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