Two years and it seems like two minutes

That's such an old bastard thing to say. It seems like only yesterday i was wolfing down chunchuyos and tannind aguardiente like there's no tomorrow, i mutter decrepitly to myself in 50 years time...

One week left!

It's been an interesting couple of years. I wrote a wee article about my time here for the Language Centre blog and was almost getting teary eyed at the thought of Colombian scran and tunes, had to insert a totally unnecessary Terminator quote AND photo just to cheer myself up a bit.

I'm writing this in my room (where the kind neighbours are providing me with unusually high speed internet) which is even more of a shambles than usual, with a battered suitcase overflowing with books, clothes and all the unclassifiable tat i've amassed over the years and can't bear to part with. Said tat includes a really nice wooden spoon, a vast stack of highly illegal pirated DVDs, assorted crochet hooks in various metallic colours and a green alarm clock which has a chicken who pecks at seeds as the minutes tick by. Hello giant excess baggage fine! When i have a prog rock band it's going to be called Giant Excess Baggage Fine.

Selling all our furniture has been another interesting experience. Try offloading a giant 1920's parrot cage, the world's most elderly red velvet sofa or a paint-splattered and excessively creaky bed on the unsuspecting Bogota public. Actually the ladies i teach at the nuns school have been magic, there's even a parrot fan among them! Serendipitous.

At the weekend we had a bit of a cheerio party in Galerias with some of the colleagues and assorted pals, air conditioning faults and serious overcrowding meant i spent the whole night sweating and worrying that there would be a fire and we would all get crushed trying to get to the exits before realising that the brutal humidity would make a laughing stock out of any unexpected fires. My photos the next day contained an enthusiastic series of unidentified hands giving the air vents the thumbs up in a vain attempt to flatter them into life.

On balance they've been a great two years. The second one was a thousand times more difficult than the first, for a variety of reasons. One of the many things i've realised here is perhaps not to trust people so much, aye they might be out to rip you off which is fairly easy to pick up on but more heartbreaking is when they turn out to be different from who you thought they were. Hard ways to learn things.

However, most learning experiences have been braw. Learning to drive was a laff and a half, and with a week of classes under my belt i am now the proud and totally legal holder of a bona fide Colombian driving license. Get in! Learning to dance salsa was crackin' as well, not that i'm any expert but at least i can enjoy whirling around to Grupo Niche or the godly Marc Anthony without worrying about where my feet are landing. Although i give all the credit for anything i may have picked up to the brave and persistent Sergio, who after countless afternoons of bruised feet and hissy fits finally managed to have me enjoying myself instead of worrying about crap footwork. Learning to speak like a true Bogotano with a mixture of old buffer language and total youthful slang was a joy, as was learning how to coax a class of 45 bored 17 year olds into chatting away in English.

At work i learned a lot of incredibly useful things like how to use Excel and how to organise film festivals which hopefully will come in handy in the ongoing search for gainful employment...

I tried a huge variety of bizarre food, swam in rivers under leafy canopies of vines, drove across deserts in the back of trucks and explored the length and breadth of Bogota. I saw El Pibe Valderrama waddle up and down the pitch at El Campin and got teargassed at the Mayday march. I was interviewed on breakfast television and sang crap karoke in front of far too many people. I got a tattoo, did some volunteering, went to the oldest bowling alley in Latin America, turned 25 on a very depressing and rainy day, made some great pals and lost a few along the way. Aye its been good while it lasted but i'm ready to go home.

Coming up: Colombia to Caledonia...

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.