Anyone else as pissed as me about the title of the picture?

Sooo I headed into an art exhibition here in Cartagena that a guy (who I met through the Couchsurfing Hangout App, obviously, hah!) and I were walking by one day. It was an interesting exhibition. There was a room titled Paradise and another titled Hell and there were beautiful pictures in both (as well as some I could've gone without seeing in the latter).

In the Paradise room, though, there was a picture that really pissed me off and I thought I could share it here so you can all be pissed off with me. You're welcome.

the "Paradise" room

Don't get me wrong -- the picture itself is beautiful. This woman is gorgeous and she has beautiful eyes (though I couldn't help but noticing that she has two eyelashes crossing in a weird way on one eye and I really want to fix it for her -- but okay, that's not the point).

What pissed me off was the title of the picture. If you zoom in, you'll notice that it's Tentación (Temptation). If anyone can think of a more sexist title for this picture, I'd be curious to hear it. I don't think it'd be any more obvious if they straight-up called the picture "Sex Object for Men."

Another friend I entered the same museum with later told me (playing Devil's Advocate more than anything else, I hope) that maybe I just didn't understand the title and that it meant something else. Okay, I'm open to it. I'd be interested to hear such an explanation but I haven't yet.

To me, whoever took and titled this picture thinks of this woman as a sex object. They think of her in Biblical terms, where it's the woman's "fault" if someone is attracted to her and "therefore" violates her privacy in some way; it's her fault if she's raped because she "tempted" the man with her beauty. They think of her as existing for sex -- as some kind of treat that they're not "supposed" to touch but that if they do, it will be incredibly gratifying. The title objectifies this beautiful woman who has feelings, who obviously has a complete personality, who is surely intelligent, who is allowed to be beautiful, who is allowed to look and dress however she wants, who has her own desires and makes her own decisions. The way she looks and the way she dresses has absolutely nothing to do with men. She is not a fucking temptation. She is a person.

Hope you're all as pissed off as I am about this title. I'm sick of this sexist shit and I wish I could say it was only here in Latin America but we all know that's not true.

Couch Surfing in Colombia Continues to be amazing...

Besides the people I've already written about, there are more! In Korea, I met literally almost all of my friends in the same salsa club. In Colombia, I've met almost all of my friends through Couch Surfing!

There was a two-night period that I had to leave my friend Angie's house because her parents were coming and they don't know (and wouldn't appreciate the fact) that she hosts Couch Surfers. I ended up going to stay with a girl named Liliana who I, again, fell in love with right from the moment we met. She's a Respiratory Therapist and she is also involved in social work, has dreams of traveling and is planning to soon start a Masters abroad. Not only that, but she is an amazing salsa dancer and cook!

Liliana & I eating some of the incredible food that she cooked us!

Besides being generous enough to let me stay in her house for two nights, she cooked for me and spent lots of time talking to and hanging out with me and then, when my dumbass lost Angie's house keys on the third night we went out dancing together, she let me sleep in her house again. In the 72 hours I spent at her house, I think we were out dancing for about 40 of them and it was amazing!

Out to eat after another full day of dancing--we actually ordered
two complete dinners each that night bc we were so starving
after all that dancing!

In the daytime during my stay in Cali, Angie had to study, Liliana had to work and so did everyone else I knew so I was pretty much on my own. So what did I do? I decided to try out the Couchsurfing Hangout app.

You set your status as "available" and let people know what you're interested in doing (i.e. grabbing a coffee or food, exploring the area, going hiking, etc...). Then you can see the other people in the area who are interested in hanging out and doing the same thing as you, both foreigners and locals, and you can make plans to meet up! I did it a few times in both Cali and Medellin and it was great! Two of the guys that I met were particularly awesome.

One guy, Juan David, and I went to get some coffee and sat in one of the parks I hadn't been to yet to chat. We rode his motorcycle (super fun but also really chill since I made him drive slowly lol) to get there and then talked for a few hours. He's really smart and I learned a lot from him talking about his network marketing business he's working on. He's planning to save up for a while and then he and his girlfriend want to travel all of Latin America on his motorcycle!

Alejandro was another awesome guy I met. The first day, he and I and another girl from the Hangout app met up to get cholados and then a few days later he took me to his dad's farm outside of Cali and it was incredible! We went with another friend of his who was super nice as well. First we went to the Pance River and then he took us to the farm.

cholado - a typical food from Cali made with fresh
fruit and they put fruit syrup, ice cream & dulce de
leche in it if you want, too!

Río Pance

The houses (his dad lives there and so do a few other relatives) were enormous--I'm talking two floors and three or four bedrooms per person--and the view was magnificent. They had food of every kind growing there and we walked around eating different kinds of fruits off the trees. We even got to help get mangoes down out of the trees with a giant stick (which I had way too much fun with) and then his dad gave them to us to take home!

the view

me knocking mangoes out of the trees

A few days later, Alejandro drove me up to the Cristo Rey (giant Christ statue on top of a mountain--think Rio but smaller) although it turned into a pretty hilarious adventure. About halfway up the mountain, he realized the car was out of gas so we turned around and literally coasted back down the entire mountain, all the way to a gas station. We were laughing the whole way but there were really times that we weren't sure if we'd make it (you never know what the traffic lights will turn red). After all that, we drove back up the mountain and finally saw the view.

and it was awesome!

Then, finding myself in the capital once again, I met up with Laura, my first friend I met in Colombia and we went out salsa dancing once again but this time as a whole new group of couch surfers!

Six couch-surfers from three different countries in a party-sized Uber
van on our way to dance salsa!

For anyone who hasn't tried the Hangout app on CouchSurfing yet (whether you yourself are a traveler or not and no matter where you are in the world), I totally recommend it! There are so many amazing people to meet and, if your'e in your own country, you can share it with someone else and get the chance to see it with fresh eyes. :D

Medellín

Medellin is one of the biggest cities in Colombia. It's situated in the middle of a valley so, no matter where you are, the view of the landscape is breathtaking. From down inside the heart of the city, you're surrounded by beautiful mountains on all sides. Then, when you go up one of the enormous mountains, the view looking down on the city is incredible.




I stayed with Andrea and Natalia, two girls I met on New Year's Eve last year in Rio, and their parents and the four of them treated me like family. I stayed with them for ten days.

We shared countless meals together...

...and, on the weekends, we went on trips to nearby the villages which are beautiful!

One of my favorite days was when we went to Parque Arví. Medellin is the only city in Colombia with a metro system and it has two lines that are actually cable cars that take you up into the mountains. To get to Parque Arvi, you take one of these cable cars and the view is insane!

View from inside the cable car

Once you've passed over the enormous neighborhoods below, you get to the top of the mountain and assume the trip's over but the cable car keeps going another 20 or so minutes over pure nature...trees and nothing else...until you finally get to a little village there on top of the mountain, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Traveling over the top of the mountain

When you get out of the cable car, there's a market with tons of fresh fruits and organic products. From there, we went on an hour and a half hike and then ate at a vegetarian restaurant before buying some dessert and settling down for a nap in the nearby hammocks.

 

on our hike

the food at the vegetarian restaurant is all grown right there

relaxing in our hammocks after lunch

Another one of my favorite days was when we went to Gatuape. Yet again, it was a kind of landscape I had never seen before.

Guatape

We took a bus for a couple of hours, then little three-wheeled taxi things to get to the bottom of the rock and then walked up 675 stairs in order to see that incredible view and, boy, was it worth it!

the stairs

It was a bit cloudy (sort of had that Macchu Picchu mystic quality to it) but it was beautiful! I couldn't help wondering what it'd be like to live in one of those houses down below for a few months, swimming or boating every day.

We also went salsa dancing one night which was, of course, super fun. Dancers everywhere in Colombia tend to be pretty awesome but the dancers' attitudes in Medellin seemed to be a bit more humble than those in Cali (not to knock the wonderful Cali) which I really enjoyed.

Also, while in Medellin, I went on a walking tour and learned some interesting things:

1. Despite what many people think, Pablo Escobar is not the reason that Medellin is such a rich city (really...the absolute poorest places I saw in Medellin are nothing compared to Bogota or Rio). Yes, there is drug money in the city and, yes, that was what helped a lot of poor people come out of poverty but that is not the reason that the economy has been so much better there. The drug money only started flowing in in about the 80's. It's actually because of the gold that was exported from there for so many years and then the coffee that's been exported since. Additionally, although the politicians there steal as well, they also invest in the city and that's something that doesn't necessarily always happen in the other cities in Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America. They're perhaps a bit less corrupt and have a bit more pride in where they're from.

2. The hot-spots for prostitution, drugs and porn are typically just outside of churches. Most of the prostitutes I saw were actually leaning against the churches themselves and, according to our guide, it's common for the men who use such services to then go into the churches, ask forgiveness and then move on with their lives feeling guilt-free immediately afterwards. Colombia is a very Catholic country, after all. We also walked through a street market on the side of one of the churches and there was more porn than I have ever cared to see for-sale. And, of course, the churches are in all the big plazas so that's where all the drug fun happens.

3. Many of the plazas in Medellin have been completely transformed, just as the country as a whole has, in the last 10-15 years. Colombia has had a tough past and it's only been doing as well as it is now for a little over a decade. My friends here tell me that when they were very young, it wasn't even safe for them to be out and about in the cities a lot of the time because there were bombs, kidnappings, etc... Now, though, Colombia is one of the most incredible places in the world to be. Between the music, the dancing, the people, the landscapes, the food and the cultural celebrations, this country is just filled with joy. The plazas that used to be the most dangerous have been transformed into some of the safest, most productive and most beautiful places in the city in order to reflect this.

For example, this statue was once blown out by a bomb but Botero, the artist, instead of throwing out the old one, left it along with the new one, in order to remind the people of Colombia of where they'd been and where they are now. 

Other examples were a plaza that used to be extremely dangerous but is now filled with giant lights symbolizing hope and another plaza with an ugly history that is now filled with educational buildings.

My time in Medellin was incredible and, as usual, I owe it all to the amazing people I was with! Natalia and Andrea, I will never be able to thank you and your parents enough for such an amazing ten days! I can't wait til we get to meet again!! <3

Life in the Caribbean

I've been in Cartagena for three days. Like I said in my Couch Surfing in Colombia blog, I realized I was being a bit ridiculous by being afraid to couchsurf with guys so I have now officially remedied that.

Daniel and I became friends as fast as I have with everyone else I've stayed with so far. He's an architect that actually lives in Bogota but he's staying in Cartagena for a month and graciously invited me to stay with him for a few days. Besides having my own room with a high-power fan (necessary in this 88-degree weather) and private bathroom, the house's balconies are covered in flowers, the Caribbean Sea is literally right outside the window, and he's got the two most comfortable hammocks set up in the living room.

View from the hammock

The freaking PERUVIAN CEVICHE Daniel made for us yesterday!!
I'm literally in heaven right now.

We've walked the whole town multiple times in the last few days (Cartagena is as beautiful as they say and, unfortunately, my pictures don't do it any kind of justice). I've officially become obsessed with champeta (a musical genre from Cartagena) and I can't get enough of the rest of the music here either. My favorite genres and songs come pumping out of every plaza, store, restaurant, bar, car and cell phone I walk by...and I keep coming across new songs I love!!

EVERY house in Cartagena is this freaking beautiful.
I think I probably need to live here at some point.

Yesterday, we met up with a friend (and ex-student) of mine from Brazil who's here for a few days as well (I didn't even know she was coming!) and we checked out the pre-carnaval festivities together (Cartagena's Carnaval starts today, something else I didn't even realize when I bought my plane tickets to come here!). I was supposed to leave here this morning but Cartagena is just too amazing and I needed more time. Daniel invited me to stay for a few more days and there was no way in hell I was gonna turn that offer down!

The kids in the city had a pre-Carnaval parade a few days ago

We woke up this morning, had some fresh tropical fruit and coffee, took a long walk along the beach and then took a swim in the freaking Caribbean Sea. I don't know how this is my freaking life!! The water is clean and much calmer than the beach I lived by in Rio so it was super relaxing. Afterwards we laid in the hammocks to read/nap before we got onto more productive things (and by that, I mean I'm drinking delicious Colombian coffee for less than $2.00 in an air conditioned cafe and blogging, bahaha!).

I'm obsessed with these hammocks...the only problems it trying to force ourselves
to eventually get out of them once we've gotten in. We've had to start setting alarms!

I still can't believe this is my life. I am free of the burden of material junk, I'm meeting incredible people and getting to see every corner of this beautiful world. I can change my plans whenever I want, I can work when I want and don't have to when I don't want to. I'm learning how to think in different ways by looking at life through the different perspectives of other cultures and making new friends everywhere I go. I'm taking advantage of every opportunity that comes my way and am truly appreciative for every single one of them.

In light of all that, I am painfully aware, especially this week, of how easily this perfect life has fallen into my lap. I haven't experienced racial discrimination or a system that holds me down because of my nationality, skin color or religion. I grew up in the nation that arguably most oppresses others in order to stay on top, with the only color of skin that doesn't suffer from racism and in the religion that is in charge of my government. I have the opportunities I have because I was lucky enough to be born into such a situation and for no other reason.

I will continue to be grateful for every minute of this journey but I promise that I will not for one second ever think that I did anything to deserve this more than anyone else. There is no person on this earth that I don't wish could have these incredible opportunities as well and I will spend my life working toward making that equality a reality.

I am sad today for the U.S.'s situation but I still have hope. I have hope because of all the incredible people I've met along my journeys and because of the inspiring educators and academics that I am friends with that I know are spreading messages of love and tolerance. I have hope because I wake up every day to see the beauty in this world and because I know so many people working to make it even better.

Okay...back to enjoying the hell out of Cartagena!

Salsa in Cali

I got to Cali, what Colombians call "the salsa capital of the world," all bright-eyes and bushy-tailed, super excited to make up for only dancing a maximum of once a week for the last year and a half.

I spent my first few hours with Angie, my couch surfing host and a girl who is the same person as me but 10 years younger. We became besties the moment I got to her house. I put my bags down and we started talking and kept going right on through as we ate breakfast and lunch together before she had to go to class.

Our first day out to lunch

I had already deemed her the same person as me when I read her CS profile but, in person, I found the similarities almost hilariously overboard. Even the types of notes and goals she writes for herself and posts around her room are literally things I've written to myself before. Crazy.

I spent the first few days settling in and looking for a volunteer job at a hostel. I walked around door to door, knocking at every hostel in San Antonio (the most beautiful part of the city and where all the hostels are), asking for volunteer work. A few places accepted me and I ended up moving into a hostel that is also a Vegan Food restaurant.

My job was to clean "5 hours a day" although I think I only actually worked a total of two hours in the four days I lived there. Likewise, though, I'd been promised (what I thought would be an awesome) three meals a day and actually barely received anything more than rice for the most part when I asked for food. I spent five hours per day in the hostel, though, just in case I was needed and didn't feel the exchange was very worth it...or very much fun.

The hostel was super pretty, though :)

I wrote Angie, who lives with two other friends, again and asked if I could pay something small and come back to live with them a little longer. It had been so much more fun and I wanted to be able to spend more time with my new friend! She and the girls offered to let me stay for a verrrry small amount and I helped them a bit with cleaning and their English! It was perfect and we had a great two weeks together!

Two of the girls I stayed with <3

 As I got more settled in, I started to go out more but the beginning of my salsa adventure was a total failure. All I wanted to do was dance but I'd get to a club and the Caleños (people from Cali) would see my gringa face and pass right by me. No one wanted to dance with me. At the verrrry end of each of the nights I went out, someone would finally (presumably) run out of options or get bored or something and ask me to dance. Luckily, one of these times it was an amazing salsa teacher named Carlos.

Side note: no joke...each of the times someone danced with me, the conversation literally went like this:
Caleño: Where are you from?
Me: The U.S.
Caleño: But you can dance.

"But." lol

A couple days later, Carlos invited me to come be his "assistant" at the salsa classes he teaches in a couple of hostels. (Bonus: there were Brazilians in both classes so I got to speak Portuguese, too!) I'm no Caleñan salsa dancer, but if I'm teaching gringos at hostels, that apparently doesn't matter. (Flashback to that time I got paid to teach bachata lessons at my hostel in Peru...How does this keep happening?!)

Giving the classes, I also met John, Carlos's other assistant. John is an amazing dancer and I started seeing him every time I went out after that. We danced together a bunch and, no joke, once people saw me dance with him, everyyyyone started asking me to dance! I didn't sit out for another song the entire time I was in Cali. I guess someone they trusted had to accept me first? It was dumb but, once I was finally dancing, I didn't care anymore.

Out dancing in Cali!

I spent the next couple of weeks learning about Cali's unique salsa culture. It was actually quite different from everywhere else I've ever danced. The differences?

1. Tennis shoes instead of salsa shoes
Only at one place do some people wear salsa shoes but the rest wear gym shoes. I wore my soccer shoes (until I played a game and busted them wide open and had to go back to my heels).

 2. No eye-contact/smiling
Okay, some is alright...but apparently here if you look at your dance partner and smile too much (which is the polite thing to do in every other salsa community I've been a part of), they take that as flirting and think you're up to something else. This was particularly difficult for me so there was a bit of confusion between some of my dance partners and I.

3. Couples dance with each other...
...often exclusively. Everywhere else I've been, you dance with your partner a bunch, sure, but also with other people. Here, if I went out with a guy friend, people assumed we were a couple and therefore didn't ask me to dance. (Don't worry--only made that mistake once!)

4. It's all about the feet!
I knew this ahead of time but it's even more extreme than I thought. I ended up taking classes during my last week in Cali and saw the behind-the-scenes. They focus almost exclusively on footwork which means everyone is able to switch between these crazy-fast footwork patterns with ease but, at the same time, most people don't know the simplest of turn patterns.

Liliana, another amazing friend I got to make through couchsurfing (for the weekend that Angie's parents, who don't know she hosts surfers, came to stay), took me to a Kizomba class that turned out to be one of my favorite parts of Cali! Every Sunday there is a class that costs just over $1.00 and the teacher is great!

Liliana & I

At the end of the class, there's a salsa/bachata/kizomba social which is pretty much my dream come true. The funny thing, too, was that I, again, ended up teaching the others some Dominican-style bachata because the only type people know here is modern. It was really fun that they were willing to learn!

Three weeks in Cali was, overall, a great idea and I could easily stay more time. Anywhere there's such amazing music, friendly people and so many opportunities to dance, I really can't complain. Cali, I'll be back as soon as I can!

My Syrian Rant

A friend (and student) of mine's mom has cancer. They won't give her a visa to come get treatment in the U.S., even though three of her family members are currently doctors or medical students in the U.S. They won't give her a visa because she's from Syria...and, in Syria, there is currently no treatment for cancer.

WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

How the fuck are we systematically not recognizing Syrians as people?! They are the exact same as the rest of us...though I'd argue that the ones I know are a bit more resilient and hard-working because they've been through much more than the rest of us. I can't imagine what I would do if my mom had cancer and she could have zero treatment, just because she's from Ohio and so a large group of extremely ignorant people thought she might be a terrorist. She's the same as everyone else's mom. And what would my mom do if that were the case with her mom?? Only when we think about it this way do we remember that we're all the same.

My student is quite literally one of the hardest-working and most humble people I've ever met. She's a medical student, studying in a foreign language in a great program in the U.S. Her family (which is a family of doctors) has been stuck in a war-torn country this entire time, through no fault of their own, and she doesn't get to see them. Now, with this horrible news, she may lose everything she has in the U.S. because she'll need to go back to Syria to be with her mom.

I don't know what the fuck I would do in such a horrible, horrible situation. I wouldn't even know where to begin. This girl is amazing at life so she's already trying to work with The Cleveland Clinic where she's been studying and she's got a lawyer working with her. She's still studying, she's still doing private lessons with me to improve her English, she's still going to work every day, she's still dealing with the sadness and difficulties that those of us in the U.S. will never understand because our country is not being blown apart on a daily basis...and now she has to deal with this...a terrible illness that her mom had been cured of before in her own country but now cannot be because of the war. She needs to find a way to get her mom to the U.S., who is currently refusing to give her a visa because she "might try to stay."

I get it. Not everyone can come in. But how about the very first people we let in are those who no longer have the medical care they need in their own country? I don't think that's such a crazy idea and, in fact, I think it's disgusting that this is even a question. With such a situation, my friend's mom should be rushed into our country, welcomed with open arms and sent straight to her first treatment.

GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, U.S.!

Couch Surfing in Colombia

My first week and a half in Colombia was all CouchSurfing. I stayed with:

Laura (who has the world's most beautiful dreads and is the best Colombian History
and Political Science teacher I've ever had),

Juliana (who has the most positive attitude, the most loving relationship and brightest traveling future ahead of her),

 and...

Angie (who is literally the exact same person as me).

 Of course we all bonded over our love of traveling, our interest in other cultures, our openness to learning from others and our craving for adventure. Duh--it's CouchSurfing. But there was something else we bonded over, too: the fact that we're the only ones who get CouchSurfing.

People who haven't experienced it all say the same thing: "What if you get robbed?" "What if you get raped?" "What if they're murderers?"

It sounds like I'm exaggerating when I list it out like that but people really do ask those questions.

Laura and her mom told me about how much Laura had to talk about it before her mom was actually convinced to do it. I believe they said it took months. Her mom thought it was dangerous, didn't think her house was nice enough and, even when she finally came around and said yes, didn't think it would be safe to invite men. She now admits she was wrong on all counts and they now accept Surfers of all genders, countries, races and the list goes on. But it took a lot of convincing.

Juliana had a similar story and Angie's parents still don't know she does it.

My mom called me on skype a few nights ago while I was staying at Angie's so I introduced the two of them. My mom said hi and then Angie's sweet little smile and wave made me burst out loud laughing. That is who is on CouchSurfing. I'm who's on CouchSurfing. The two of us are the people that everyone else is terrified of and that's just hilarious.

I understand it, though. Things sound scary before you try them and I'm guilty of this, as well. Up until this point, I've always looked for girls to stay with BUT I realized how silly that was while I was in Bogota. Laura's friend, Cristian, also just started hosting Surfers and we all hung out almost every day, whether he had someone staying with him or not. He'd come by with his car and take us to some other amazing part of the city until I got to know all the best parts! Since he's new on CouchSurfing, he didn't have many references and I got to be one of his first! He's the sweetest guy in the world and, hanging out with him, I realized how many amazing people I must be cutting off by refusing to stay with guys.

Karla (Venezuela), Me, Cristian (Colombia), Myriam (Switzerland) & Laura (Colombia),
hanging out, looking over the entire city of Bogota

I also met Karla (from Venezuela) and Franziska (from Germany), two other Surfers, while I was in Bogota. Both stay with guys as well as girls but, since the site is mostly men, Franziska told me she almost always stays with guys. She's 23 but she's been to many more countries than I have and has CouchSurfed so many times she can't count. In all those times with all those different men hosting her, how many bad experiences has she had? Zero.

I get that CouchSurfing sounds scary to people. I really do because even I have even been letting fear (the "lack of safety" in staying with a guy) influence me into taking unnecessary precautions. BUT something unknown that makes us nervous is all the more reason for us to pay attention to logic and experience and to be careful to not make decisions based in fear.

CouchSurfing is incredible because of the wonderful people you meet and the beautiful experiences you share together. I sincerely recommend that everyone tries either Surfing or Hosting at least once in your life because it's amazing!

Disclaimer: CouchSurfing is not AirBnb, just like traveling is not spending a week in Cancun or the Galapagos Islands. AirBnb people do it for the money and CouchSurfing has nothing to do with that. People Surf and Host for the love of cultural exchange and the opportunity to learn something from others. Every moment of it is incredible.

Traveling "By Myself"

This is the first time I'm actually backpacking around a country by myself. But on my flight from Bogota to Cali, I had to stop to ask myself...Can I really say I'm traveling "by myself"? Yes, I'm the only one on the plane and, yes, I'm alone in calling the shots...but I'd be a complete disaster if I were actually by myself. The week I spent in Bogota at two different families' houses was spent almost completely with new friends.

There was a day, though, that I was left to my own devices and it was a total disaster. First of all, I was trying to make plans with Franziska, a lovely girl from Germany who was couch surfing with a friend of Laura's (my host) but, because of a lack of wifi on both ends, I wasn't sure if we had officially made our plans or not. I decided to head that way and show up at our meeting place, just in case she came too so, even though it had started to rain, I went out to hail a cab. Once I got in, though, it started pouring and the streets immediately started to flood. The water rose quickly and it got to the point that I started to wonder if it was really safe to be driving in it. The driver said it was fine and that it was actually normal; because of corruption, he told me, whatever money was supposed to be used to fix the drainage system magically disappeared each year so they essentially have no drainage system now. The water only goes away when the sun comes out.

Anyway, the more it poured, the less likely I thought it was that Franzika would be showing up at our meeting place because our plan was to go up Monserrate, a giant moutnain that overlooks the city. I was starving and everyone had told me there wasn't food around the entrance to the mountain and I didn't think there was much shelter either so, after changing my mind at least three different times, I asked the cab driver to just drop me off in the Centro somewhere where I could eat. He dropped me on a corner and pointed to a place that he said had lots of restaurants inside. I ran through the rain and went in the door that (I thought) he had pointed me to.

Lots of restaurants? No. It was a place that sold nothing but chicken but I saw that you could order it grilled so it seemed fine for me. Still, I didn't understand the menu. There was almost nothing on it and it didn't explain what each meal contained. There was a poster on the door that advertised a promotion of one chicken and four arepas for 14 pesos. That actually seemed like a lot for a meal in Colombia so it didn't seem like a good promotion but what choice did I have? I wasn't gonna walk around in the rain to look for another place.

So I ordered and the guy asked if it was to-go. He gave me a weird look when I said no and told me to have a seat then. Unfortunately, he told me they had no wifi so I still wasn't going to be able to get a hold of Franziska or anyone else. A few minutes later, the waiter came out with a giant tray containing eight fucking pieces of chicken (four legs, four breasts), four potatoes and four arepas. My mouth dropped open and I looked up at him. He looked at me as if to say, "exactly" and told me, "That's what you ordered."

"Well I'm not from here!" I told him, "I've never been to a place like this and I have no idea how it works." Luckily, he was super nice and let me switch my order (although I still ate a pretty obscene amount of chicken)...and he even ended up giving me the wifi password that they're not supposed to give to customers. I think he just felt bad for my soaking wet, 8-pieces-of-chicken-ordering self.

When the rain had finally slowed a bit, I went out to try to get a cab home. As I walked by the next building, I looked in and saw that that was where the cab driver had meant for me to go. There really was an entrance to a place with tons of different restaurants. Oops.

I stood in the rain and tried to flag down a cab driver for what seemed like forever. I kept moving to different corners and asking people where a better place to catch a cab would be. I was pointed to a few different places but people also told me that it's just tough to get a cab in the Centro. After half an hour or so, I was freezing and pretty wet so I decided to take shelter in a cafe and at least take a break from being outside. The waiter, a super sweet guy from Venezuela, told me he'd order a cab for me after.

However, after my amazing Colombian coffee, when he tried to call a cab, no companies answered the phone. It was apparently a busy hour of the day. My friend tried to order me an Uber but none of those were available, either. The waiter sent another waiter, who was wearing their short-sleeved uniform, into the street to try to hail a cab for me. That made me feel like a lazy, shitty person but they kept saying it was fine and I thought maybe he'd have better luck than me because he's Colombian and knows how things here work. He stood out there in the cold rain for probably ten minutes, thought, and all the cabs were full. I didn't want him to be outside in the rain because of me so I told them I'd try to find a cab on a different street. They told me to walk three or four blocks down the road but, even there, every single one was full. Finally, luckily, I saw one pull over to let people out and I sprinted over! Success! I was finally on my way home.

Later, everyone asked me what I'd done with my day and all I could say was that I'd taken an extra-long cab ride through flooded streets, ordered a family-sized meal for one and stood in the cold rain for an hour, trying to hail a cab. (Although I could also mention that I'd had nice conversations with the waiters in the coffee shop and my cab drivers.)

The other five days that I spent in Bogota were spent with the sweetest new friends. We successfully arrived at all intended destinations and found places with good and cheap food in normal-sized proportions (and it barely even rained on those days).

So it seems wrong for me to say that I travel by myself. As much as I love my "independence," I rely on friends, family and strangers all the time to help me get where I'm going. I think the reason I love helping other people is because I'm aware of how much others help me. Traveling keeps you vulnerable; you need help all the time. People you've just met drop everything to help you and that, in turn, makes you start paying attention to other peoples' needs. You're just automatically looking for a way to give back to the world in the way that it's been helping you. I think if everyone traveled, rather than being so scared of strangers and running the other way when someone needed help, everyone would be more willing to help whoever was around them. Traveling, you are beautiful!!!!

The rest of Bogota

One more day into my stay in Bogotá and I got the whole history lesson I was looking for!

Plaza Bolivar

Laura and I took a stroll to the biggest plaza in the city, in front of where the President lives and where all the government and judicial offices are. There was quite a bit of propaganda, encouraging people to vote for peace this Sunday (there's a vote on whether or not to end the civil war that's been ongoing here for more than fifty years).

On the way there, she explained all the details of what has been going on politically in Colombia and showed me statues and tributes to important political characters along the way. We also stopped to watch the changing of the guards and the folding of the flag outside the President's house.


These are historic moments in Colombia's history and it's super interesting to be here for it. The 26th, the day I got to Bogotá, was the day they finished all the paperwork for ending the war. Sunday, the day I get to Cali, is the day that the Colombian people will officially vote to end the war (hopefully).

 We went to another, huge market (that takes up an entire block) and I tried even more fruits that I had never seen before. It rained on and off in the afternoon so we spent our time in a couple different cafes. It was great because I'm slightly obsessed with the cafes here. Chains aren't popular so each cafe is really unique. They have creative menus (one place had an entire book where the first few pages were the menu and the other pages were there for the customers to draw or write whatever they wanted), interesting decorations (beautiful murals, different plants or a whiskey bottle used as the soap dispenser in the bathroom at one place), amazing coffee (each place has its own house specialties and they all offer a variety of options of coffee with liquor in it as well), and it's all super cheap!!

Coffee served with cinnamon, chocolate & whiskey

Inside a cute little cafe near Plaza del Chorro

The Gold Museum

The next day, we walked around the Botanical Garden and, because she's an ecologist, she was able to tell us what almost everything was. It was pretty impressive and the place was beautiful. We also walked though the Modern Art Museum and the Gold Museum, which has some really pretty displays and reminds you about the Spanish colonization...which is not a happy topic. I love Spain and the people from there but we thought that "Malditas Españoles" ("The Damn Spanish") would've been a more hilarious and maybe even more appropriate name for the museum.

Botanical Garden

That was my last day staying at Laura's house so, at night, I switched to my next couchsurfing place! I'm staying with another family who's also really sweet! I set it up with Juliana, who's 22, and I'm staying with her family. She and her boyfriend and I talked for a few hours when I got here last night and they are awesome. They're both new to couch surfing and dying to travel so they had tons of questions about the places I've been. She studies French so we talked about linguistics and they also explained a lot about how the Colombian education and health systems work.

Again, they gave me my own room (which I think I'm borrowing from her little sister who is sleeping with her mom while I'm here) so that is unbelievably nice! There's no hot water in the shower, which threw me off since it's pretty cold here in Bogota, but that's part of the adventure of traveling! They made me breakfast this morning, too...some fresh juice and a potato soup which was a breakfast first for me.

Now that I've been here for a few days, my brain is finally starting to successfully switch between Spanish and Portuguese without getting so mixed up but I still need a lot of practice. I'm speaking way more slowly than I used to in Spanish because I'm having to concentrate more (making it all-the-more embarrassing when I tell someone here I majored in Spanish, haha!) but I think after a couple of months here, my brain will be able to switch between the two pretty easily. That's the goal, anyway!

 I only have today and tomorrow left in this city so I'm gonna make the most of it!

I love walking around in this city. It's huge but it's not like a typical big, dirty city. There are some skyscrapers and big avenues and whatnot, but there are also so many small, adorable little streets that remind me of Cuzco (with the mountains all around the city and everything!).











Random side note: The weather here is completely insane. It's sunny one minute and rainy the next! They don't have distinct seasons here but they said you can see all four seasons every day and it's true! The first day I went for the bike tour, Laura asked me if I'd put on sunscreen. In the same breath, she told me to take something for the rain. It sounded crazy but I found out pretty quickly that she was right. Both necessary.

To sum up, Bogotá is amazing so I'm gonna go explore some more!