Chiguiros

The chiguiro (or capybara) is the biggest rodent in the world. It apparently has good eating on it and in the Llanos they spit roast it over a big bonfire. Probably the most interesting thing about this bad boy: the meat is very popular in this neck of the woods during Lent, because supposedly in the 16th century the Catholic church classified it as a fish thereby making it allright to eat. How informative is this blog by the way. Here is a picture of a chiguiro eating an ice lolly:

In other news, yesterday i visited the infamous San Andresito which is a whole neighbourhood full of shops and stalls selling every kind of junk under the sun. It`s in the Zona Industrial among grim grey warehouses and the skeletons of old train tracks. Gun holsters, hair straighteners, pink satin bedsheets, Japanese toys, weight gain powder, you name it and it can be found here. The main market is for contraband goods. I was on the hunt for a pair of trainers and so spent two hours traipsing from stall to stall while the proprietors pounced desperately on us as we arrived, asking what we were after, who was wanting the trainers, for the lady or for the gentleman, what style what brand try some on! No compromise! I sometimes get a bit Scottish about it all and wish they would just beat it and leave ye to look at the trainers but i got into the swing of things, going into the shops and gazing at the wall of trainers before picking some up and footering about with them before moving on to the next one, where an identical wall of trainers confronts ye except in this one there`s a wee chap in a lurid trackie having his lunch, a big slab of meat and a few desultory potatoes rolling about the plate as he saws his way through what looks like a medium-rare boot but you have to admit it smells delicious.

Finally i found a pair of absolute crackers (dear reader, if you´re into trainers they´re brown leather Nike ones, from the new collection according to the man, with a GOLD swoosh. Elegante como el pegante!) and it was over to Sergio (he of the salsa lessons) to work some Colombian bargaining magic on the shopkeepers. If i try and do this i can get them to take about $20,000 (8 pounds) off the price, but my accent just says "Hello my whole house is wallpapered with dollars so charge me double, please!". Needless to say with a Colombian bargaining legend on the scene the chaps knocked much more off, cheers pal! Must work on bargaining skills. As they are all contraband trainers they don`t pay any taxes so they buy them for $40,000 a pair anyway. Observe:

Also glass cases with rows and rows of watches, and all the wee guys who work in the shoe shops huddled round a TV shouting at A.C Milan vs. Real Madrid, and people in the street watching a heated chess game between two auld buffers, and banged-up cars with the boot full of suspicious Levis or bejewelled roasary beads. Hint of the Barras about the place, wafts of cheap cigarettes and the smell of fried food, car horns, people shouting, the heavy slate Bogotá sky hanging above your head as tinny salsa pounds out of shops and car radios. Ah Colombia i love you all over again.

After San Andresito we went to eat empanadas up at Las Aguas (see post on empanadas for more information about both the place and the foodstuff) and then to a piano concert. I didn`t pay that much attention to the music because i was too busy looking at my new trainers, arf.

At the weekend i will be ripping up dancefloors with my shiny new trainers and shiny new salsa skills, finally i got the trick of the thing! Plenty of practicing in my house while the parrot looks on disdainfully and "Todo Tiene Su Final" blares out the stereo, soon i will be a salsa master!! That song (Hector Lavoe, also done by Marc Anthony) ("Everything has its end") is the soundtrack around here recently, i`ve even got this sort of Zen/salsa theory of life worked our around its lyrics, but saldy it will have to wait til next time since i`m off to class.

Cinemas and chandozos

Hello pals!

Well things are looking up around here. It`s the Bogotá film festival at the moment so i have been at the pictures twice a day every day at a bizarre cultural centre beside my house to see bleak documentaries about shattered personal relationships among people trying to escape from East Germany and hysterical French capers about perverse TV execs.

Is there anything better then going to the pictures? Something about the ritual of the thing, the way it`s fundamentally the same even if you`re sitting on a rooftop watching something projected onto a crumbly wall, or in the most luxuriously Miami-esque cinema in an opulent commercial centre, or in some scabby university auditorium with uncomfy creaky seats and a faint smell of old coffee in the air. When the lights go down, and the projector hums into life and you see those strange crackly dots and lines that appear over the picture momentarily, and the way that if you look back you see all the light spilling out of this little hole in the back wall, laser beams of stories. Cinematic overload magic.

There are no students at uni this week as they have a recess week, unfortunately the course i teach is an extra-curricular course for whoever wants to do it and consequently i get nae holidays. Quite hysterical atmosphere at work though, the fact of having no students gives the place a bit of a party vibe, especially yesterday which was the culmination of the "Secret Friend" business. This was a name out a hat, buy that person a present thing for the day of Love and Friendship which is the last Saturday in September (we were late, as always. Sometimes i love my disorganised work). I got a friend of mine which was nice, rustled up some hipster gear at the market in Usaquen on Sunday (i also got a belter cardigan last week, RED with a black and silver fair isle yoke and shiny black plastic buttons, yes please) and i think she was pleased with it. I asked mine for an interesting book and she gave me an unexpected but not unwelcome (Spanish) copy of Angela`s Ashes and an orange t-shirt that says "I`M A GREAT CATCH" on the front of it. Then we cracked out the Tetrapak rum and the boss wired up this crap karaoke game, the one that rates your performance (NOTE TO PARENTS: I know you know what this is, i heard all about Donaldo´s magical "No Woman No Cry"). I`ve mentioned before that i´ve got a reputation at work for being really into rancheras, so my colleagues of course fell upon this like vultures and they all started chanting "Katherine, Katherine!" until i sidled up and murdered Vicente Fernandez´s classic "Estos Celos", complete with shady dancing and AYAYAYAYAAYYYYYs!!!!
Needless to say the game was fairly harsh with my performance, lots of little red "Horrible!" and "Pésimo!" (=dismal) floating up the side of the screen. PERSONALLY i think it was rather good...

Some facts and other news:

1. I am going to learn to dance. Hopefully i´ll be teaching a pal to write very elegant and well-structured English essays and in return the dancing lessons will allow me to quit the shameful shackles of being a shit dancer. Cherie´s sister, brother-in-law and nephew are coming to Colombia in December and the plan is to go south, down to San Augustín and Cali (!), and there is NO WAY i´m going to Cali with these dancing skills. Cherie is on the Septima at this moment, and has been ordered to pick up an mp3 CD stuffed with salsa hits. (I´m in the internet cafe beside the office).

2. The word "chandozo" means mongrel dog but can also be used to greet pals, e.g: "Quibo chandozo! Que me cuentas?" (="Hiya pal! How´s tricks?").

3. The best corrientazo (set lunch place) in La Candelaria is the bakery on Carrera 5a, in front of the famous "Doña Cecilia" tienda where all the hippies get rattled at night time (incidentally, about this tienda, they sell shots of tequila to the street, so if you`re jsut trapising about looking for somewhere to go you can have a swift shot then continue on your way. It´s delicious but lethal). I had lunch there today and for two pounds ($6,000) i got a bowl of ajiaco (typical Bogota soup with chicken, potatoes, sweetcorn and special herbs called guascuas), a plate of salad then the main plate - chicken, rice, patacón (flattened, fried plantain YES PLEASE) and yuca with two massive glasses of lulo juice (lulo is a green fruit that looks a bit like a cucumber, it´s very refreshing). Corrientazos are great.

4. I´ve got to go to work now :(

5. BUT i´ll be back soon with my weekend holiday plans, i think we are returning to Boyacá with Cherie´s pal Lauren who just arrived from England to get a wee snook aboot Villa de Leyva which is a town i don´t know much about apart from they filmed a telenovela about ZORRO there once! Which reminds me of "A Confederacy of Dunces" where he leaves a note for someone saying "I declare that you be hung from your underdeveloped testicles until dead - ZORRO", which phrase was once the entire text of an e-mail from Leckie, who really writes a mean e-mail.

Off to work! But first, to the bakery for a bun! Yes it´s a dirty job this 18 hours a week (half of which i spend eating buns) Language Assistant business, but someone´s got to do it!