Disclaimer: This email is really long, and will be followed (hopefully in the next couple days) by other emails updating you all on my very busy start to 2009. Please read at your leisure and don't be annoyed when I email you again soon.
La Navidad y el Año Nuevo
Welcome to the day-by-day journey of my holiday season in Colombia.
Tuesday, December 23
This was a normal workday. After work, my boss, Darwin, took us all shopping. We piled into two cars and headed off to the equivalent of a giant Costco to buy toys for less fortunate kids. Every year, Darwin goes driving around the city and passes out gifts to the kids of poor families who wouldn't get presents otherwise. It was really fun to fill up our massive cart with toys. We bought a ton of little cars for little boys and dolls for little girls (stereotypical gender roles, I know). We also bought some basic clothing items and Christmas cookies to give out as presents. Initially, we were focused on bargain toys- getting the most for our pesos. When we were checking out, there was a promotion where a "Bonus Value" printed on your receipt. Three times, we got some really good bonuses!! It was so funny, three of us stayed at the cash register, and another three guys went running to find more toys to basically buy for free or really cheap. The bonuses allowed us to splurge and get some really nice toys. We got a Barbie and some action figures (which are actually pretty pricey down here). Toy shopping was never so exciting J
Wednesday, December 24
I went to work in the morning; however, none of us actually did much work. The celebration of the Novena had its conclusion and everyone was participating in the celebration. My segment, Completions, was assigned a major role in the ceremonies. There were a lot of Catholic readings, prayers, and Christmas songs. I was nominated to participate in the reading portion. I got to read a prayer (in Spanish of course) in front of the whole base. It was supposed to be followed by an "Our Father" and a "Hail Mary," but someone else had to lead that part, since I'm not Catholic and don't know even known that stuff in English, much less Spanish. The readings were followed by some traditional Colombian Christmas carols. By then end, I had mastered the clapping pattern of the chorus. Woot woot!! Then there was traditional Christmas food, and drinks, and the live band played music. There was one guy whom I had never met and who was dancing to every song with various women. I was minding my own business, when he came over and asked me to dance. Now, there wasn't anybody else dancing, lots of people watching, and I'm not quite the latin-born dancer that they breed down here. Nevertheless, I accepted the offer and proceeded to embrace my dance partner and my foreign-ness on the dance floor. It was fun, slightly embarrassing, filmed, and repeated to two more songs.
In the afternoon, we all left the base and went to go distribute the gifts we had bought the night before. There are lots of poor families that stay in the medians of the major avenues. They sell drinks and food to motorists or wash windshields for money. We drove all around the city, and when we would get stopped at a red light, we would honk and wave the kids over to our cars. They would go crazy for the presents, and then the lights would turn green again and we would drive away, leaving them with some Christmas cheer. The coolest experience of the afternoon was the little girl that received the Barbie. She ran away with her arms high in the air, yelling with excitement. It was really cool to know that we helped bring some joy to a little girl's life during Christmastime.
In the evening, I was invited over to Darwin's house for their Christmas Eve celebration. Here, the 24th is actually a bigger part of the whole holiday than the 25th. The party was Darwin, his wife- Vanessa, her mom, and her coworker, Darwin's sister, my coworker and his wife from Bolivia, and me. Since Darwin and his family are Venezuelan, that made quite the international group- Venezuelans, Bolivians, Colombians and an American. We ate and drank and played games. The craziest part of the evening was when we played Tabú, that's the Spanish version of Taboo- the game where you try to get your team to guess a word without using the related words listed on the card. Everyone else spoke Spanish, so I gave clues buzzed people, and guessed words all in Spanish. Not to brag or anything, but I'm proud to say that I didn't suck!! On one turn, I actually got my team to guess four words!! Now, for a foreign language, that's pretty darn good, if you ask me.
Thursday, December 25
I spent my Christmas day alone. It was kind of depressing, but I felt blessed by the wonderful Christmas Eve that I had. I slept in, read the Christmas story to myself, and listened to my newest a cappella Christmas album by Straight No Chaser. By the wonders of the internet, I was able to call my family back in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My dad had one of the conference call phones they use for business calls, and I was able to be part of some of our family traditions. Every year, we read a short novel called, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," out loud as a family. It's a laugh-out-loud kind of book, and even though I could probably recite at least half of it from memory, I never get tired of reading it each year. It's rather convenient that there are seven people in my family and seven chapters. I got to read my chapter of the book, and it was almost like I was in the same room as everybody, even though we were a continent away. We all got to laugh together, and I got to hear stories of all four of my siblings playing doubles in Wii Tennis. (Can I just comment here, that my entire life, we were never allowed to have any kind of video game system. To this day, I am the worst video game player I know because of it. Well, my parents waited until all of us kids moved out of the house to buy a Wii system and now they're addicted!! Everyone who comes to our house nowadays must play Wii Bowling. It's the newest part of the Schulte house experience.) I digress. Back to the holiday fun.
Friday, December 26
Not much to tell. Hung out in the hotel, slept, thought about and planned my upcoming New York City Adventure.
Saturday, December 27
Worked from 8:00am until 2:30am, so that we didn't have to work on Sunday. It may seem crazy, but being a tourist the next day made it worth it.
Sunday, December 28
I got picked up just before lunch to go visit Monserrate, a church up on one of the mountains overlooking Bogotá. I went with my friend and coworker, Marcela, her family, and some other friends from work. We drove to the point where we would catch the train or cable car up to the top of the mountain, then drove away from it to find a parking space. Apparently Sundays are popular days to be tourists. (FYI, there are some really nice photos of this excursion posted online on my Picassa site.) Anyway, I got to sample some traditional foods. I bought a pincho, that's meat on a stick. I also had masorca, that's grilled corn on the cob. It wasn't normal corn on the cob. It had bigger kernels (like triple size of normal kernels) and tasted like popcorn. Yum yum.
Anyway, we bought our tickets and rode the train up the mountain. The view was beautiful from up top. We walked around the church and took lots of pictures. Then we went into a market area where people were selling hand-made stuff of all sorts. We went to eat lunch at a restaurant, and there were a pair of guys singing with a drum and guitar right out front. It was quite poetic. The food we ate was traditional Colombian food- a big plate of fried goodies that everyone shared and ate with toothpicks. I was a brave soldier and tried everything the platter had to offer. Yeah, that includes chicken, platano (like a banana), potatoes, tripe (intestines), chicharrones (crispy skin), liver, and morcillo (blood sausage). I must say that I preferred some of the items more than others… I washed it all down with a cold glass of refajo, a beverage made by mixing half beer and half a soft-drink called Colombiana. The soft drink by itself reminds me of a cross between ginger ale and cream soda. The refajo stuff seemed like pure craziness to me when I heard about it (beer and soda? ewwww.. nasty), but it's wonderfully delicious.
After lunch, we went shopping. I loved the stuff they were selling. I bought a purse made of braided straw-like material. It's really beautiful. The fun part was bargaining with the vendors. I saved lots of money… by spending lots of money… haha.
Finally, we decided to head back down to the city. Most of the group took the train back down, but three of us decided to wait in the line to take the cable car down. We waited in line for about 30 minutes. There was a little boy about 3 years old in front of us in line with adorable big brown eyes. He was the biggest flirt of a child that I have ever seen. He kept starting at me and giggling. Whenever the line would wind around a corner and he couldn't see me anymore, he would be looking and looking until he found me again and flash me a huge grin. Another group of kids were watching me too (too bad I can't charge for being part of the sightseeing tour). Right before we made it to the front of the line, they shyly asked if they could ask me a question. They asked if I was North American. I guess I don't really fit in around here. Haha.
Anyway, we finally made it onto the cable car. We were packed pretty tightly into the single cabin. I'd say there were about 30 of us standing in the approximate square footage of one and half minivans. It's a steeper ride than the cable car for Pao de Azucar in Rio de Janeiro, but still nothing close to a thrill ride (Cedar Point Junkie here). Nevertheless, a couple minutes before we stopped at the bottom, the movement just became too much for some lady in the corner. She vomited right there in the closed, small, high population density space. Thank goodness it happened at the end. I've never seen people exit a mode of transportation faster than I saw people get off that cable car.
Despite the lunch of internal organs and the smelling of someone's lunch at the end, I had a fantastic time. Did I mention the pictures? Check 'em out.
Monday, December 29
Worked until 9:30pm so that we didn't have to come in on Tuesday… this whole working late and getting the next day free is holiday season pattern around here.
After work, we had a party at the staff house apartment. It was a going away party for our coworker, David. The funny part was that he was only at the party for about forty minutes of the three hours that we were hanging out. We're a pretty international group, so the party turned into a multi-national dance festival. Everyone had a turn showing off traditional dance styles of their country. We saw dances from Colombia (of course), Ecuador, and Bolivia. I did a little country line dancing to represent the good ol' USA. I have a bunch of hilarious videos that do the evening much more justice than my basic prose.
Tuesday, December 30
Tuesday morning, I left with Marcela, her mom, Victor, and his wife, Maria for Neiva. The five of us and our luggage were packed rather tightly into Marcela's car for the five-hour trip to her hometown. We stopped along the way for snacks. We were eating bread made from yucca (a potato-like vegetable) and drinking avena (a creamy beverage that tastes like cold, sweet oatmeal with way too much milk). This little girl came up to us selling some cheese and said to me (in Spanish), "Your eyes are pretty, can you give them to me?" She was really cute, and I was flattered. We shared our snacks with her and bought the cheese she was selling. Later we bought native fruits from street side vendors. They were tasty, and I just chose not to think about the cleanliness level as I was consuming the juicy tastiness.
Wednesday, December 31
Wednesday was all about shopping. New Year's Eve is a family centered holiday here in Colombia. Everyone felt really bad for me that I wasn't home for New Year's, but I was just disappointed that it wasn't a bigger party holiday for me to experience. Marcela's family was incredibly hospitable, and it inspired me to make one of my life goals making sure foreigners are included in holiday celebrations. Anyway, that morning, all of us went shopping for enough food to feed the block, even though it was just going to be family. The typical main course of the holiday is something called "pollo relleno." For all y'all non-Spanish speakers, that means, "stuffed chicken." It's like they take the chicken meat, grind it up with veggies and such, and then mold it back into a chicken shape. You just slice, heat, and serve. It comes pre-cooked… like a fancy hotdog J. Strange but tasty. In the neighborhood, there were parties everywhere. Across the street there was a live band playing traditional music. Everyone stays with their families until midnight, and then around 1am, the young folks go out dancing and such. At the stroke of midnight, we had to eat twelve grapes. Each one was supposed to be a wish for the new year. I accidentally dropped one of my grapes on the ground… do you think that wish will still count? I applied the five-second rule for the sake of 8.33% of my new year's wishes. Wouldn't you?
Thursday, January 1
New Year's Day- a day for junk food, football and Lazy Boy chairs? Well, if you're in Neiva, you go to a water park, Parque Juncal, of course. I spent the afternoon figuring out which high-speed water slide was my favorite, relaxing on the lazy river, drinking beer, and reapplying sunscreen. We went with a big group, and there was one family that had a little girl, Emily, of about seven years old. She decided to adopt me as her favorite playmate for the day. I don't know how much time we spent playing "tiburones" (sharks) in the kiddie pool. She was adorable and full of energy. I definitely got my workout for the day chasing her around. When I wasn't babysitting, I was impressing the guys with my thrill seeking side. The other girls were scared to go down the fast slides, but my biggest fear was for my swimsuit when I went to go stand up at the bottom with an audience.
The End!! Well congrats if you read that all...
Love,
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