Monday, November 30th, 2015

I slept well despite the dogs waking me about 4am and again about 6am, finally waking/getting up at 7am.

Wow, the Denver Broncos beat the previously undefeated New England Patriots 30-24 last night in overtime, and I missed it.

We still haven’t heard from James about finishing the kitchen.  I told Teresa he shouldn’t be in any hurry since he has all of our money.  I don’t understand why she did that.  And my unfinished chess table chairs are still sitting here.

We left the finca at 9:05, got past the killer dogs undetected and were surprised to find at the top of the hill that someone had leveled the dirt from the landslide.  It’s soft to walk on but at least it’s better than having to walk next to the barbed wire fence.  And since it’s on the flat top of the hill Walter should be able to drive on it without any trouble.

On the way down the hill we saw Don Carlos cutting plants in the area above the sideroad.  

At the highway we saw that they have blacktopped the new southbound lanes but it’s still far below the level of the northbound lanes.

We waited quite a long time for a bus, seeing many pass us by that were full.  Teresa told me it’s difficult to get a bus early on Monday because of people returning to Medellin.  I’ll have to remember that.  Over a span of about 5 minutes 3 trucks passed us that must have been full of pigs – god what a smell!  It lingers in the air around you for several minutes afterwards.  Teresa found several lengths of rebar that she hid because she wants them for the finca later but I have no idea what for.

After waiting for an hour and 10 minutes she finally decided we would take a bus to Caldas.  We got off at the junction of Caldas, the highway and the road that leads to Santa Barbara.  We walked a block to where the police have a tent set up (they weren’t there today) and soon were on a bus to Mayorca.  From there we took a taxi to San Rafael hospital in Itagui.  Teresa talked to someone and they sent us 4 blocks away to another San Rafael hospital.  Then they sent us a block away to another hospital.  All I understand is that we are supposed to call someone tomorrow.  

We took a taxi to Envigado where we had lunch at Carbón de Leña for 23mil.  I talked to Eddie and made arrangements to meet here for lunch tomorrow.

We took a bus to San Diego CC where Teresa picked up her purse at Bon Bonite.  As I understand it after 7 months she got the same slightly damaged purse back.

We stopped in Exito and picked up some milk, bread, and crackers.

We left the mall at 2:30 and took a bus back to Envigado.  We stopped at a health food store where we each had a glass of fresh mandarin juice for 5mil.  We took a taxi to the highway where, after a 20 minute wait, we decided to take a Fredonia bus even though it stops in Caldas.

We got a couple of the last seats in the back followed by another man who sat next to me.  He smelled like he had worked physically today and hadn’t yet had a shower.  It seemed to bother Teresa more even though he was sitting next to me.

In Caldas the usual woman got on the bus and collected money from various people on the bus.  I understood she wanted to charge us 8mil because we were seated so we got up and let others have our seats and in the end I only had to pay 5mil.  Maybe Teresa only wanted to get away from the stinky man.

The killer dogs were waiting for us and I gave each of them a dog biscuit.

We got back to the finca at 5pm so subtracting the 15 minutes or so that we spent in the health food store, it took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to get back to the finca from the San Diego mall.

I received an answer from the secretary at the Antioquia Chess League that there is a tournament Thursday, December 10^th through Sunday, December 13^th.  I replied with a few more questions about details.

Laura came back at 7:30; hopefully peace has been restored.

It’s nice to see the Colombian Peso well over 3,100 again.

I took my sleeping pills at 10:30 and went to bed at 11pm.

T-shirt of the day: Never.