Lima, Peru

Been in Lima for one night and two days, wow a lot of different impressions already. I am staying in the Miraflores area, and there are a lot more tourist down here than anywhere I can think of in Bogotá, I heard a lot of English today, a lot, not to mention a little French and German too. The Miraflores area of town is very cool, crowded and a lot going on. A good place to take a beer or coffee and just watch the action. Not to mention it is walking distance to this mini mall that over looks the ocean. Now I am here during the winter time, and it actually is as I am south of the equator for the first time in my life. All and all it is very cool, there is a lot of people out there praying on the Tourist money as well though. People will come up to you because you speak English, make small talk, and than ask for money for food, etc, after a couple of heart break stories. Or they will try to get you to go somewhere to talk to somebody about a product you must have for altitude sickness etc, and than charge twice as much. And when you walk away! Now all the sudden it's half off, weird.... This one little girl really wanted me to buy some candy as I was walking in to this circle of artist, selling trinkets like most air fairs do, and i didn't want to. So i offered her all the coins in my pocket, which was on 10 Soles, it's all I had! Anyways that is only about 3 or 4 cents, but once again it is all I had. She through it back at me after she told me it was worth nothing, and than when I started to walk away she tripped me! That has happened a lot, the Taxis are a trip, too. Because they don't have meters it is the old debate game about prices, it is mostly done by neighborhoods with standard pricing from neighborhood to neighborhood, or district rather. The "safe" taxis are twice as much, the normally taxis would be the same if i couldn't speak spanish. Like most travel warnings, they strongly urge you to only call taxi companies, etc, as they can be dangerous, is that a standard rule in every country? I am convienced that is a tactic done by government owned taxis or something, because the are a ton more money. Anyways, tomorrow i am headed to Cusco, for the morning and than to the majestic Macchu Picchu, but right now I gotta go get my sister from the airport!

Waiting in the Airport

A post a month huh? Nah, just gotta get back in the groove, Bogotá can very demanding. I am stuck in the damn airport this morning, tip, if you want a taxi in the morning in Bogotá, call early, 6:45 is impossible. So, i have spent the entire day online today, finally i got the Tigers on the radio, but it was a lot of youtube and iTunes for the morning, plus a long nap laying on my luggage. Anyways, i am headed to Popayan! The white city, known for it's very strong religious presence, and during semana santa, the week of the saints, it is one of the most popular destinations for national tourism, and they have large parades, and religious festivals. I don't know a whole lot more about it, other than that it was destroyed by an Earthquake once and rebuilt. So, i am sitting in the airport, lets draw some comparisons between the most organized airport in Colombia, and any airport in the US. Number one, no toilet seats. Number two, people can come in and walk around and sell you things, while it is not very common because there isn't a large customer base, it does happen. I have been here since 8, it is 3, and this one guy has literally tried to sell me some bag of cheese 10 times, and this only lady, dressed up as a nurse, has come around and tried to get me to pay to have my blood pressure taken 5 times, ?!? But, one thing that remains the same is the food is expensive. Anyways, back to the road. I will let you know how Popayan is in the next couple of days.

Proud to be an American! Wishing i was Colombian...

Wow, what a profound weekend. I had an amazing expierence with the YMCA in Camp Bochica that while it is still fresh in memories feels like it could have a life changing impact. The ICCP (International Camp Counsler Program) of Colombia invited to me to join them at Camp Bochica as the delegate for the United States, to help inform particpants of what to expect culturally and to provide work related information. The dream of traveling for a citizen of the United States takes a few things, money, a passport, time, and some courage. If you have the money and time all you need is a plane ticket, and presto, here is your travel visa sir. For a citizen of Colombia it is much more than that, it´s not a vacation, it´s a dream, one that takes sacrafice, hard work, preserverance, and above all us more courage than one can imagine. It starts with a dream, to see the United States, the home of New York, Converse tennis shoes, Miami, the Rocky Mountains and Mickey Mouse. Than it takes a year of sacrifice, volunteering, not to mention the countless hours of work and studying English or course. Heaven forbid one should travel to the US with out perfect English, but dont worry if the Eiffel tower is on the agenda, Americans dont need to speak French... blah! With the Peso essentialy worth on half the value of the US dollar, it means Colombians have to work twice as hard and long and sacrafice twice as much for that plane ticket, could you imagine if the already expensive international flights doubled? How often would you go to the private resort in Mexico? That´s what i thought, it makes Daytona look better and better. Several cities send particpants ever single year, and ever single year there is a talent show to represent each cities unique and individual culture. AMAZING! The culture of Colombia is on display and the hertige is strong and proud. And different for ever city, i thought about what i would do for Kalamazoo, or Michigan, loose my job, play X-Box, gain wheight and where jeans and a white T-Shirt? Sorry Michigan, you know i love you, and i wouldnt let anybody that wasnt from there say that. I wish you could have seen some of these presentaions, you would have been as amazed as i am with the memories still ringing inbetween my ears 3 days later. And yet, of the 82 qualified, hardworking, amazing applicants we had, only 78 recieved Visas, 4 particpants where told no, you can not travel to the US, by the United States of America´s Embassy, located in Bogotá, Colombia. No, your hard work is not enough, no, your university is not good enough, no, your second cousins uncles brother in laws babysitters boyfriends aunt once talked to a Guerilla, No, No, No, No, denied. This is not to live in the U.S., this is for a 10 week job, with children, to enhance and share culture and enrich lives, no, no, no, denied. And, what did this four people do? They didnt hang their heads, they didn´t weap as they saw 78 of their friends achieve their goal, they didn´t curse the U.S. and call them dirty names. They lifted up their head´s, fought back the welt in the through, traveled to work training with the partners they sweat with, they bleed with, they laughed and cried with. And when they got to Camp Bochica, one this was consistent with everybody, they are proud to be Colombian. Proud of their culture, country, their famalies, their lives... The preserverance and determenation of these young men and women make you appreciate how lucky the American life is. Just like a fish does not see the water in which it seems, the American does not see the privaledge in which they live. I am proud to be an American, proud of everything that we have built, proud of the life that we live, but it took a country where people live and die with only this pride, to make me realize it. God bless Colombia, God bless Colombians, and to my fellow Americans, please understand how much God has already blessed us...

My First Fairly Scary Expierence

Today i left my work an hour early, i was in the classroom and i think the class got cancelled because no one informed me, or maybe they where somewhere else, i am not sure. So, i left around noon, decided to try to beat the rain and get a little extra volunteering done. When i left i heard all these comotion and didnt know where it was coming from, until i got to the street. Upon arrival i saw a large march walking south bound on 7A, towards Candelaria, mostly young people, waving Colombian flags, and i thought to myself how cool, its like a presidental march, so i walked across the one lane of traffic and joined the march, naturally. People where shouting up to people on balconies that where showing support, ¨come join us, come join us¨and people where running from apartments down in to the street to join, how cool, my first Colombian presidental rally, i heard them many times from the window when i heard people yelling DOWN WITH URIBE. It was all fun and games, and than it started to get a little more serious. About 10% of the population where young men, with cloaks, bandanas, and masks over their faces. And i saw one of them run up to the Citi bank, which i was planning on using, and start spraying some jargon on the front window, the crowd started whistling and the boys packed up their pant and ran because cops where approaching. I man that actually needed to use the services just walked by the young men spraying the paint as if they where just pigeons nodding their heads while saunteering around the sidewalk for crumbs. So than the same boys, directly in front of me, and carrying gigantic sticks like baseballs mind you, started yelling at two lonely police in the median, the police advanced the young men proved overpowering the police actually backed down! I walked by another building, this one most have been more important, because the entire stairway was protected by police, standing shoulder to shoulder across the entire building. About 40 cops in all, and dressed head to toe in this black bullet proof material, they looked like robocop, you could have shot these dudes in the belly with a desert eagle and it would not have made them even move their feet. Than after 38 police at the end their was two cops that most have been short on the SWAT budget, because they where dressed in these old army green pull over vests, that had been used before, the evidence was in the holes where former police had been shot. Needles to say, the last two cops, looked the most frightend. Wow, this is what i was thinking, wow. Then we got to a skywalk, so people could cross the road, because 7A is a busy street, the young man in front of the rally ran to the top and started waving his Colombian flag, everybody went crazy, and naturally so did I. After that he was followed up by two other young men, who than unrolled a homemade American Flag, hug it off the crosswalk, let it on fire, and watched it burn. The crowd scream even later. At this moment it accured to me, this isn´t a Anti-Uribe Rally, this is an anti U.S.A. rally, my immediate reaction, looking around me and being in the center of this mob, was, SHIT. My next thought was dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, and my third thought was, cross the street and watch with a buffer of three lanes of heavy traffic. I did just that, running to the other side, when i got to the other side i saw the police move in on the boys that i had mentioned, the ones with the grafitti and sticks, and the boys started waving their sticks and one pulled out a homemade nailbomb in a Pony pop bottle, the cops backed down. Again i thought to myself holy moly, i need to work on my spanish a little more so next time i join the right rally. Peace from Bogotà.

Sorry its been so long, i have been very busy with traveling and my spanish class coming to in an end, here is some photos to check out of the recent trip, it is worth noting this are all in Manizales, i will have stories and more photos in the following days.

Back From Vacation

I am back! It feels good to be back in Bogota, for the last week i have been traveling around the coffee region of Colombia (it consists of Manizales, Pereira, and Armenia with Ibague being the city on the way out) and it has been absoultely beautiful, an amazing trip. I am staying in a hotel for a week, one that doesnt have internet, so i will only be able to write some short posts and thoughts about the trip for now but this weekend, maybe sunday night, i will go in to more detail and post some pictures as well. Today i am going to talk about the bus ride from Bogota to Manizales. The ticket was 42.000 Colombian Pesos, or 21 dollars, for a seven hour bus ride through the mountains, wait until you see the pictures! Some really breathtaking views, but also some scary moments. The trip takes you up, down, and over several mountains before you reach your destination. At some points you are up so high that you can look out the bus, and the only thing between you and a 1000 meter drop is a 12 inch curb. Plus some of the curves are literally 180 degrees, and you can have curves like that back to back to back, with the bus driver pushing the bus as hard and as fast as they can. Needless to say, i get a little car sick on these rides. If there is a car, or a jeep full of people hanging off of it, and it is going to slow, the bus driver will pass the other car infront of you, even if it is in on a double yellow, around a corner, with 20 feet of visibility, next to a cliff that would mean certain death if the bus where to drive off. And buses do fall off, there is proof in the guardrails that are smashed over, off, broke in half, and hangning off of cliffs. You literally drive through clouds, with visibility only being 50 feet at some points. It can be a long seven hours, but we only saw two freight trucks tipped over... finally ariving to Manizales was a wecloming site. The national tree of Colombia is the wax palm, which is a beautiful tree that grows very very very tall, with a small bush of palm frons at the very top. The tree only grows at high altitudes, in arrid climates, with mild weather. i got to see so many wax palms on this bus ride, which is something i have wanted to do since i came Colombia. In areas where the trees where thick you just had to look for long white trunks growing out of the trees and you could see the palms towering above the pines, in other areas the hills where bare, dressed only in grass with isoloated Wax Palms, standing very tall, erect, and proud, almost as if they where puffing out their chest and standing up straight for a yearbook photo. Gorgeous, but the drive is something i don´t really want to have to make again, i was pale, sweating, and had a barf bag handy for almost three hours straight.

On a completly unrealated note, i want to talk about the price of beauty here in Colombia. Women take a lot of pride in the way they look and dress before they leave the house for the day. Tall boots with heels is the primary look that many of the ladies here strive to achieve, it is almost a standard look for 20 and up... way up. It rains a lot in Bogota, and a lot of the buildings have tile floors inside, making them very slippery, including the stairs. Today when i was exiting my first class i saw a young lady laying at the bottom of the stairs, crying, holding her ankle, with about 6 people crowded around here. After asking if I could help, which i couldn´t really because medical assistance had been called and most of the people on the scene spoke no English, i figured out what happend. Apparently the young lady was walking down the stairs, with her highheeled boots, slipped and tumbled to the bottom. In the process she either sprained, or broke her ankle, it was tough to tell. The price of looking good landed this poor girl on crutches, it was a sad situation, i wish her the best, but it was a pathetic sight.

Lastly, yesterday was opening day! The 2010 baseball season is officially underway and i couldn´t be more excited. A lot of the experts are brushing us off this year (us being the Detroit Tigers), because of to much youth, lack of expierence, and a poor offence. It is true, we need a lot out of Laird and Everett, looking forward to improvments at those positions in the near future, but we have chance. That is what spring is all about, baseball and the hope for something grand. Dreams are dreamt big this time of year and i wish my team, the Detroit Tigers, great luck and hope for lots of sucess for the 2010 campaign, go Tigers!

FORGIVE GRAMMER AND SPELLING TODAY I DIDNT HAVE TIME TO PROOF READ JUST TIME TO WRITE AND POST

Bogota by Night

Wow, this city as beast. When your living here and you develop a routine its amazing to think how quick you adapt and become a part of something that is totally alien, sometimes i forget that i can't communicate with over 7,500,000 people in my same city. I have always kind of looked at cities like living organisms, partly because they are, to some extent, and partly because the are born, grow, and eventually die. Well, Bogota is in its growing stages, in 1951, there was 715,000 people, today there is over 8,000,000 people with estimates for the 2010 census around 10,000,000 people, this is city is gigantic. In spanish class today the ran begin to fall with heavy force upon the roof off your building, which was nice because the wet moist air help mask the smell of marijuana smoke that was flowing through the window while an entire class of students stood directly out of our window and smoked a big fat joint. Eventually my Spanish professor tapped on the glass and let them have it, "Could you please move over so your not smoking RIGHT next to our window?" Ha! All the kids turned out to have class in the room directly next to ours, another Ha! The rain calmed it self during the duration of the class, so much so the asphalt was dry when i excited the room. But, life was looking me directly in the eye in the form of a gigantic deep black cloud rolling like an avalance down the mountains in the east with a cold breathe that seemed to run down every last vertebre in your spine. I knew i had to get to the bus, and i knew that i had to do it fast, so i put my head down and begin the face paced trek to the Tranmilenio station, i beat the rain there but as i walked through the station i saw B12 roll by, and in the processing while waiting for the next 12, the 11 came, and it was crowded! So crowded when the people couldn't get off the bus, and someone trying to get on actually had to grab the person's wrist and pull them out of the crowd of people. They popped out like a cork, making the same noise and everything, and after the preverbel cork come the pooring of people, like six or seven, and of course nine got on. The last guy getting on got piched big time and when the bus left the strap to his back pack was actually physically haning out the door, i couldn't help but laugh. Immediatly i thought that Karma was going to put me on a crazy crowded bus. But alas, i didn't, and the downpour began as i got on to the bus. The top hatches were open for wind, and nobody close them, so every know and then while hanging out to the handle i would catch a fat rain drop right in the eye. All though all the side windows were closed, witch on this paricular day wasn't the greatest thing because someone farted the fieircest fart i have ever smelled and in stuck in a group of people that are face to back and ass to ass. Okay, this is how big the city is, at the first stop when the doors open the people getting on got soaked in the rain in the from the one inch crack between the bus and the terminal. By the time i got to my stop 145 (my school is on 26) the rain that was moving south had rolled over my bus route and the rain had actually stopped, not just stopped, but the the tread lines on the road where actually dry from the cars driving down the road, awesome. The walk home was a fast one, i moved quickly and than a moment of look around came over me around my house. I looked around my neighborhood, Cedrittos, and across from my apartment there is an all girls middle school more or less, i am not sure of the grades. At the school they were having a parent teacher night and the streets where lined with cars. I thought to my self, wow what a wonderful neighborhood, than i looked up and saw the mountains in the east. In the far east the mountains, and where the gradient allows it, which is still an amazingly steep incline, people build houses, and i assume don't pay for land. In this fairy tale neighborhood (were people still get robbed at 2 in the afternoon on a busy street) the ghettos in the mountains stands guard like a gargoyle in some old gothic castle. Looking across the street at all the happy families it was an erie feeling to think about all the people displaced from guerilla violence, people with half an arm and 2 fingers on the other hand, mothers who walk down the hill to beg with their children, 7 year old children getting tattooed by there 9 year old brothers, houses made of old brown brick and mix fast concrete with stolen electricity and cable but an unfinished second floor with a floor and one wall, just looking down on us all the time... the city is the home of anything and everything. It is a place where all your dreams can come true, and you can loose your life in the same night, what a magical place.