Robbery and Rooftop Pizza: Colombia Week 6

This week, Rosie was gone, so I was truly on my own in Cartagena. Because of this, I had the opportunity to do a lot of things only I wanted to do. It was kind of nice but also a very different experience. I'll let you judge the week for yourself.

Day 1

I started off the week at church. Because of the slightly odd experience I had with Johan on our date the week before, I decided to try the other church. I lived between two churches and had been going to Johan's, but I decided to switch things up a bit. This church actually had a YSA ward, which was really nice. There were about 25 YSA members, so it was really fun to get to know them a little bit. During second hour, we had a YSA Sunday School and I was complimented on my scripture reading in Spanish. It was really nice to hear because Spanish in Cartagena could be very difficult to understand, which was quite discouraging at times. I sometimes felt like maybe I had no knowledge of the language or what I was doing at all.

When I arrived at church, the weather had been so beautiful and perfect. When church ended, however, it looked like it was about to rain. I still insisted on walking home though and ended up getting caught in a torrential downpour. I was wearing a maroon shirt that got soaked all the way through. You could barely tell that it wasn't black by the time I got home. This is even after I waited it our for like 30 minutes inside a random storefront with some other people who had also gotten caught out walking. It just goes to show that the weather there could be nuts!

When I got home, I found out that it was time to run over to Cupertino's birthday party. Cupertino was my favorite kid in Colombia and his dad drove my moto taxi. Earlier that week, I went to the store and bought him some Hot Wheels and a cute Incredibles shirt that came with a mask. I was definitely ready to celebrate him and his birthday alongside some other family and friends!

Cupertino and I on his 4th birthday

I was actually able to bring along some of the neighborhood kids that I had gotten to know. I loved those kids so much, so this was a treat. At the birthday party, the adults mostly drank while the kids ran wild. This was standard for most birthday parties from what I saw. We played a lot of different songs and watched the kids dance around for a while. Mostly, it was a pretty boring birthday party for a kid in my opinion. We did take some pictures together and ours was the only one he smiled in, so that was awesome. He literally did not smile for pictures with a single other person. You can't tell me that's not a great feeling.

When we opened presents, his mom almost cried when she saw the shirt I had gotten him. I hadn't realized it until this point, but I had only seen Cupertino in two shirts. Otherwise, he was shirtless. They did not have enough money to even buy him another shirt, even though one was very ill fitting. In many of the pictures since this, I have seen him in the shirt I bought for him. Cupertino was most appreciative of the Hot Wheels (obviously), and the whole family seemed touched by my generosity. I had only spent the equivalent of $15 on his whole gift. It was at this point that it hit me just how poor some of the people I was meeting were. It really forced me to take a second look at my life.

After the birthday party, I headed home and ended up leaving the house to get pizza with Cristhian and Jesus. We took a taxi a few blocks away to go to this pizza place on top of a roof. We ended up going 12 stories up in this random office building to this place called di Silvios. We sat on the rooftop and it was honestly amazing. The pizza was quite terrible if we are being honest, but the company and view completely made up for it.

One weird thing in Colombia (really all of South America): the cheese is absolute TRASH. I'm not sure what they do differently, but cheese tastes disgusting. Because of this, the pizza was a little bit ruined. They also had thin crusts, which isn't my favorite. However, the people I was with made me laugh and it was one of my favorite nights the entire time I was in Cartagena.

When it came time to leave, I wanted to walk home. We were only about four blocks from our house, and it was a nice night. It was only around 8:30pm. However, when I suggested we walk, Jesus looked me straight in the eye and asked if I wanted to get robbed. When I said no, he told me we had to get a taxi then. Even a group of two mid-twenties young men and a nineteen-year-old girl would probably get robbed if they walked the four blocks home instead of taking a taxi. This blew my mind, but guess what... we took the taxi.

When we got home, I took a quick video of my sores and sent it off to my mom. She was getting increasingly more worried about my sores as the days went on and the infections weren't healing. However, there wasn't much I could do for them at this point, so I was kind of stuck in this situation now. I didn't really think there was a problem, but I kept her updated just because she always worries about me when I am abroad and I try to keep her in the loop as much as possible. She is my best friend of course!

Day 2

Nothing really exciting happened this day. I went to work at La Fundacion before coming home. I finished writing the rest of the post cards and then went to El Centro Comerical to the ATM. I needed money to pay Cooper (Cupertino's dad) so he could buy presents for Cupertino's birthday. Mostly I just played with the neighborhood kids. It was a pretty standard Colombian day for me.

Day 3

I started out the day working at La Fundacion before coming home for a quick lunch and heading directly to El Centro. To get to El Centro, I decided to take a collectivo. I certainly hope my mother is not reading this right now. Collectivos are essentially any car that's passing by on the road that want to pick up a bit more cash. I basically just went and stood on the street corner and pointed the direction I wanted to go. There's no definitive marking of a collectivo and you have no control over who else gets in the car. Collectivos hope to pick up other passengers as well so they can make the maximum amount of money. The fee is quite a bit cheaper to be in a collectivo, but you can definitely get stuck with some creeps. Luckily, this collectivo turned out okay. Nothing great and nothing horrible. I'm not sure it was an experience I would repeat when going to El Centro though.

Once I was in El Centro, I dropped off the last of my postcards and then headed over to the Naval Museum. I LOVED the Naval Museum. I was one of the only people there and essentially had the place to myself. Cartagena has a rich history as they were one of the three stops in the Triangular Trade for slaves. The walls around the city were erected to preserve this but eventually led to helping Colombia win their independence from Spain. The Naval Museum was a beautiful open concept museum that went through all of this with regard to their history and culture. They even had a few fake boats and submarines you could go in! I loved it.

After spending nearly three hours in the Naval Museum, which I planned to take my mom to when she came, I grabbed gelato from a nearby shop and left the city walls to go watch the sunset. Cartagena had walkways made completely of stone that jutted out from the mainland every couple hundred feet. I believe they were to break up the waves when they came in so that nothing could destroy the city easily in a natural disaster.

Sunset from the end of the stone walkway

It was quite interesting because that night, a man came out with his fishing materials right after me and began to try crabbing while I was standing right there. He wasn't having much success and I offered to help him. However, he only spoke German and Italian and I only spoke Spanish and English, so I'm not sure how much of a help we were to each other. Oh well! You win some, you lose some I guess.

When I was done watching the sunset, I headed back to El Centro and crossed the street to stand over by the government buildings. This is where you caught collectivos heading back to the part of Cartagena with houses. I caught a collectivo back to Los Caracoles, which was my neighborhood. However, we took a back route that I had never seen before, so I ended up almost missing my stop. Luckily a lady in the collectivo helped me out a bit so I knew where I was going. I eventually made it home (more or less) safely.

When I made it home, the neighborhood girls all came over. They had become quite attached to me for some reason. We spent some time dancing around the house. I used to put on music for them if I ever needed to get something done. They were always content to dance around the house just listening to music. Colombians also learned the dances to songs from music videos, so the girls were often happy to show off the various dances they knew. I've attached a video of them doing part of the "Gasolina" dance as well as singing "Escapate Conmigo," which I will never think of without thinking of them now.

Day 4

It was Halloween in Cartagena and I was STOKED! I figured something exciting would happen. NOPE. Absolutely nothing exciting happened. The kids didn't even dress up. The only different thing was that they actually got to play on the playground for a while longer than normal. Pretty much nothing had changed from the normal.

The saddest thing happened during all the playground time, however. Juan Sebastian had just eaten his snack when he decided he wanted to go on the merry go round. He got on and then promptly threw up his snack. I was spinning the merry go round at this point and I felt SO. BAD. for him. He felt so gross after that happened. We cleaned him up and life went on.

Maria Jose and I

I'm sure you're absolutely shocked, but when I got home, Maria Jose came right over to play. She would just let herself in the house at this point to come see what I was doing. She didn't care that it wasn't her house to come to. She always made me laugh.

The one weird thing that happened on Halloween ended up being my hair turning curly. In my entire nearly twenty years of life, I had always had stick straight hair. When I woke up on Halloween morning, I had curly hair. And it wasn't just any kind of curly... I had perfect ringlets. It was so confusing. I thought it was a one off and that I had maybe slept weirdly, but I woke up on November 1 with curly hair too. It's a year and a half later as I'm writing this, and I still get curly hair every time it's hot and humid. It even happens if I work out really hard. Pretty strange for a girl who thought she had stick straight hair the entire first twenty years of her life! It definitely explains why my hair always held curl so well! Honestly, I quite like my curly hair, so it was fun to see my hair doing something different since I so rarely do more than brush it!

A better look at my newly curly hair

Day 5

I had a pretty average day in Cartagena. I worked at La Fundacion all morning before heading home for lunch and then going to the beach. I did get hit on a ton that day. I would constantly be asked, "What's your name? Where are you from? Want to get married so I can get a visa to the US?" I got proposed to six different times on the beach while living in Cartagena. People there were so desperate to go to the US because it was so difficult to get a visa from Colombia. While I didn't really mind getting asked, I definitely did not say yes to any of the proposals.

When I got home, I talked to my mom for a few hours about politics. She filled out my 2018 mail-in ballot for me so that I would still have the opportunity to vote while I was living in Colombia. She and I discussed politics and which candidates we liked and why. I missed voting in the 2016 presidential election by 9 nine days, so it was nice to be able to exercise my right to vote, even if it was from afar. I knew my mom would vote for exactly who I told her to, even if she personally disagreed with who I told her to vote for.

I also was able to help my neighbor Judith buy a flight to Bogota. She needed to go for work but had no credit card to buy a flight. I ended up buying the flight for her with my card and she paid me in cash. This also just reinforced the poverty cycle for me. If you can't get a credit or debit card because your work is all under the table, you can't shop online or book anything that way, which continues to perpetuate the cycle you already have going. Not a great situation to be in. I was mainly just glad that I was able to help Judith out a little bit because no one in the neighborhood had a card they could use to help her.

Day 6

I'm not gonna lie. This was one of my absolute favorite days in Colombia. In Cartagena, November is La Mes de Fiestas (party month). There are parades and all-night parties every single day. It's honestly so crazy. Basically, all the workers take off at least half the regular work days to drink and do whatever they want. It's a really different culture than anything I've ever experienced.

When I got to school that morning, everyone was dressed in traditional clothing and ready to walk in one parade. The entire Fundacion got together with parents, families, and neighbors to walk all over the streets. La Fundacion probably had at least 350 kids, so our parade was at least 500 people big in my estimation. We walked around all the neighborhood. Keep in mind that this is a super rough neighborhood on the wrong side of town. Everything is super run down, but everyone was so happy to be there and walking around town. It was incredible. Neighbors would play music as we walked by so everyone was dancing through the streets. People had silly string and shaving cream and would spray them on anyone. There were bubbles being blown all the time. I got to dance with my kids and hold this massive banner at the end of the parade that was the equivalent of what high school football teams in the US run through for their home opener.

Juan Sebastain, Keyleith, and Glorianys with their teacher

When we finished walking around 3 miles around the neighborhood for the parade, we went back to La Fundacion and had some dance performances. The kids put on little mini performances. The flagrantly gay (but not out because that's not accepted in Colombia) music and dance instructor organized an entire play with some of the older kids between ages four and six. They were so cute.

After the kids gave their performance, we watched an amazing show by some of the teenagers in the neighborhood. They performed a dance number to Thriller (it was Nov. 2 so this was in season more or less) and then some girls did some sort of twerking dance. In Colombia, they teach their kids how to twerk very young. In my class of two year olds, we would sometimes have twerking competitions where the teachers were cheering on all the girls who could move their butt the most. It was crazy. Because of this, the twerking teenage girls was a shock but not completely out of the ordinary.

When I got home, I spoke on the phone with my mom for over an hour. It was the last day to vote, so my mom and I were discussing the last few changes I wanted to make to my ballot as she was helping me vote from afar. We talked for nearly an hour before I ended up having to go. The neighborhood kids wanted to play and just started barging in at all times without any sort of invitation. They would literally just open the front door and walk right in. I love those kids so much.

Usually with the neighborhood kids, I would spend time playing all sorts of games with them. I would swing them around in a circle by their arms or shoulders, have them climb up on me and do a flip backwards, or even just do piggyback rides around the courtyard in front of the apartment I was living at with my family. We had such a good time just running around like crazy and I would always come in dripping in sweat. It's such a good workout running around after these kids!

To finish the night, I helped Judith check in for her flight to Bogota the next day. I was unsure if she had ever flown before. Luckily, I was able to explain the airport and how to get through security to her. I hoped she would be able to make it through the next day okay.

Views from my lonely beach spot

Day 7

This Saturday, I woke up and then went to the beach by myself. I always love going to the beach, but it was a little less enjoyable while abroad in Colombia by myself because you cannot leave your stuff or it will get stolen. Because of this, I was not able to go in the ocean at all. However, I did have a really enjoyable day laying down and tanning while reading Unbroken. If you know me at all, you know I am an obsessive reader and go through at least one book a day. I didn't get through all of Unbroken because you have to really digest it, but it was an absolute treat. I would recommend the book to anyone. (Hot take: this is a book review site now... just kidding... unless??).

When I finished at the beach after dark, I took a taxi home before packing the next day for Bogota. Because of the November festivals, I had the first half of the week off from work, so I had decided previously to go to Bogota and do a little exploring on my own. I played with the neighborhood kids and called it a night.

Life Lessons

Always go to children's birthday parties. They will be super entertaining and cute and the parents might get super drunk.

Don't spin a kid on a merry go round right after he eats because he WILL throw up.

You may think you have stick straight hair, but that could definitely change. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Parades are the best to both see and walk in.

Play with the neighborhood kids any time possible because they are so stinking cute and will love you forever.