Saturday, July 26th, 2014

Last night I got an email response from Teresa.  She has the movie The Fault in our Stars at her finca but she wants to go to a banzai exhibit at San Diego CC on Sunday. 

She also told me that an Empanada does not make a good lunch.  I need fruits and salads and vegetables.

I went to bed at 10:30, woke up once at 3:45 due to a short rainstorm, woke up at 6am and got up at 6:30.

Today is the day I finally get to see Teresa’s finca.  I’ve got my camera and I hope to take a lot of pictures.

I left the apartment at 9am.  Here’s a picture of Jhon’s office I took as I was walking by.

This is the park I walk through almost every day to get to Viva CC or Mall Laureles.  Avenida 80 is behind the crossover bridge you see in the background.

This is where I get my glass of fresh orange juice most weekday mornings.  Notice the sign “Redd’s” above the bar entrance.  That isn’t the name of the place it’s just what I call it.

This is the bus stop I use when I want to take a Circular Sur 302 bus in the southerly direction and, yes, you can see I just missed my bus.  However, another will be along in less than 5 minutes.

This is the entrance to the Aguacatala metro station. 

This is where I purchase my ticket for 1,900 pesos (about $1) to ride the metro to anywhere in the city.

This is a metro train arriving in the opposite direction.  It shows the name of the station at the northern end of the line – Niquia.  La Estrella is the southern terminus.

I took a quick picture of the inside of the metro.  There is absolutely no graffiti anywhere on the train or in the stations.

After I got off the train in Envigado it’s only a 2 block walk to Exito which you can see on the other side of the parking lot.

I saw Teresa’s 17-year old daughter Laura right away.  I took this quick picture of her before we headed into Exito to buy something.

She’s a pretty girl and I understand very intelligent.  We bought popcorn and a large bottle of Coke and headed back to the Aquacatala metro station.  

At 10:10 we caught a bus that said Fredonia on it; I understand we could have also taken one identified as Tan Tar.  About 11am we arrived in the little town of Caldas.  We stopped next to a small store which apparently serves as the bus stop.  Across the street I saw a butcher shop with a Alcoholics Anonymous sign above it.  The streets are under a little construction; it’s obvious they are replacing the sidewalks with stone tiles.  We finally got off in what looks like the middle of nowhere.

This is a 2-lane paved road.  To the right you can see a little of the area blocked off where they are working on a new highway.  Across the street is the dirt road we walked up to get to the finca.  Notice how steep it is.  Laura had no problem walking while I was quickly, and often, out of breath which she found amusing.  (Later Teresa had no problems either.)  I’m guessing we are already at a higher elevation which would explain my problem although a change in elevation wasn’t that obvious.  We walked about 75% of the way up the hill you see in the background.

Now, through all the foliage, you can see the finca in the background.  It looks like a pretty nice building. 

As we were coming down the approach we were greeted by their 4 small dogs.  Teresa called them what sounded like “Foss Ters” and I looked them up and found they are probably “Fox Terriers”.  They were not in the least bit aggressive towards me, maybe because I was with Laura.  One is all white and the other 3 are white and brown.  The white one is Peter, another is Tony, I forget the 3^rd and the 4^th I couldn’t even pronounce.  This is the road we had just come down.

This is the front of the building. Teresa told me she designed it herself and it took 1 year to construct.

This is the view from the front porch.  This corner looks like a good place to hang a hammock.  Notice her garden.

This is her living room.  She has a large screen TV out of view in the upper right corner. You can see the dining room in the background.  Notice the “windows” on the left and right.  They don’t have glass but are protected by wrought iron with panels that can be closed for security and to keep out the nighttime cold.

This is the dining room with a very nice table and chairs in the Spanish style.

This is the kitchen.  She cooks mostly on a wood fire; the chimney is in the background.  In the center are 4 extra burners that run on liquid propane.

This is the master bedroom.  There is a large armoire out of view on the left.  We plan to build a closet for me with the extra space on the right.

This is the 2^nd bedroom.  Laura sleeps in one of these beds and this is also where she does her homework.

This is the 3^rd bedroom.  I guess this is the guest room and it does have a small shower off to the side.

This is some artwork at the entrance to the 3^rd bedroom.  I should have asked Teresa if she created these.

This is the laundry room.  I believe the machine on the left is for washing and drying.

This is the main bathroom which is between the 1^st 2 bedrooms.  The shower area alone is larger than my bathroom.

This is the view from the side of the property.  It’s pretty steep.

This is the view from the back.  It is very steep, between 60% and 90%.

This is a view of the back of the house.

More views from the front of the house.

Teresa looked at our “popcorn” and told us that this is corn used to feed chickens.  Come to think of it the kernels do look a little big.

One thing I like here is that it is noticeably cooler than Medellin.

I helped Laura with some English she had written in a notebook.  It mainly consisted of words scrambled from a sentence that she had to reconstruct.  Teresa and I also used her computer to talk a little.  She still had a lot of questions to ask me.

We played a few games of dominoes and she quickly built a 4-0 lead but I came back and we ended with her winning 10-6.  She talked me into staying overnight and I agreed although I didn’t have any extra clothes or anything.

Breakfast consisted of a bowl of granola with milk and a little later eggs scrambled with tomato and onion, an arepa with cheese and hot chocolate.

Other meals were mainly salad, bean soup or beans with rice (calentao), chicken or beef (very chewy as usual) with your choice of drink (usually strawberry juice for Teresa and I and Coke for Laura).  

Teresa has some type of minor digestive problem so she’s supposed to eat small meals every few hours.

When Teresa feeds the dogs (once or twice a day) they follow her and she puts food down in one location and one of the dogs starts eating.  She moves a few yards away, puts down more food, and another one starts eating.  She repeats that 2 more times and then stands guard to make sure none of them try to take any others’ food until they have finished.

She took me down a path near the front of the house and showed me some exotic plants and trees.  She pointed out some medium sized pretty black and yellow birds.  Maybe I should have skipped that trip because the next day I had several mosquito bites.  She sprayed the spots with something.  I looked at the bottle and it was in English.  It was some type of product for the hair.  :)

Saturday night we watched Homefront which I saw back on May 9^th, and then Endless Love.  These were unlabeled CDs that I can only guess Laura copied off the internet but they were very good copies.

When it’s time to go to bed she closes and locks all the windows and I was surprised that it was so dark in the bedroom my eyes never got used to it.  It also gets cool there in the evening which is great for sleeping.

T-shirt of the day: Girls don’t cry.