Author: alittlecameo

Astrology | Travel | Speaking Spanish

When is it okay to clean out your 10 year old stepson’s room?

April 16, 2014

I’m home alone for a few days as mi novio and D went back to Santa Marta for Semana Santa.

I love having the house to myself. These periods become very relaxing, peaceful (because I can function without the TV on) and ultimately very productive. So in the past couple of days I’ve managed to clean out our bedroom, my wardrobe, the spare room and now I am working on D’s room.

I can’t admit to being a tidy person. Thankfully, mi novio and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to tidying and cleaning, as in my experience that is an important element for a less stressful relationship. I am also a hoarder. I have stuff and when I go through my things to throw them out, sentimentality overwhelms any motivation to de-clutter. When I moved to the US a few years ago, I didn’t even pack up my little family cottage. Mum said if she needed the place she would clean it out and pack it up. It was a bit of a different story when I moved to Colombia. I finally realised that I was going overseas for an indefinite period of time, and it was highly likely that the bits and bobs I was saving for “some day when I have kids” or “for when I have a costume party to go to” just wouldn’t even be unpacked but stay in my mother’s container of hoarded items, so I had a market stall, dropped off three boxes to the op-shop and threw out a heap of junk.

Having entered D’s room to put some clean clothes away, I decided his room also had to be on my clean out list. D certainly didn’t inherit his grandmother’s penchant for cleaning, nor do I think he falls into the same untidy/disorganised category as mi novio. I actually think he is the messiest of us all. Maybe it’s because he’s a ten year old boy, but about two weeks ago he spent a whole afternoon supposedly cleaning up his room. In his ten year old mind that obviously didn’t mean sweeping under the bed or cleaning out and re-organising the shelves.

When I think back to my time as a 10 year old, I had just moved into my very own room. It had a built in desk and shelves where I could put all my little ornaments (and there were a lot of them). I loved having my privacy. I think it was not long after this that I started to have regular toybox clean ups. My ritual would involve opening up the toybox and pulling out all sorts of things – mostly junk – and then convincing my younger brothers and sister that it would be great for them. In effect, I tidied up my toybox, and would carefully put everything back in the box in neat piles, yet the junk only moved to another room of the house.

I also remember the fear whenever Nan came to stay. Almost every single time she came to stay she would get the rake out of the shed and rake out our rooms while we were at school. This was terrifying for all of us and I’m still not sure whether Mum sanctioned this behaviour or not. Perhaps Mum now feels somewhat vindicated of her own hoarding that would also come under threat whenever Nan came, because she then had to clean out Nan’s house after she moved into a nursing home and Mum discovered Nan’s very own hoarding habit hidden in a four bedroom house.

I tried to keep in mind what it was like having someone else forcibly enter my room and clean it out according to their own definitions of rubbish while I was in D’s room, but ultimately I just got on with it. My compromise was a bag of things that I would be happy to throw out, but that D should see first. I’m curious as to whether he will actually go through that bag and put away neatly any of those things.

It will be interesting to find out whether I suddenly become the wicked stepmother, or whether he’ll take it all in his stride and be happy with the new pairs of tracksuit pants I’ve bought and left on his bed as a surprise. There’s also the Easter chocolate he won’t be expecting to sweeten the deal even further. Let’s hope that at the very least, the Lego stays in one general area and not end up in every single drawer, nook and cranny of his room. I think that would be called a cleaning win.

What’s your approach to cleaning a 10 year old’s bedroom, is it their job or your job?

 

 

Pieces of home

April 14, 2014

Contents of care packageMy mum is coming to visit soon. Yay!

She was here just 6 months ago with Dad to celebrate her birthday (which I completely forgot to blog about), so it was very unexpected that she would make the long journey again so soon. She either loves Colombia, loves to travel or loves and misses me… Most likely her reasons are all of the above.

The great thing about having Mum visit is the second 23kg suitcase of goodies she can bring me. And of course the simple fact that I get to hug my mummy and laugh crazily about silly things with her; we’re two peas in a pod in that respect. The post in Colombia is notoriously unreliable and cannot be trusted, which means care packages and online shopping are out of the question, unless of course you like throwing your money to the gale-force wind. While my aunt sent a small parcel before Christmas that arrived two days after Christmas, the two parcels Mum sent in December haven’t. The government contracted post company 4/72 said it could take up to 6 months to arrive and they can’t do anything about finding it unless they have a registered mail code for a service which Australia Post doesn’t provide for Colombia. I have little hope that either will arrive, and believe that some Colombian is now wearing Chesty Bonds singlets meant for mi novio and watching my friends’ Aussie film Blinder (doubt there’ll be a Spanish option there). This situation makes me cranky just thinking about it, and I think Mum secretly has some ulterior motive to come and give the postal company here a good ear-bashing along the lines of how she managed to arrive in Colombia before her parcels.

So, the goodies!! Mum will be bringing more items from my wardrobe, that is, what she hasn’t already brought over. I just hope she can find my pink heels which are probably stored in some plastic crate in her container.

I also took the opportunity to do some online shopping and have it sent to Mum. I bought some Bonds underwear because that is a staple. Did you know that here in Colombia that don’t let you try on white bras?!?!!? I don’t get it, are my boobs supposed to be dirty?!?! Anyway, I also bought some new pajamas because I like a slouchy style that is difficult to find here in nice patterns and colours ie. not cutesy prints on white or a bedtime version of the legging. Speaking of leggings, I also bought a couple of pairs of them too since I haven’t had much luck with the leggings here. Two out of three pairs developed a mysterious illness called “Camille is too grande for these poorly made, imported from China, tight pants” and have split while trying to contain my backside. This wasn’t just a seam split, but a failure in the fabric that saw it disintegrate and leave a huge gaping hole directly under the buttocks while riding my bike one Ciclovia Sunday; hardly a modest look for a girl in her mid-thirties and truth-be-told it’s scared me off buying more leggings.

My shopping spree wasn’t just all about me and my penchant for Australian brands, I also bought the boys some clothes. A tee and hoodie for D and a couple of singlets for mi novio because he is obsessed with showing off his biceps and rarely finds formfitting singlets for males here and so spends most of our shopping outings drooling over women’s active-wear. If I don’t feed his need for tight muscle-flashing singlets I’m convinced he will one day buy a women’s tank top and work a bit more on his pecs just to fill it out at the front.

I also bought a really cute dinosaur print doona cover for D. As it’s a kids print, the biggest size was a double and I’m now worried that his doona is queen size. That may require another shopping trip to buy a new doona for the dino cover…

I think that was about all the online shopping, but as if I haven’t already spent enough money on things just for the sake of it, I’m still toying with the idea of buying an on-sale Charlie Brown dress as she is my favourite designer and makes such flattering clothes for my shape and has great prints. I’ve also been researching fleecy-lined leggings/footless tights. I asked for a pair of these last time Mum visited since my one and only pair have started to emulate the dodgy street-bought leggings, but think they were either out of season or unavailable in Target or Kmart. Actually any hosiery in general is good. Cool colours and designs of good, non-ballsy quality are hard to find, and if you find them, chances are the biggest size still won’t accommodate the legs of an average sized foreigner who towers over most Colombianas and will leave the crotch hanging about mid-thigh height.

As far as what I’m leaving it up to Mum to buy, Australian food is high on the wanted list. I’ve got a good stock of Vegemite and recently received a care package from a friend via her colleague’s parents who live in Bogotá which included Vegemite. Tim Tams are always in fashion (original flavour or the dark choc covered bites are the best). I also love, love, love Cherry Ripes and ask for Caramello Koalas which D loves (not sure if it’s because it’s chocolate or if he likes the koalas because they seem so Aussie to him). I usually also get Murray River Pink Salt, which if you are Australian you really should have in your house, not just for its great taste and cool colour but because it helps overcome an environmental issue and is one of the flagship brands coming out of my hometown. I also recently got pink salt from my friend so I think I have enough until the next visitor comes.

Other great Australian products I love are Lucas’ Papaw ointment for my lips, Thursday Plantation tea tree ointment for insect bites and, it’s a bit icky to say, feminine hygiene products. I have plenty of papaw and tea tree ointment, and can get by with OB tampons (even though they’re not as great or technologically advanced as my favourite brand back home) but I have been unable to find a good pantyliner here that is thin and doesn’t feel like photocopy paper, so I put in a request for those from Mum.

Living in another country makes you appreciate all the little everyday items from home, and due to their scarcity they become little luxuries. While I’m looking forward to Mum arriving with a suitcase of little luxuries and a taste of my homeland for us, I think she’s hanging out for the luxury of eating patacones, arepas, empanadas and mi novio‘s special arroz de coco.

What are your top three care package items from home? How do you get around unreliable mail services in Colombia?

A report card & maths class

April 11, 2014
Sheldon would have been horrified at the parents meeting today.
Sheldon would have been horrified at the parents meeting today.

Today was the last day of school before a week of holidays for Semana Santa (Holy Week / Easter) and so the parents were invited to the school to receive first term reports.

This is the third parents meeting for D’s Grade 5 class I’ve been to this year, the fourth when you count the farce of a Parents Council meeting during which I wrote furious notes about the principal’s narcissism, the complete lack of explanation of the role and frequency of Parents Council meetings, the disorganised elections of committee representatives, the vast quantity of parents who hadn’t finished school and wanted to return to study and the principal’s complete lack of ethics in naming people for whom the parents should not vote for in elections for mayor of Bogotá. I had intended for those notes to become a blog post, but they are probably too harsh and the summary above should be enough to give you an indication of my shock at how I’ve found Colombian government schools to be.

Usually we are only told the evening before that there is a class parents meeting in the morning, but for this one we had a week to program activities to ensure our attendance. I am the one who has been to every single parents meeting because they always fall on one of the three mornings per week that mi novio has classes. His cooking school is expensive and he can’t afford absences, so I am the sole representative from our family, which is a bit scary because I don’t always understand every nuance and struggle to hear what the teachers are saying because of distracting background jabber. (Second language speakers will know it’s so hard to focus on what is being said while in a noisy room).

In each of the three class-based parents meetings, the male teacher has said the same thing:

“We Colombians lack reading comprehension because we simply don’t read. This isn’t just our fault here in the class or at home, it is a cultural thing. Children will mimic the behaviour of their parents, so if they don’t see their parents reading even a newspaper, they won’t read themselves.”

Now that I’ve heard that for the third time I realise the teacher gives the parents an out for why they don’t read, or think that reading is important, although he did ask how many parents had thought to give a book instead of a toy. I am a big reader. I’ve always loved reading and stayed up late to finish chapters. I remember once in Grade 3 (about age 9) I was reading a Babysitters Club book on the bus. A Grade 6 girl came up to me and told me I was too young to be reading a book that thick. Thankfully I didn’t let that criticism stop me and went on to collect 40 more Babysitters Club books up until I grew out of the girls’ antics. Anyways, instilling an interest in reading in D is difficult. I came into his life as he was about to turn 8, and I don’t think he owned a single storybook. He had a couple of books on dinosaurs, but that was about it. I struggle big-time with this and acknowledge completely that it is a cultural and a socio-economic issue. Television rules in Colombia.

I am also starting to realise that these meetings are not just progress updates for the parents, but personal development classes where they teach the parents how to parent, what are parental responsibilities, and also how to do Grade 5 maths. Today the teacher asked the parents to give him examples of homework problems they didn’t understand and we had a class on long division. I really should admit that while I like statistics and written maths problems, long division has been long forgotten from my brain. I understand the concept of division, just not how to get the solution without using a calculator. I was, however, the only parent who was able to answer correctly why the kids need to learn long division instead of just using a calculator. Although offered up by other parents, “For when they don’t have a calculator” and “So they don’t think the calculator is intelligent” were not what the teacher was hoping to get.

The teacher also put up a problem that was given to the kids the day before and asked the parents to solve it. He said the majority of kids got it wrong. It was soy un numero 365 veces que 100, cual numero soy? (I am a number 365 times the number 100, what number am I?). He asked who knew the solution. Nerdy foreigner Camille sitting in the front row raised her index finger shyly but the rest of the room had blank looks, especially when he then said that 365 + 100 was not the answer. He waited a bit longer and the other parents could not deduce from the three other equation types which to use. I mumbled “Multiply” and the teacher scanned the room one more time before nodding in my direction and asked me to repeat the answer. He used that as a case in point for lack of reading comprehension because they didn’t know what ‘veces‘ was in mathematical processing. I got to put on a doubly proud face because D got this question right on the test. 🙂

In addition to the maths class the primary coordinator stopped by to dictate to the parents that they need to focus on three things with their kids during Semana Santa:

  1. Health – get check ups for dental, vision and hearing, and focus on nutrition and exercise
  2. Creating good study habits – not leaving homework til the last day, playing board games with their kids
  3. Rules and limits – set timeframes for how long they can play with a video game, or visit a neighbour etc

I came away from the meeting deflated by all this preachiness to the lowest common denominator and being made to feel like I am incompetent to raise an intelligent and considerate child without the school’s intervention.

I also find it so hard not to compare it with education in Australia. Okay, I find it impossible. In Australia, a kid can go to a government school and get an excellent education. That’s not the case here where it’s a rare case for a graduate of a government school to go to university, and they instead encourage students who excel to continue to vocational education – this is straight from the back-patting speech of the principal at the Parents Council meeting and not any observation of my own. Education in Australia is colourful, imaginative, project and team-based. I worry that when we move to Australia one day, D will be behind the other kids not just for his level of English, but because he has not been guided in using critical thinking, and so that is something we try to work on at home.

I now know why parents who can, pay to send their kids to school and we will be looking for a new school for D to start high school next year. I want to give him every opportunity to shine and learn in an environment where the majority of other kids are also there to study and learn and who have high aspirations for their futures. D’s marks reflect a good opportunity for improvement in some key areas. His report card did not have the consistently high marks he received at his small school in Santa Marta and it may sound contradictory to what I’ve mentioned above, but I think he is learning more here in Bogotá and he has better educated teachers. We’re also happy that he’s settled in smoothly after a big change of environment and that he is now more self-starting and independent with his homework than he was in Santa Marta. Now we just need to focus on improvement in some subjects so we can get him into a good school where I can go to the parents’ meetings and be spoken to like a responsible and educated adult.

Just throwing it out there … do you know of a good co-ed secondary school in the north of Bogotá that operates on the calendar year, teaches classes in Spanish and doesn’t cost millions of pesos per month?

The hoarding must stop

April 6, 2014
The live-in help's bedroom turned storeroom
The cleaned out storeroom with just one bag of plastic bags remaining. Hard to believe you couldn’t see any of the slats pre clean-up.

We live in an apartment that has a tiny room and bathroom for a live-in maid.

At least half the apartments we looked at had a room for such purpose (cuarto de servicio), and being from a country where people don’t have live-in help (unless they are super wealthy) that came as a bit of a surprise.

Knowing that we would not be having live-in help, the tiny little room that is about as big as a double bed and its attached bathroom off the laundry became our storeroom. A better name would be to call it the junk room and that spells disaster for a genetically programmed hoarder.

The narrow single bed is built in at waist level atop cupboards where we store suitcases and boxes (kept for the time when we have to move again). The built in floor to ceiling cupboard is the linen press with shelves dedicated to cleaning equipment and one shelf for the Christmas decorations. The Christmas tree, wreath and tubes of baubles are stored in the shower of the bathroom, along with the polystyrene base for the fridge box. On top of the slats for the bed is where the hoarding happens. This is where the reusable shopping bags and backpack are kept, thrown on top of whatever old newspaper or handful of plastic bags. It is a huge mess and a pile of absolutely unnecessary crap that I think has been stressing me out and making me feel blah.

Sending the boys off on an adventure to Nemocon salt mine, I attacked this room with the mission to get of crap and plastic bags.

I started by removing all the recycling to in front of the apartment door so that the boys could take it down to the basement on their way out. I’m rather ashamed to admit that there were 20 egg trays that I had ostensibly been saving to make some egg carton flowers I’d found on Pinterest but never made. They went out, along with the newspaper magazines and catalogues. We had a full sack of plastic bottles I sent down as well. The biggest surprise for me was the sheer quantity of plastic bags we had cluttering up this little room. La suegra had bagged them up neatly when she was here last, but still, they had gotten out of control.

I think it’s worth mentioning the unhealthy relationship that Colombia has with plastic bags. I have never seen anyone take a reusable shopping bag to the supermarket. There seems to be something of a push to get people to use reusable bags, but it’s not embraced. At the supermarket they sometimes even ask if you want your shop double-bagged so it doesn’t break. All bags also come printed with a message saying to reduce plastic bag use, but I don’t think many people have actually read that, and no checkout operator pays any attention to it. So despite using plastic supermarket bags as bin liners and halving the plastic bags we receive at the supermarket by taking a backpack and another jumbo carry bag, we have an unhealthy mountain range the size of the Sierra Nevada in plastic bags.

Reducing the number of plastic bags in our possession was one of my top goals. I started by reviewing the shopping bags and separating the ones with holes from the whole ones (no pun intended). The good ones we could use for bin liners were put in a long plastic bag that had originally contained 6 x 1.1L bags of milk. That is now strung up and is where all the bin bags will be kept. I also kept the jumbo sized bags as they often come in handy, but only kept the best ones and put them all in one bag. I also like to keep the nice ones that you get from clothing and gift stores, and again only picked out the very best that I may actually use one day. We now have the two infrequently used bag types stored in the laundry cupboard, where it should be noted that I found even more stashed bags…

While I just kind of chucked about 5 bags of plastic bags, I am starting to wonder if the supermarkets here have bag recycling points. I feel like I may have seen a few, but then I don’t know if my mind is playing tricks on me and superimposing an Australian supermarket over my local Jumbo. I felt guilty about just chucking them without checking for a supermarket recycling point first, but if I had waited then it would probably end up like when I bag up clothes to take to the op shop and instead of making an immediate trip there it just ends up being stored away again and no space is de-cluttered.

In addition to the massive plastic bag chuck out, I also reorganised the kitchen cupboards and cleaned everything thoroughly, getting rid of the greasy grime on the cupboard doors. Now I just have to hope that my boys will live by the new plastic bag rule, and that I don’t fall back into this old hoarding habit.

What do you hoard?

Oops / Duped

March 31, 2014

Regular readers will note that I have changed my blog theme recently.

Whilst I had been thinking about changing my theme as a bit of an inspiration to write more posts, the change comes about as an uninformed oversight and quick scramble to make it presentable, instead of a researched and planned upgrade.

I was browsing themes to see if any caught my eye, and in the past WordPress allowed you to see how your blog would look in a particular them before committing to it. Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places, but I couldn’t see that option, so instead I decided to activate a new theme and thought that if I didn’t like it, I could simply revert to my old theme of Bueno. Then I read an article saying that Bueno got retired. Nooooooooo!!!!!!

Bueno was one of the most popular themes so I never would have imagined that they would retire it. Sure, being so popular means it’s not so original, but I loved that theme. Unfortunately I feel as though I had the wool pulled over my eyes because there wasn’t a button to revert to my original theme, or a warning saying that I wouldn’t be able to return to Bueno if I didn’t like the new theme. 😦

So I tried on a few more themes and in the end have stuck with Bouquet for the interim, or maybe long term if it grows on me. It has two columns and full posts on the homepage and it is also pink, a colour I feel rather attached to. I would love to go for a magazine style or featured posts, but I don’t think my photos are eye-popping enough and my content publishing is hardly regular at this point.

What are your thoughts on the new theme? Should I stick with Bouquet or go with something really different?

 

Ladybird cross-stitch

Knows how to do things

March 28, 2014
Ladybird cross-stitch
Ladybird cross-stitch project

I think this would be the modern-day description of ‘accomplished’.

If we fast forward Jane Austen to the twenty-first century, her characters wouldn’t be praised for their accomplishments but for knowing how do to things.

Last week we had three visits from mi novio‘s younger sister (my cuñada), her older husband and nine-month old baby – all visits by virtue of the La Suegra staying with us – and on all occasions she said “Camille sabe hacer cosas.” (Camille knows how to do things). It only struck me the third time in a short period of time that she is in awe of what I do and I realised that almost every time she visits she says the same thing.

She comments on little things that to me are the product of a little bit of curiosity or interest in something. On the third visit I was decorating La Suegra‘s birthday cake and accompanying cupcakes when they arrived, yet later when I opened the fridge to take out the giant cupcake and the other normal cupcakes, she asked in the most surprised voice if I’d made them myself and was I sure I hadn’t bought them. She then went on to say I should open a cake shop, a comment which her husband seconded heartily.

I should note that I used a packet cake mix and the decorations were not as I had hoped because I messed up the ratio of cream to white chocolate so the ganache was runny and hardly stayed on the cake as I’d envisioned. I guess by Colombian standards, my cakes were pretty special because I made them myself. I don’t know any Colombian who bakes a birthday cake. Birthdays always mean a trip to the cake shop to buy an overly creamed cake.

My other accomplishment, in the eyes of my cuñada, is the cross-stitch I am working on. While sitting around on the couch during these visits, in order to be at least partially social and keep my interest piqued in something, I have taken to working on my cross-stitch. I hadn’t done any cross-stitch since high school, but recently the desire came over me, so I bought a little colour-coded kit of a ladybird to work on. Apparently knowing how to do cross-stitch is also something amazing, even though I’m just following the instructions and have ignored the suggested stitches for large areas because they look too complicated.

What would also be amazing is if I knew how to knit, crochet and embroider, but alas, this fair maid knoweth not these feminine arts.

I have always wanted to lead an interesting life, and I think that for my cuñada, my life has been like a fantastical latino soap opera that flirts with the borders of the possible. In contrast to her, I’m not content to sit and do nothing except watch soaps on TV. I like to explore, travel, learn new things, experiment, be creative, read, write, get crafty, visit museums and I like to work.

To her, my inspired, but lacking in finesse, activities and crafts are the most amazing things. However, it’s all about exposure and experiences, and based on my experiences I admire and am awed by my friends who post elaborate and perfectly decorated cakes on Facebook, who produce the most darling little crochet and knitted pieces, who can sing or play a musical instrument, who can design and make their own clothes, who can take and edit incredible photographs, who envision and create films, who are disciplined and prolific writers, who renovate and decorate their homes, who are talented sportspeople, who have beautiful and paradisiacal gardens, who can paint or draw, who can fix machinery or make anything they can imagine, who plan and prepare extensive dinner parties, who can prepare a perfect latte, who can make a divine floral arrangement, who can speak other languages fluently, who commit to further study, who can design memorable posters and documents, who can build their own furniture and who live their passions.

I’m most interested in giving things a go, it’s not so much about the quality of what you are doing, but rather that you are actually doing something. Particularly if it is a creative pursuit, there are many benefits to be gained by exercising that part of your brain and it makes life enjoyable. I mean, I like watching television, but I don’t gain any enjoyment out of it. I get enjoyment and satisfaction out of baking, making some little craft, reading, wrapping presents and the like.

My dad always says that a man’s got to have a project. This is coming from a man who has many, many projects (both completed, uncompleted and pure ideas) and this from a man who knows how to do lots of things. I agree with him. Having personal projects is productive and enjoyable, it is interesting and most of all, it is a great way to continue learning and growing.

So whilst the nineteenth century term of accomplishment has gone out of fashion, it is still very much alive. So don’t be shy, don’t say you don’t have time to follow your creative pursuits. Make the time, try your best and keep learning new techniques and ideas. You never know who out there will admire your efforts.

For a little bit of fun, here’s a quiz to find out which Jane Austen heroine you are….

What are your accomplishments (or what you know how to do)? What accomplishments do you wish you had?

 

An Enduring Travel Friendship

March 21, 2014

We just got back from what was my fourth visit to Argentina in 10 years, to celebrate the wedding of the friend I met and travelled with from Quito, Ecuador to the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia in mid 2004.

It’s funny how travel friendships are solidified. Emily and I met sharing a hostel dorm in Quito after I’d spent a week studying Spanish there. She was at the very beginning of her 18 month South America, New Zealand, Australia and South-East Asia trip and I had already spent four months travelling in the US, Brazil, Northern Peru and Ecuador. We both had the same vague plan and decided to travel together for as long as we could stick it out. Two and a bit months and the addition of another travel buddy later, we parted ways with sad hugs and promises to keep in touch as she went to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile and I went back into Bolivia to make my way to Paraguay.

Little did we know that that was just the beginning of a long-standing friendship as when I returned to Australia I met up with Emily twice and then she came to live with me in my hometown for a bit. Five years passed before we saw each other again when I took my mum on a trip to Latin America which included visiting Emily as she had moved to Buenos Aires with her Argentinian boyfriend.

Another two years later, mi novio and I stopped in to visit them in Buenos Aires on our way back to Colombia. Leaving our two boyfriends to speak Spanish together, we laughed and joked about how we never would have imagined that we would both end up living in South America with Latino boyfriends. It was just too many stars aligned.

We are now just two months away from the 10 year anniversary of when Emily and I met and I know we’ll be friends forever. That meeting at the Posada del Maple in Quito and that first daytrip to the Otavalo markets was the beginning of this long-standing friendship that has withstood a lot of distance and dozens of home bases.

As I am a travel buddy from far-off lands, I hadn’t met any of Emily’s family or friends and her wedding was the perfect opportunity to meet them. Her family greeted me like some kind of adopted daughter they’d never met and her friends were all so fun and friendly and also eager to meet her South American travel buddy they’d heard about. It was the most perfect experience and we got to spend a few days together with her family and friends where they became my friends too.

It got me thinking about what is the secret of travel friendship longevity. I have quite a few friends on Facebook from that year of travel in 2004 and I love to see what they’re up to and how their lives have changed in the past decade. Those that I’m not in touch with via Facebook, I still think about as I recall my travels and the many wonderful experiences I had. So much so that one of them could contact me out of the blue saying they will be in Colombia and I would go out of my way to help them or offer them a place to stay.

If I had to explain what makes a travel friendship work in the long-term I guess it’s similar to my thoughts on making a long-distance relationship work – you have to plan to meet up again. Once you see a travel buddy outside of your trips, you are more likely to maintain closer contact with them. If they visit you or you visit them, you have additional shared experiences together in a more homely, real-world setting, and your stories span multiple time periods and give you more of a platform for the friendship.

It’s also important the amount of time you spent travelling with someone. The more time you spend together on the road, the better you get to know someone, and the more you know about a person, the greater the connection and the friendship will start to bloom as the connection is more emotional and less geographic. If you only have a short amount of time travelling together, but you maintain that friendship with numerous visits or phone calls, that will also help preserve the friendship beyond the life of your passport.

There’s something about travel that helps you to open up and share things with people that you might not normally do. Perhaps this is because we may never have to see them again, or perhaps it’s the conviviality of a mish-mash of people all just trying to get by in a foreign country where they feel at sea in a small lifeboat. Sharing the experience is what bonds you, but sharing more of you is what helps bind you to others.

One of the things I’ve found has helped cement my friendship with Emily and others that I’ve met on the road, in addition to the above-mentioned, is that we don’t live in the past. While we have wonderful shared experiences of the road and of course those stories come up regularly, that’s not all we have because we are interested in what our friends are doing now. These friendships live in the present and we have the expectation that they will continue into the future regardless of if we communicate frequently or not. Like any good, true friendship, time nor distance do not diminish the friendship.

Do you have any long-standing travel friendships? How have you kept these friendships alive post travel?

Bread basket at Lula

Food find: Lula

December 8, 2013

While out and about doing our favourite thing on a Sunday (riding our bikes along the Ciclovia), hunger stopped me right in front of a cute little place I’d often admired but never stopped at. What captured my attention today was the sign out the front saying “Brunch 9 – 12”.

Brunch has long been a very special mealtime event for me. Seeing the English language word in a sea of Spanish made me nostalgic for the weekend brunches I would often have with friends and that I miss enormously. Brunch is a great opportunity to debrief from the previous night out, catch up with friends in a relaxed manner and of course to drink long and languorous coffees.

So I pulled the brake levers on my bike and told mi novio that we were going to have brunch. I think I also said, with a starry-eyed expression, that brunch is my favourite meal of the day and that before sampling any of the restaurant’s offerings I was already going to return with a colleague and also anyone else who comes to stay with us.

Lula is a bakery and coffeeshop with two dining areas, the front courtyard covered with an awning and with greenery all around, and the inside section with gorgeous wooden chairs with a vintage style oval pink and white fabric-covered back in one of those designs you usually see on fancy crockery.

We took the advice of the waiter, who upon asking if it was our first visit, suggested we start with the bread basket while we decided what to order. Out came a beautifully presented tray of assorted breads and croissants and four glass jars with wooden paddles stuck in the top. It looked divine. The smallest pot contained cubes of butter and the waiter explained the other three; a white chocolate and red berry cream, a peach, orange and almond marmalade, and a chunky chocolate and hazelnut spread. We set to work trying out everything from the fanciest bread basket I’ve ever seen. The chocolate and hazelnut spread was exactly like crushed up Ferrero Rochers. The white chocolate and red berry cream had that syrupy berry flavour mixed with the creaminess of the chocolate but my favourite was the runny marmalade which left the orange in the backseat and let the peach and almond flavours and textures dominate.

Our meals of baked eggs with bacon and asparagus and the Mexican styled fried eggs unfortunately didn’t live up to the high expectations the bread basket had set. My delicious and perfectly flavoured baked eggs could have been cooked a bit longer as the runny yolk only added to the thick creamy hollandaise soup they were served in, which was nigh on impossible to eat with a fork. Mi novio’s Mexican ranch style fried eggs lacked flavour and the presentation lacked flair.

As I think has only ever happened to me in Colombia, our lattes came out with the coffee topped with a dollop of froth in the cup, and the milk on the side in a teeny little jug for us to fill ourselves, and only reached three-quarters of the way up the cup.

Despite a few small disappointments with our meals and a sizeable bill for brunch, the bread basket trumped it all and we’ll definitely go back again; even if it’s just for the bread basket as that was the winner of the day.

LulaCalle 116 No. 15B-78, Bogota
www.lula.co

November sunset

November 26, 2013

I have amazing city views from my office window and last night I got to watch a captivating sunset. As the sun was going down, I scribbled the following description in purple pen…

The sun is descending from the heavens on a zigzag cloud stairway. On the far side of the clouds, its orange intensity burns incandescent through the soft web of clouds shrouding it as it drifts slowly downwards from its vantage point high up above the city.

The brightness points upwards, casting light on the bottom of the clouds and shooting reflective rays into the still light sky. It emphasises wispy clouds detaching themselves from the security of the mother clouds and gives them a golden hue.

Downwards it emits a pearly coral red into the smog lying on the horizon. The coloured circle peeps from below a cloud before it succumbs to the polluted horizon.

The sky is no longer vibrant with life, but dulls into the pallid deathliness of day before night. The zigzag cloud stairway to the sky hasn’t moved.

This post is different to my normal blog style, so this is where I guess I should make mention of the past six months without new blog posts. It’s not for lack of topics, because we all know that when you are discovering a new city in a different country there are always lots of interesting observations. I’ve been kept occupied making a home with mi novio, finding my way around Bogota and getting crafty, but I’ll be back again soon on the blog!

 

 

Settling in to Bogotá

July 1, 2013

I’ve spent the past few weeks settling into Bogotá, my new job and our apartment. After seven months living with la suegra, I’ve been busy creating a home with mi novio. The shopping and nesting has been aided somewhat by three long weekends in the space of a month.

Apartment hunting in Bogotá isn’t as straight-forward as I thought it would be, and we ran into one huge obstacle, the aseguradora. It seems the majority of apartments for rent send the applications off to an insurance company who scrutinise your income and debts and those of your guarantor (in Spanish it’s called a co-deudor). Your guarantor needs to not only own property, but have an income higher than your monthly rent as well. They also must be Colombian, or here in Colombia to sign the paperwork, a difficult requirement to meet if you are a foreigner. All this is just to RENT an apartment.

When our application for our favourite apartment failed because our co-deudor didn’t have one document they were asking for and we refused to pay a deposit of COP$9,000,000 (US$4,680) we had to start all over again and about COP$100,000 (US$52) poorer with the application processing fee of COP$80,000 and the zillions of phone calls that were made over it.

We were more than a little disheartened, but thankfully mi novio spent a day traipsing around the neighbourhood where we wanted to live and set up four inspections. We loved the first one. It was very similar to the previous favourite, but had three bedrooms plus a servant’s quarters (something that I’ve never seen in Australia except heritage properties) and was a little bit more expensive. We loved the apartment so much that we called the owner and managed to arrange a contract where in lieu of going through the aseguradora, we drew up a contract with the owner and agreed to pay one month in advance so we will always be a month ahead of our rent payments. We cancelled the rest of the appointments and started jumping around with joy.

Because we were dealing directly with the owner – who conveniently is a lawyer – we were able to move in three days later. Woohoo! No more hostel!

After the early morning handover with the owner, we hit the shops to start buying homewares. We happened upon a great bargain on a TV at 25% off the regular price, and although it wasn’t the highest priority, it found its way to the register along with a fridge, washing machine, crockery set and a few other bits and pieces. When I went to pay for everything with my Australian credit card it came back rejected. Uh-oh! It turns out my credit card had been blocked after withdrawing cash from the ATM (which I never do) and in three transactions in order to get the amount we needed to pay our landlord that morning. We then had to reprioritise our purchases as I couldn’t pay for all of them with my Australian debit card either and mi novio had nothing left in his account. So we took the TV home as that was on sale for one day only and I wasn’t prepared to lose the COP$300,000 discount.

Despite the stretched daily finances, we went to another store where we bought an inflatable couch that flips into a mattress so we had something to sleep on. Realising that we hardly had any cash, I went to the ATM to withdraw enough to get us back to the hostel and then a taxi with all our bags to the apartment. I had insufficient funds. Slightly preoccupied, we went back to our new apartment, complete with big screen TV, and counted every last coin to come to a grand total of COP$14,000 (US$7.30). We needed COP$3,000 for the bus to the hostel, and then we only had COP$9,000 for the taxi back, which was going to be a stretch. We were also starving because we had hardly eaten all day.

First night in our apartment with just the essentials.
First night in our apartment with just the essentials.

I thought mi novio had a few thousand pesos in his account so I said we should go to the supermarket to get some food. Unfortunately his card was rejected. So I tried my credit card again. No go. I then handed over my debit card praying the purchase of COP$12,000 would go through, and it did. We had similar pure luck in flagging down a taxi and negotiating with the driver to peg the fare at all we had, COP$9,000. So rather than celebrating our first night in our own place in a grand style, we sat on our inflatable couch/bed in front of the TV on the floor eating bread rolls and sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola.

The next two weeks were filled with the arrival of our furniture and belongings from Santa Marta, shopping for more homewares and four deliveries of white goods (although I should call them silver-goods since the fridge and washing machine aren’t white) and furniture. Delivery by delivery, our apartment transformed from a shell into a home.

I love the process of setting up home – must be my Taurean traits shining through – and this is the second time in two years that I’ve furnished a place pretty much from scratch. This apartment of our own has been such a long time coming that I’ve been reluctant to leave it at the weekend, which I’m sure has caused my housebound novio some frustrations. I’ve been baking and although the oven isn’t perfect (the temperature dial requires the use of pliers and the temperature range doesn’t have precision markings) it is holding up to my needs and placating mi novio somewhat with sweet treats.

The best part is that we live a short walk from my work so not only do I avoid the gridlocked commute,

I can come home for lunch. If that’s not luxury in Bogotá, I don’t know what is.