Week 2: (Slowly) Falling into Place

1. Cornell Connections

This past Saturday I spent the entire morning looking for a place to live for the year. After an unsuccessful morning, I received a call from an American named Sarah who is here in Manizales for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship. She was also looking for a place to live, so she suggested we look together. Sarah is temporarily staying with a family of a professor who works at the same university where Sarah will be teaching (Universidad de Caldas). That afternoon, Sarah and the professor, Margarita, came to pick me up for an afternoon of apartment hunting. Upon meeting, Sarah and I exchanged the typical question: “Where did you go to College?” After my response, Margarita threw up her hands to say, “I lived at Cornell for a year!” As it turns out, Margarita’s husband was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2007 to do research at Cornell, so in the mean time Margarita taught as a Spanish professor for two semesters. We discussed all the Spanish professors that we know in common, bonded over Cornell, Ithaca and all their wonders, and then resumed the apartment search. In summary: six days after my arrival in Manizales, Colombia, with its population of 400,000, I meet a Colombian woman whose family lived in the little town of Ithaca for a year.

2. My New Home

Saturday’s search showed me that the living options here are not too great, especially if I want to stay within the budget of my Colombian salary. Luckily (very, very luckily) Juan Sebas invited me to stay in his apartment for the year. While his apartment is far beyond anything I could afford, Sebas has enjoyed having a roommate and wanted me to stay, so I’m paying the amount I was expecting to pay when I set out on my initial search. Ironically, I’m now living in Colombia (where I expected to be “roughing it”) with more amenities than I’ve ever experienced. I live in a nice, furnished apartment with two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a patio lining the entire Northeast wall. The pictures from my last update show a version of the view I wake up to every morning (I say “version” here because the weather changes drastically day to day, so the view always looks different). I have a doorman and a cleaning lady – luxuries that I will most likely never have again in my life. I feel spoiled to have fallen into this lucky situation, but the lovely Ari Fox made a good point here: just because I live in a shmancy apartment doesn’t mean I’m not “roughing it.” I’ve moved to a new country where I didn’t know a soul, thrown myself into a culture about which I knew essentially nothing, and have taken on my first real job in a completely foreign work environment. I was courageous enough to come here, so why not live in a little luxury?

3. 12 Hours in the Capital

Tuesday night I took an 8-hour bus ride winding through the mountains at 40km/hr to arrive in Bogotá at around 7am.  I went straight to the Ministry of External Affairs, waited 5 hours for my visa, got my visa (I can officially start work legally on Tuesday!) and then spent a few hours meandering through the streets, going into churches, and then listening to a “cuentero” (comedic storyteller) on a plaza in the evening. I was pleased to actually understand a lot of the jokes he told; those of you who have taken on another language can agree with me that humor is difficult to translate and is probably one of the last aspects to grasp in language acquisition. Then at about 7pm I headed back to the bus terminal to catch another overnight bus back to Manizales. Walking aimlessly through the gridded streets of Bogotá reminded me that one of my favorite parts about Mendoza was walking everywhere, stepping into shops, stopping to watch goings-on in a park or plaza, and taking a different route to reach the same destination each time. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to enjoy long aimless walks through Manizales. The hills are steep enough to make leisurely walks not-so-leisurely, and the curving streets make it nearly impossible to know where you are. I consider myself someone who is pretty good with directions, but sometimes I’ll be two blocks away from my own house and not even know it. I’ll have to stray from the main avenue – Avenida Santander – little bits at a time, and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to know my way around.