Music, Explosions and Lesbians

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Dude, with a title like that, how can this not be great? I'll try not to let you down.

Yesterday was Friday (because today is Saturday. I am not sure if you are aware of how weeks work, so I just thought I'd offer a refresher. (Ed. It is actually Monday. I must once again apologize for the lack of blogging, but I don't currently have an internet connection) and because it was Friday, I used my afternoon and evening to do not schoolwork.

I could just leave the blog entry at that, since "not schoolwork" is broad enough that I could just leave it up to your imagination (and with the crazy title, that could be fun.... go ahead, try it before reading on.

Okay, ready? Hope you had a good daydream), but you know I'm not going to do that, because I'm long-winded.

So the first thing I did after school was head to the mall near my house for some groceries, which I was running fairly low on but had been unable to acquire because I was also running low on the thing that is generally exchanged for goods and services: money. Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts. Fortunately, Friday was the first pay-day of the year (and as I later found out, the first Friday of every month is pay-day for everybody who works everywhere, and therefore there's a specific word for the first weekend of every month because it's the weekend when everybody goes out and it's a big party!), so I had sufficient funds to get myself some eats and drinks.

Upon arriving at the store, I discovered that it was also Tigo Day! Tigo is my cell phone carrier, and every Friday is Tigo Day (getting paid and Tigo Day in one day?! Mayhem), which means if you put money on your phone on Friday you get all kinds of crazy bonuses (pre-paid cell phones are the norm here, I'll write a more detailed thingee about it sometime). So I decided to take advantage of Tigo Day, and put some money on my phone. Unfortunately, this took a while, and by the time I was finished I realized I didn't have enough time to go home, so I couldn't get many groceries; I just got a snack for the walk over to Colonial Music where I had plans to meet a friend who would help me look for a guitar.

I won't bore you with the details of the journey; suffice it to say I still had my books from school and was still wearing teaching clothes and I was still a little bit sick and it was friggin hot and it was a long walk and I had to backtrack a few times near the end of the walk so I was pretty exhausted when I got there. But this isn't a whining xlog, this is a xaving xlog.

So my friend M was delayed in getting to the store, but that was actually a good thing because it gave me a chance to try out a bunch of guitars for a while without being self-conscious about making M wait around. The store had a good selection of guitars, and I narrowed down my favourites to 2. I didn't want to rush into a purchase though, so we checked out 2 other stores in the area, neither of which had the selection of Colonial. Furthermore, M assured me that finding a used guitar is basically impossible, unlike in North America, the Land of Craigslist. So with that knowledge in mind, and also the infusion of cash, and also my hunger to play some geetar after a painful month-long absence, and also the help of M's friend-employee, I decided on one of the 2 top choices and, well, I bought it! Check it out:

Obviously, his name is Wally.

It's pretty great, it's got a nice sound and a built-in pick-up too (a luxury I have been without my entire guitar-playing life). Also, I recently got a pretty nice (or at least large) stereo-speaker system from K (it came with her apartment, but she wasn't using it), and I'm pretty sure I can use the speakers as an amp for the guitar as soon as I get a battery for the pick-up. Oh, and tomorrow I'm jamming with a couple musicians I met at a jazz bar! (Ed. that didn't happen, but it will at some point) Things are coming up musicdave.

So after dropping the guitar off in its new home, I met up with J, who had told me he had plans with his co-workers (he works at another school on the same street as me) and that t"You are going to really enjoy the place we're going to :-)"t (t" "t means text message quote). So after dropping by his apartment to see his incredibly awesome 5 year old son Little J (who is so bilingual he just speaks in both languages) we hopped in a cab and headed further "downtown" than I've ever been before (someday I'll do a post on the city, but I don't know it well enough yet).

The place we went to is called Las Vegas, and is like a huge open air restaurant/dance hall/bowling alley. Except they don't play bowling, they play a game called Tejo, which is kind of like horseshoes, except instead of throwing a horseshoe at a post you throw a rock at gunpowder. In the novice game, you throw from a distance a little less than a horseshoe pitch, or whatever they're called, and there's an expert version that's more like bowling distance. It might not sound very hard to hit something from horseshoe distance with a rock, but the explosions were pretty rare.

We stayed there for a couple hours, enjoying beer and loud music which inspired much dancing among the crowd, even though it was still early.

And then a Mariachi band came! It was someone's birthday or something, so they had been hired to serenade said person. It was a full-on affair, with 2 guitars, a guitarron (one of those friggin huge guitars), a violin, 2 trumpets and 2 singers, costumes and friggin huge sombreros (not as big as the friggin huge guitar). They played 3 or 4 songs, and then asked for requests, all of which they, of course, knew, and then one of the guys in the party who had hired them even sang a song and was incredible, showing up even the real singers.

We stayed for a while after the band left, and the good times continued. As you can imagine, dancing is a huge part of the culture here, and will likely inspire a post or 2 of its own later on. I'm picking up tips here and there, and got some (seemingly genuine, but who knows) compliments last night, particularly about my feet (always moving in the dancing around here). It was fun, and J has one co-worker in particular who was an amazing dancer, and I found out later to my complete and utter lack of surprise that he used to be in dance troupes professionally.

Eventually J and I left to go play dominoes with lesbians. I am only specifically mentioning the lesbian part because J felt it necessary to qualify the event in such a way every time he brought it up (in case you're wondering, the lesbians are J's friends, we didn't just go to some sort of lesbian domino bar).

Aside: I don't have much of a handle on the attitude towards homosexuality around here, but I get the idea it's a lot more difficult to be gay here than in the places I've lived before. Apparently, there was a gay teacher at school last year, and he didn't last very long, and I get the impression it was because of precisely this.

Anyway, the fact that we were playing with lesbians (and one gay dude also) wasn't the only distinguishing characteristic of this phase of the evening. Namely, we were playing dominoes! In a bar! And you don't even have to BYOD! They've got it all set up. When was the last time you played dominoes? I'm not even sure I've ever played dominoes properly. It was fun. We had a friendly game, but J pointed out some more serious looking games that were definitely being played for money (or, at least, the drink bill), were played in total silence (using knocks, like in euchre), and could result in heated arguments.

A fun curiosity of the bar: the men's bathroom was just at the back of the bar, like not even in its own room. There was a wall... which went about halfway, leaving the rest of the urinals exposed.

After dominoes ended, we turned to the game which took up most of the floor-space of the bar: pool. Except Colombian pool is totally messed up, man. It starts with most of the balls on the side in some particular arrangement (the girl sets it up for you, you don't touch it), and then the goal is to sink the balls in ascending order, like in 9-ball, but you get points for each ball you sink - the number of points is the number of the ball (i.e. 8 points for the 8 ball). You also lose points for things like scratches.

It was a fun night, and distinctly Colombian. Even though I hadn't planned on going out, since I had to get up early for Parents Day at school today, I'm glad I went, and I got enough sleep anyway.

Sunday

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Pre-Script: this was supposed to be posted on Sunday night, but I haven't had internet at my house - an issue which has been solved in a theoretical sense but not a practical one (i.e. I know what the problem is, I just haven't been able to fix it yet). So, sorry for the lack of bloggage - and put yourself in the mindset of "Sunday night" when you're reading this.

Today was a weird day.

I woke up with a brutally sore throat, which came as a total shock. Usually, I can feel a sore throat coming several days in advance; it starts as a tickle in the back of my throat, and gets progressively worse until the 3rd or 4th day when it reaches an apex. In other cases (particularly after nights when beer is on the menu), I wake up with a sore throat that gradually dissipates throughout the day, never to be heard from again. Today's seems to be the natural, non-alcohol-induced kind (I did have some beer over at J's house on Friday night, but I've never encountered any sort of delayed alcohol-induced sore throat, that seems unlikely), but there was no lead-up.

I suppose it could have been something I ate - I ate a lot of crackers yesterday, maybe the salt? It's not like I ate a whole package, though. I had sushi for dinner, and at the end I had a couple bites of straight wasabi, because I love the wasabi spiciness - the brief but powerful rush of tingling in your mouth and nose, and the fact that it doesn't linger like "regular" spiciness - so I suppose that could have been it. Maybe the salt of the soy sauce contributed too. But that's never happened with sushi before, so I'm skeptical.

(By the way, side note about sushi last night. The entrance to the sushi restaurant was inside the deli next door. When we arrived, they didn't have any tables, but they had extra tables set up inside the deli. So for the first 20 minutes or so, we sat there at our plastic table and chairs, studying the menu as customers filed in and out, picking up their groceries, before being ushered into the very posh sushi restaurant.)

It's no Sushi Kan... Deli Kan?

So, as is often the case when I feel even the slightest bit sick, I resolved to stay home and take it easy today. I tell myself this is so that I can nip whatever may be coming in the bud, but in reality it's just an easy excuse to be lazy.

Of course, this led me to stay home all day, and aside from stepping onto my balcony for a few brief moments, I haven't been outside. This is something I've been trying not to do while in Colombia, so hopefully I'll at least muster the energy to take the garbage out to keep the streak going (ed: I didn't. The streak is over). But so far, most of what I've seen today has been the inside of my apartment, and since I'm nicely settled in and used to the place (pictures soon, I promise), when I'm inside it doesn't feel like I'm in some exotic new country.

At some point today, I decided to listen to an album by the Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (that's the one with Do You Realize on it). I hadn't listened to it much before; I just downloaded it shortly before leaving the other continent, so apart from the aforementioned state song of Louisiana (or Oklahoma? I forget), I wasn't particularly familiar with the music. But as I was sitting at my desk, either doing some schoolwork or reading, the music made me stop what I was doing, close my eyes, and enjoy the moment. This is not a common occurrence for me; even though I'm constantly listening to or playing music, it's not often that I get totally absorbed in it. I think this has something to do with the logical and mathematical nature of my brain; whether I try to or not, I'm always simultaneously listening to the music and analyzing it. Concerts are never the superlative, life-changing experiences they seem to be for other people. But it does happen every now and then.

Sometime in the evening I started getting hungry (this, on the other hand, is a common occurrence), and I decided to make something large for dinner so I could take the rest for lunch tomorrow. Since my fridge isn't yet fully re-stocked, and I'm still accumulating kitchen equipment, my cooking possibilities for this type of meal are limited: basically, rice or pasta. Last time I made rice, so I went the pasta route, and the sauce was a very traditional (for me) mix of onions, green peppers, broccoli, tomatoes and a bit of tomato sauce.

So it was that I sat down to dinner, excitedly awaiting the first bite of a nostalgic dish, listening to the same Flaming Lips album (it had been put on repeat by this point). And it seems like all of these things - the mild sickness-induced drowsiness, the lack of outside reality, the tastes-like-home food, the affective music - conflated to sweep me away in a wave of emotion. What emotion that was, I cannot tell you. I wouldn't call it homesickness, because I wasn't particularly sad. And also, as mentioned, I feel at home here. Maybe home-wistfulness?

Or maybe it was simply living on another continent setting in. I've been in Colombia for three and a half weeks now, and I've bathed in a mud volcano, eaten lots of interesting, new food, and been immersed in a totally different culture, but I never got an overwhelming sense of I'm here now. Now, I didn't really get that sense tonight, either, but it was something close. Something like the feeling you get on a cold autumn night - a general warmth and sleepiness, the summer over and a long winter about to set in.

I don't know what that means, since the closest thing I'm getting to winter around here are the trade winds that come around in November for a few months, and give the 32˚ air a bit of a breeze to cool us off. Not exactly snowball fight weather. I suppose the significance is that it was something that felt like home, a feeling I've had every year of my life up til now. But this is home - for the next 10 months, at least.

Sorry to get all meditative on you guys. It's back to silliness and things being lost in translation tomorrow, I promise. Maybe I'll even get around to posting pictures of the school and my apartment.

Notes From Friday

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I usually try to focus these blog posts on a single topic/story, but sometimes there are just a few tidbits here and there I want to pass along. So, without further ado, here are some of said tidbits.

*****

I've mentioned this once before, but it was just a quick aside buried deep in a mostly-unrelated story, so I thought I'd mention it again: last week, a teacher band was formed for the purpose of playing at the school's first mass. I played (play? Not sure what our future is yet...) drums in said band. I'm telling you this because my colleague E wrote a blog post about the mass, so check it out! And check out the rest of her blog while you're at it!

*****

Another reason I wanted to mention the teacher band is because one of its members is a new friend of mine, and he's involved in both of the other two tidbits of today's post. This new friend's xlog-name is M, and he plays electric guitar and bass in the teacher band. He's one of the two music teachers at school.

And last night, M and I almost got arrested!

Okay, not really. But we could have been, because we were doing something illegal. Namely: we were men and we were outside.

I'm serious! This sounds like something you might read on Ian's Blog (I am just linking all over the place today), but in Colombia? What's the deal?

Apparently, last night was some sort of women's night in Barranquilla. At first I thought this meant men couldn't go to bars, but in actuality it was much more wide-spread than that; we weren't even allowed to be on the street! Obviously, I had a lot of questions about this, but M didn't know much more than I. This is not a regular event; last night was the first one, ever. M's understanding was that it was some sort of social experiment to see if nightlife-related violence was reduced, but he also brought up the very good (and also hilarious) point that of course nightlife-related violence would be reduced, since nightlife-related violence is usually alcohol-fueled, and without men, who would be buying the women drinks?

Anyway, last night M and I went over to J's apartment for the evening (if you don't feel like clicking the link, J is a displaced Canadian who I met on the bus this week. I also found out last night I am J's 3rd replacement at my school - meaning he taught the same classes as me 3 teachers ago), and even though it was only about a 10 minute walk (more like 25 on the way back...), we were terrified! Okay, we weren't terrified. What were they gonna do? Give us a stern lecture? I would have just pulled the gringo card, and I would have got out of even that. (by the way, maybe this is common knowledge, but I just found out last night that gringo refers specifically to Americans, so I'm not one - as someone who is often, and wrongly, referred to as a gringo, J was sure to make this point very clear.)

*****

Before venturing out into the wild unknown of no-men-allowed Barranquilla, M and I had been hanging out at my apartment. I had invited M over because we take the same bus and we were thirsty, and I had drinks.

We were thirsty because yesterday after school the teachers had a Friday soccer game, which I believe is a regular thing (there was one 2 weeks ago which I had to miss because I had to go get my blood taken or some other moving-related administrative thing (by the way, I'm O negative, which I already knew, but I guess they won't let you just tell them your blood type), and then last week it was raining), though I didn't find out until yesterday that these Friday matches aren't so much games as training sessions (they're effectively the same thing, I guess it's just the motivation that's different).

Training sessions for what, you ask? Well, as I just found out yesterday (I found out a lot of things yesterday) the teachers are going to a soccer tournament soon. It's a tournament for all Colombian SACS Schools - SACS is some kind of accreditation that allows students to receive both a Colombian and American high school diploma, and my school just got accredited last year.

So anyway, there's this SACS soccer tournament in October. As far as I know, that's all it is. Maybe there's some sort of educational conference component to it, but I haven't heard about that. Oh yeah, and the tournament is in Bogotá! I don't know yet if I'll get to go, since, as mentioned, I just found out about it yesterday, but that would be amazing, obviously.

*****

One last note: yesterday I got my Cedula, which is the Colombian everything card - it's like a combination driver's license/SIN card/probably everything else? The most important result of this is I can now open a bank account and consequently receive a pay cheque. Things are coming up Dave.

Loose Connections

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I know my parents. (I think this is generally apparent.)

My parents have friends named E and S.

E and S have a son.

This son has a friend named D, who used to teach in Peru.

A former colleague of D's from the school in Peru, named D2, now works here in Barranquilla at the British School. I've been in e-touch with D2, but have yet to meet him.

This morning I hopped on the bus to get to school, and the first face that greeted me looked out of place - another whitey! Like me! After staring each other down for a few seconds (not really), he decided to make idle white chatter. But it wasn't just any chatter - he asked me, out of the blue, in English, without having heard me speak, if I was Canadian. How did he know?!

It was weird, though a stranger on the bus knowing who I was isn't unprecedented. So we got to talking, and it turns out he's been here for a while, after having spent 16 years as an accountant and also some time in the Canadian Forces (though he didn't look old enough to have done all that, maybe I mis-heard the 16).

Another Canadian! My excitement caused me to forget about his strange, unexplained knowledge of me. I haven't spoken to a Canadian (apart from a few static-y minutes of failed attempted Skype with my family) in several weeks, which is almost definitely the longest streak of its kind since I didn't know how to speak.

I eventually discovered that he used to work at the school I presently work at, and he recently ran into the senior school principal, who informed him of my existence (my legend precedes me, apparently). And when he saw me enter the bus with another teacher who I eventually figured out he already knew, he put 2 and 2 together.

So what does this story have to do with the opening lines of this blog post? Well, my new Canadian friend, J, now works at the British School, and knows D2. A very satisfying completion of the circle. Kevin Bacon would be proud.