Apartment Tour

Living Room

Kitchen/Dining Room

Main Bedroom

Closets leading to main bathroom

Rooftop view

We Finally Have Internet!

Yes. Its true. I am currently coming to you (although not live unless you can somehow see this as I type…creepy) from our living room. David got the call during our Tuesday Spanish lesson that Telmex could come this week and LUCKILY Rosa comes on Wednesday’s so they were able to come while she was there. It did take some Spanish-English dictionary translating by David to send Rosa a text (she never answers her phone) that made sense, and leave a note just in case so she wouldn’t be surprised. I stayed and played Volleyball at school until about 6 or so and David played tennis with our principal so neither of us got home until later in the evening, of course assuming that something inevitably would have gone wrong, or we wouldn’t know the password and we’d have to wait another month for them to come back. When I walked into our apartment and saw our modem it was a little like Christmas morning. I know that not having Internet is a silly thing to complain about compared to a lot of other things, but I was relying on Skype to communicate with my family not to mention keeping people at home up to date with my blog AND planning and putting in grades. Life got a lot easier with that little modem. However, knowing that I can in fact survive without Internet in our apartment, I am going to try to make a point to not waste my time on it as much as a admittedly often do. You can expect an influx of blog posts in the next few days though.

As I write this David is streaming the Bears season opener and just turned his computer to me and exclaimed “Look! Its the Bears!” Apparently its still a little like Christmas morning, 5 days later.

Retracing My Steps

Yes I KNOW I haven´t updated this religiously, but no Internet at home + first week of school + moving to a new country makes it difficult to find time for some of these things. But I will try to retrace the steps I have taken here in Cali since my first post.

Our first Friday here we had lunch at our director´s house which is here on the campus. We had arepa which is a traditional type of bread treat they have here and pan de bono which is hot cheese filled bread rolls, both delicious. It was also a juice workshop in which we got to try different juices and combinations of all the yummy fruits they have including caruba (David´s favorite), lulo, mango, papaya, maracuya (passion fruit), guanábana (my favorite) and a couple others I can´t remember. They were just as delicious as the food. During our lunch break Joe, our director (who is originally from Indiana), took out his set of Bocce balls. David and I quickly got on a team and showed off our skills. Everyone was pretty impressed with us and those who weren’t playing pulled up chairs around where we were playing and started watching. Our team won 3 of 4 if I remember correctly. David told me that I throw just like my grandpa, which if you know my grandpa is a pretty great compliment for any Bocce ball-er to receive.

That Saturday we spent the morning shopping some more and then moving into our apartments. Since the bus moved south to north, David and I had LOTS of helpers moving our things to our apartment. We unpacked and unpacked and unpacked some more, then decided to take a break for a swim. While we were up at the pool Sebastian and Matilde stopped back by with our Space Bag of sheets, pillows and towels we left on the bus. The security guard gave them a really hard time about getting in because he couldn’t call us because we didn’t have phones. We were glad to see they were being so strict. We decided not to go dancing that night and stayed in. We attempted to put curtains on our floor to ceiling glass doors in the bedroom, but they were too short length and width…and then the holder for the rod came out of the ceiling. Needless to say we were up preeeeetty early Sunday morning…

And so we ventured back to Homecenter (similar to Home Depot or Lowe´s) to return our cortinas and buy new hardware along with some other things we were in need of. I was worried about having to return something, but given my overwhelming experiences with returning things in the states, it wasn’t too bad. I was even able to double check (in Spanish) that we could use the voucher for other things if we couldn´t find curtains. We found some that are still too short, but they get the job done so they were good enough for us. In the afternoon we went to the new chemistry teacher, Wojciech's house where he and his wife Sonia made us homemade pizza´s and gave us a chance to make some pizzas of our own with the ingredients we brought. Very yummy and very relaxing after a busy week. Monday started a loooong week of meetings, but also gave us a great opportunity to meet all of our new co-workers. Those updates will have to wait for another time. Ciao!

First Days

I feel neglectful that I haven’t updated friends and family more about our first week here in Cali, Colombia. So here goes my attempt at a summary so far… Monday was our first full day in Cali and it was just the start to a busy busy week. After we had our complimentary breakfast here at the Radisson (best service I have ever experienced) we were on our way in a school bus with the 11 new international hires and Anna Luisa, Marcela and Sebastian, our HR saviors and new best friends. Here in Cali I can’t just tell them that my blood type is A positive, they have to check for themselves, so we headed to the clinic where we each had a blood test done, from which David still has a bruise about the size of a lemon. After that was pictures for our cedulla, or Colombian ID and finally we started the apartment hunting. We looked at about 15-16 apartments in total in three different areas. In the south there is Ingenio and Ciudad Jardin which are MUCH closer to school (and obviously where we decided to live given David’s aversion to mornings). San Fernando and San Atonio are further north but are considered the west neighborhoods, where about half of our new colleagues decided to live. San Antonio is a really cool neighborhood, but is almost all studio apartments. It is also home the the oldest church in Cali shown below with some cool street art.

At the end of the day another couple and two other teachers who decided to live together had secured apartments. And so day two started with 4 fewer bus occupants. By midday David and I were the the only two without an apartment; not our fault. The apartment that we had decided would suffice wouldn’t be ready until Monday (after they had told us Saturday, and later turned into Wednesday) which was too late for both us and the school. We went with Marcela and Sebastian to look at a few more 2 bed 2 bath, but we didn’t like them and there were some landlords we couldn’t get a hold of. We were starting to stress. The afternoon we got a tour of our BEAUTIFUL school and I got to peek into my lab desk and AC furnished classroom :-) Below are just a few shots of my blissful new work environment.

Wednesday everyone got to sleep in, as we weren’t meeting until 10, except for David and I who still had apartments to look at and had a 7:30am appointment. It was rough. Two more apartments later, we decided to get one that we had looked at on Monday…I think the rooftop pool may have influenced us. During lunch we met with the transportation coordinator about getting to school and around the city and how the Calles and Carreras work in the south. At night we went to our director’s house on campus for dinner and drinks. Unfortunately it was outside with a wooden patio so the one night I decided to wear heels was ended up with very careful stepping so my shoes wouldn’t get stuck between slates of wood of sink too far into the grass. Needless to say there was very little salsa and meringue dancing for me. Thursday, oy Thursday. Many many meetings and LOOOOOOTTTTSSS of paperwork. Although there was a bright side to all of it. I met with my middle school principal and we talked through various procedures, got our health insurance set up, opened our savings account and got cell phones. Who’s jealous of the Nokia 2200 I’m getting Monday?! I found out I could get someone on the street to put a new SIM card in my iPhone and it would work just fine down here, but “used” (aka stolen) cell phones are a huge market down here and I think that might make me a bit of a target, so old school it is. After all of our various meetings at school we all got on an even bigger bus and went to La Catorce, basically the Cali version of Target or Walmart, to do some moving in shopping. About half a school bus worth of purchases later, we went back to the hotel, while our things were kept on the bus until they are delivered to our respective apartments Saturday. Unforunately it’s time I get to bed, tomorrow is moving out of the hotel and in to our apartment day! Until next time..