preferential line.  She told me after a while that the other line was actually faster.  Maybe there transactions are simpler and therefore faster.  It took us 30 minutes to get through the general line.  We stopped at the Exito pharmacy and I bought 6 Immodium capsules for 11,900 pesos ($6.26).

We caught a Circular 302 bus and 30 minutes later got off at Monterrey C.C.  We walked up Calle 10, stopped at Mail Boxes Etc. where I paid for 2 months of my mail box rental.  I didn’t pay for just 1 month because I didn’t want to have to worry about when they would be open around New Years Day.   

We walked up to the Flip Flop Sandwich Shop where I had a chicken salad sandwich and a Coke zero because they were out of regular Coke (ugh!) and Reina had a chicken sandwich without the bread which is probably the closest thing she could get in an American restaurant to a Colombian meal.  

We arrived at the dentist office at exactly 1pm but no one answered my knocks.  I called the dentist’s private cell phone number and he told me his assistant should be there in just 5 minutes or so.  I told him I would have to come back another time because we had a movie to go to.  I didn’t know exactly how long it would take us to walk to Oviedo C.C. or to find the theater, buy our ticket, etc.   

We actually got everything taken care of and were in our seats no more than 2 minutes before the show started.  Oviedo C.C. is just a 10 minute walk from my dentist’s office.  I don’t know how much the movie cost because Reina had the tickets to find our seat (so I have no receipt but it was probably 7mil each like I paid last time) while I carried the medium popcorn for 8,600 ($4.53) and medium Pepsi for 4,500 ($2.37).   The movie was good but not great; I don’t know why I didn’t like it more because I usually enjoy survival movies the best.  It did seem to end abruptly like there is going to be a part 2. 

I called the dentist and he was in his office and I told him I would be there in 15-20 minutes to make a payment.  As we were leaving the mall I looked outside, saw it wasn’t raining and realized we had left the umbrella in the theater.  We decided that Reina would go back for the umbrella while I went to pay the dentist.  (Interestingly, as I was leaving the mall I noticed that each car entering the parking area was being checked for bombs; security had a mirror attached to a long pole and slid it under each car.)  

It worked out and we both met about midpoint between the theater and the dentist’ office.  We walked back to the building the dentist’s office is in and then walked down the street where we caught the Circular 303 bus back to Exito.  I gave her the address to Patrick’s Irish Pub where we will meet at 8pm on Friday for the Mac Championship.

I was exhausted and went to bed at 8pm with earplugs in.  I got up a couple times during the night do to my problem and took one more capsule of my medicine.