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Friday, May 23, 2008
Bucaramanga
We are now guests at tia Marina (aunt of Manuel) who is cooking caldo (soup) for us as we speak. We´ve already been fed frigoles and yesterday, pronto after arriving bright and early, tamales and arepas. All home-made. Needless to say that my man is in heaven. I’m afraid my cooking skills can’t beat this. heh.. Thankfully we have 1 Colombian restaurant in Tokyo!
Tia Marina has worked very hard to now own an apartment in a secured compound. There is a tennis court, outdoor swimming pool, gym, sauna, and basketbal field. With all these luxuries within reach it´s like we´re staying in a fancy resort. Very nice to lounge in and along the pool when we got here after the long bus ride from Cartagena. 12 hours. Though it was tiring and a cold ride because of a blasting airco, we have no complaints about the bus. Super soft seats that reclined almost flat, with lots of leg space. Defenitely more comfortable than an economy seat in the plane. They also showed videos. Pirated from Russia (hilarious!) and they stopped functioning halfway, but that didn’t matter.
Bucaramanga is very green, like Medellin. This afternoon we went to see the ‘Grand Canyon’ of this area, called ‘El Cañon de Chicamocha’. Gorgeous. We saw some coffee plantations on the way, too!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
beach!
Oh how I’ve missed the lovely feeling of super fine sand between my toes while walking along the beach shore. We got a chance to do so on the morning of our last day in Cartagena. And the Carribean Ocean water that washed the sand away was warm! We walked from the hotel to the beach area, a good 45 minutes in the hot sun—the first day it didn’t rain, hurray.
What they say is true: a quiet and private walk here doesn’t exist. On the way there were persistent sales people trying to get us on a boat to the little Islands (Islas del Rosario—didn´t have time so will have to come back one day in the future), and once on the beach we got appraoched every 10 meters by a local trying to sell us a spot with shaded beach chairs; fruit; sunglasses; drinks; Tshirts; or jewelry. Or (very original) perhaps we would be interested in some special oisters for Manuels ”machetti” for some extra potence for later in the day. How about that!
Anyway, we were mentally prepared and with many ‘no gracias’ were able to have our walk. The only thing that we smoothly were seduced into while sunbathing, was the foot massage with aloe vera that got extended into a hand and back massage. 
One has to indulge at times.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Cartagena de Indias
We arrived in Cartagena 2 days ago, at the north-west coast of Colombia. Cartagena is one of the top tourist destinations of this country, and a world heritage site. We’re staying in Hotel Casa del Curato in San Diego (some pictures on their website), a residential area full of colourful colonial buildings, 400-year old churches, and long narrow cobbled streets. It’s gorgeous here, very romantic, and thus a pretty good honeymoon destination.
And there is a restaurant further down the street that specializes in vegetarian food ("TorreLuna"). We tried it out yesterday, with great results. Such a welcome change!
The only down side is that (as in every touristic area) the prices are high; every passing taxi honks at us looking for a fare, and it seems like everybody tries to sell us something. We haven’t been to the beach yet but apparently that’s even worse there. No quiet walks… Oh well.
Today and tomorrow we’ll continue exploring, and then we’ll take an overnight bus to Bucaramanga. We’re hoping the weather will be a bit better there. It’s nice and warm here (28 °C), but with more rain than supposed to be.
Friday, May 16, 2008
photos
Hurray, finally we´ve got some photos online! Here you can view them: Colombia photos. Enjoy!
Once our dear friend MJ --the star behind the techie bits if this blog-- has recovered from giving birth to a baby boy (congrats MJ!!) you´ll be able to access the photos via the link of the blog menu on the right as well.
PS: due to privacy matters we cannot place photos of the kids during our volunteer work on the World Wide Web, but we´ll be happy to show these when you visit us at home.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Onto Bogota
Today is our last day in Medellin… tonight we fly onto Bogota where we will stay with Sofia and Alejo, in the house where Manuel used to live as a kid.
We’ve wrapped up the volunteer work, as you’ve probably read in the other postings this has been an amazing experience, and time has just flown by.
I passed my final Spanish test with a 4.6 (out of 5.. not bad eh!) and am now in the phase that my brain is starting to tune to Spanish before Japanese. When the kids ask me how to say something in Japanese I have a black out. haha.
Last weekend was a long weekend with holidays on Thursday and Monday. We joined Andres and Adriana and some of her family to the finca of a friend, in Guarne. Guarne is a small town about a 45-minute drive from Medellin. We had a relaxing stay, and the house and landscape were incredibly beautiful. Photos to follow…
Ah, and I finally got my chance to ride a horse for the very first time! I was a natural talent for the first 10 meters until the horse decided to take off and I almost got launched off his back. Thankfully I managed to stay seated though. Next time I’ll opt for a slow tred-only lesson first. 
Also last week Manuel had his eyes lasered, to fix his myopia (nearsightedness). Not LASIK but a slightly different technique, because his corneas are on the thin end. All went well and Manuel’s eyes are healing as should, and as hoped for. After all: eye laser operation was invented and developed in this country.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Volunteering - Last day at Saciar, and How it Begun
About nine years ago a man died. During his funeral, many people unknown to the grieving family of the deceased began arriving to offer their condolences. When asked how they knew the deceased, they all told similar stories of how this man had helped them overcome adversity by providing their families with food, clothing or helping pay for the education of their children.
The man at the center of this story was the father of Mrs. Silvia Llano Mesa, the current Manager of Fundacion Saciar, a foodbank in Medellin, Colombia.
Mrs. Llano Mesa’s family had no idea that their father had been helping all of these people until the day of his funeral. They decided to continue their father’s legacy by establishing the foundation. Today, Saciar provides 650 organizations in and around Medellin with food, clothes and medicines for distribution among the neediest people. They also established 12 soup kitchens where 2000 kids daily receive a nutritious breakfast and lunch.
Currently Saciar has 25 fulltime employees and 120 volunteers to assist run this wonderful organization with the task of helping the most vulnerable people.
We were fortunate to be able to volunteer here for the past 5 weeks, and get to know the Saciar “family” a little. A very rewarding and gratifying experience. Working with the kids was a lot of fun. Today, our last day, the staff at Saciar showed us a heart-warming letter they received from one of the children, thanking everybody at the organization--including us, ‘working with paper’ (origami)! ...What a great way to wrap up our mission here, and knowing that our visits were well received.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Hablo español!
All is muy, muy bien here in Colombia. I’m loving it. Started my Spanish course last week and am loving that too. I did an entry test and was allowed to skip level 1. The course is indeed intense: in one lesson (4 hours a day, from 8 am to 12pm) we’re covering content that’s normally done in 3 lessons. It’s going well though. There are only two more students in my class: Samantha from the UK and Derek from Canada. They’re up to level, which is lucky for me because I learn from them. Dora, our professor, is very good and because we’re with only three, it’s almost like having private lessons. On the 23rd we have the final test for this level. Lots of irregular verbs and their conjugations to learn and apply…
Since arriving in Colombia and starting the course I understand more Spanish, and my speaking ability is improving as well. And there’s 2.5 months left to practice! Also, I’ve been joining Adriana to yoga class which is a great listening practice in itself, because the teacher speaks nice and slow. Apart from having a great (and much needed) workout it is really nice to realize that I am already able to recognize and understand a lot more of the vocab, verbs and grammar than I did last week.
EAFIT is a university with lots of facilities and green. Amongst others they have a great library and an outside pool (YEH!). I go there by bus (an experience in itself that I’ll describe in another post later) or sometimes I can get a ride with Andres or Adriana on their way to work.
It is kind of funny to be ‘back at school again’, it makes me feel really young and sometimes old at the same time. It’s nice to realize that I’m not as green as 10 years ago anymore though. Today I was a guest speaker at the course that Adriana teaches where I spoke about living, working and running a business in Japan, with a short Q&A session with the students afterwards. It was fun and went well.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hello, my name is
We meant to post this one a while back but didn’t get a chance to do so. Somehow it’s hard to be disciplined and sit down to organize the pictures we’ve already got. Heh…
Anyway, in preparation for our trip we figured it would be fun and practical to make Tshirts with our names on it. Good chance to use the Tshirts-kun we’ve got (a fabulous screen-printing machine for Tshirts). We mainly wear the shirts when we do the volunteer work or when we meet a group of new faces, so they know what to call us. Eight years experience of hearing people deal with the challenge of pronouncing my name bears fruit! We figured out the best way to phonetically spell my name for Spanish speakers. 
It is: Bre-jjj-che.
