Apartment - First Impressions

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I moved into my new bachelor pad here in Barranquilla last night, and it is pretty great. In fact, I would go so far as to call it ballin'. I'll leave most of the description until I have accompanying pictures, though.

This is the first time I've moved into a furnished apartment (in 4th year I moved into a place some friends already lived in, so I guess you could call that semi-furnished, but I had to BYO bed/dresser/etc), and it's definitely a sweet deal. However, I discovered today that "furnished" is not quite all it's cracked up to be.

Case in point: today, my shirt tripled as oven mitts, a tea (tee?) towel, and a shirt. Now, I bet you're wondering, "what did you need oven mitts for, Dave?". That's a lie, you're not wondering that. I needed oven mitts for food. Obviously. Shut up, Dave.

Specifically, I had made pasta for the first dinner in the new place (if you know me at all, you're not surprised by this), and required oven mitts in order to strain the pasta. So I used my "oven mitts" to pick up the pot, carry it over to the sink, and.... wait, where's the strainer? Oh that's right I DON'T HAVE A STRAINER BECAUSE I JUST MOVED IN AND I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING. So, my ingenious method to strain the pasta involved dumping it onto a plate (because the pot had no lid, which would have made things infinitely easier), after which the plate still had lots of water on it in addition to the pasta, and was really hot, so I had to pour cold water on it for a while, then try to hold the pasta at bay while tilting the plate slightly in order to let the water run off.

Then I saw another pot, which had a spout and a lid.

Oh well, it all worked out, and my pasta was ready, if lukewarm. Next, I poured on the "salsa de tomate" I had recently bought on my inaugural food run (which also included eggs, bananas, cereal and a mango). The sauce came in this weird bag with a twist cap (I think a lot of food here comes in bags), so I opened it up and squirted some out.

It smelled like ketchup.

Greeeeeaaaaaattt. I get to eat pasta with ketchup for dinner. I know some people like it with their macaroni and cheese, but ew. I resolved to taste some, just to make sure, and lo and behold, it didn't taste quite like ketchup; sweeter than I would have liked for tomato sauce, but doable. So I continued squirting it on the pasta, and set down to eat.

After a couple bites, I realized my first impression had, in fact, been the correct one. It was basically ketchup, and it was gross. I couldn't go on much longer, and eventually I had to rinse the sauce off the noodles and just eat them plain (and getting somewhat cold by this point, what with all the rinsing). After several rinses, the ketchup taste remained surprisingly strong, but I just grun and bore it.

Later, when putting the tomato sauce away, I turned it over and saw the word "ketchup". It was actually quite a relief to know that the standard tomato sauce here is not, in fact, ketchup (and that the standard ketchup is, in fact, ketchup), and I should be able to find the real stuff next time.

Other fun apartment facts:

• upon exploring the master bathroom (that's right, I have 2 bathrooms... actually, sort of 3. More details to come), I found one of those removable shower heads and a tap... not in the shower. Beside the toilet? And soon it dawned on me: I HAVE A BEDET! Rad. I haven't used it yet, but I think it's safe to say I'm already converted to the ways of the bedet.
• After eating a banana, I didn't know what to do with the remains, since I don't have any wastebaskets (this furnished thing isn't all it's cracked... you get the picture). My solution: I threw 'em in the freezer.
• Upon returning from my inaugural grocery run, I introduced myself to the man who I assume is the regular night shift guard. This is a translated transcript of the conversation: "What's your name?" "Luis" "Nice to meet you, Luis. (shake hands) I'm David (Da-veed) and I'm Canadian. My Spanish isn't good, but I learn." Then Luis offered up a high-five. What a cool guy. (P.S. I do know how to say "I am learning", I just forgot to say it that way. The way I said it probably made me more endearing, though)