Bogota Week Four

Ok I have made seven entries today and this one should be the last. It looks like I will have dragged my blog upto only 2 months out of date more or less. If I stay here tomorrow I will try to smash it most of the way through Bogota. My aim is to catch my tail by the end of november at the latest. Anyway, week four.

I started my week by having lunch with Jennifer. She was a very hot teacher and a professor at Rosario. She had wanted some English classes and Angelica had suggested I teach her. She volunteerd to pay me, but I said I would teach for free. A one hour lunch became four hours as we discussd various things. I had to speak in Spanish naturally and it was good practice for me. She believed I was a 'gift from God' as she needed the language practice and did not have much time. I am just more of a believer in coincidence. I met Andrea and Cesar early for some language practice before the meeting and ended up welcoming some Aussies to the meeting, which was useful for Gloria and Julian. We walked Andrea back and agreed to have lunch on the friday. We ended up with some crap chicken dinner after I had walked Gloria to the station and then we took a taxi back home. At this point Alice was getting hassled by most of the Colombian men and had had her bottle of rum incident, but it was difficult for her to shake them.

Spurs signed Niko Krancjar on he last day of the transfer window and that was some very good business at the price. My friend from Cali Paola was in town and we tried to arrange to meet u as she had finally decided to head to England and her friend was no longer going with her. I went and did lots of shopping in uselss places with Praveen, but managed to buy some badly neeeded new clothes. The crap transport meant I was late for meeting Gloria at the cinema. She was also a little late and wanted to see the earlier showing, but I hate missing the start of films. We went to watch the John Dillinger film 'Public Enemies' which was pretty good and we postponed her coming to mine as she had her period. Crap public transport had cost me again. Praveen had meanwhile gone out for an Indian with Alice and he claims the friday night previous as the turning point for him whn he started to go a little crazy with the Colombian girls. He would end up sleeping with six girls in 2 months which is quite a few. We had gone to Bogota Beer Company before the film and I had had a Leffe. Great to have one again even if it was nearly twice the price than in London. I found out Xiomara was going to apply for Gloria's job, which was awkward but I opted not to say anything. That would come back to haunt me a bit. Also Jenny was coming over for dinner that week and Praveen decided it would be a good idea to invite Xiomara to the flat. That was insane and clearly not a very smart decision. Was going to end up in one of those awful comedy situations where everyone arrives at the same time and has stuff they don't want known by other people. That night the washing machine went completely mental and sounded like it was going to blow up. Praveen ended up having to attacj it and shut the whole damn thing down.

We got our new housemate Manuel. A Colombian guy who studied at the nearby university. Hmm I did not remember that he joined us so early. He brought a girl back or Praveen did. Not sure which. I cooked lunch for the girls from Los Andes and they tried to persuade me that I should come to their graduation in Andres Carne de Res, but I insisted that I already had plans to go to Gloria's leaving do and subsequently would not be able to make it. They told me I should cancel my plans, but not being Colombian I refused. They cancelled the plans for Andres that we had had for that saturday as thy had to go away. I got a haircut, which means its well over two months since I last cut it. Still torn between cutting it or letting it grow longer still. Damn French have scored. Come on Ireland. Come on Bosnia. I met up with Paola and Luis Betancourt (the kind of head of couchsurfing Bogota) and they came to the flat before we went for drinks. They went to do aguaspanelitas for the homeless people, but I failed to make it that week as I had to go and see Adriana after missing her last time. I went with her to a Mexican and then we had a really interesting conversation. She is half Colombian, half Yankee and a yoga instructor. I went back to the flat and had some cereal. For some reason that fact is deemed interesting enough for it to have made the blog.

I met Jennifer and taught her for four hours after cooking lunch. I also got a phonecall from Alice's flatmate who wanted me to teach English for her. She was somewhat pushy and psycho. She wanted me to confirm if I could teach without any of the details. I asked her to e-mail them to me and she just went mental and ended up hanging up. She ended up getting Alice to teach cowboy style for her in an IELTS preparation for which she had no training. The family ended up sacking her and last I heard they were sueing the cowboy company for their money back and Alice's housemate was asking her to lie. I advised her as a foreigner it was just safer staying away from it all. Jenny came over later and we went for a long walk in search of a jazz or blues club. We never found one, but got to see a lot of Bogota near where Alice lives. Nice architecture around there. Jenny stayed over at mine as a friend and I found out that Mayra was coming to stay with me the week afterwards when she got back to Bogota.

The bank and the British Council were still shit and still no responding to my e-mails. The bank eventually changed my postal address and I found out I could not contact the British Council, because the person who was my point of contact had left and nobody had informed me of this. I had not got much sleep lately and was completely knackered. Of course when I wrote that I did not realise I was about to be whalloped by tonsilitis. I went to Andrea's place to teach her and Daniel some English. They did not have the correct coursebooks and it was not a resounding success. We walked her dogs first and then she cooked me lunch. My damn phone died and she had to give me a new chip so I could continue with what I had planned for the day. We met a guy named Cesar who Praveen knew (he invited us to a party on the saturday) and a Peruvian and Venezuelan girl for drinks in the Bogota Beer Company. Afterwards we joined Jamie, two Yanks and a random Austrian guy in the shit bar. There were also two shitty bint Colombian women who were interested in me. One asked what I look for in a woman. I gave her my qualities. She said she had none. I said I was not surprised. Still she kept trying it on until w got rid of them and we went with Jamie to some shit reggae bar with a random Belgian. It was crap so we left to go to Candelario for the first time. One of the Yanks lost their coat and we clubbed until the end although at this point I was starting to suffer.

I got about six hours sleep and went for lunch at Angelica's house. I had Ajiaco which is probably the best of Colombian dishes. Though I hate patacones and arepas so I was always going to be cutting down the competition for dishes. I was starting to get ulcers and blistering around my mouth as the tonsilitis kicked in. My sister thought it was herpes but that was struck down by the doctor. Colombia won in a qualifier. I think that one was against Ecuador. So thy were still in he hunt for the World Cup. Looks like Ireland will lose the first leg 1-0. We went to a house party where we met some cool people, but the Los Andes lot suck even if the house party was moderately ok. By this point I was completely fucked health wise and I headed home to try and sleep off whatever was hammering me. Praveen went to the shit bar with Alice and thats where they had a massive argument revolving around feminism and saw the crazy Yank again.

I cancelled everything on sunday. I was completely buggered. My tonsils were like gold balls again and I could barely swallow anything. My throat was on fire. So began my long break from drinking alcohol as well. I thought maybe the allergy had got stronger and Gloria brought me some medication to repair my throat. She was always incredibly good to me when I was completely sidelined with this. I wrote I need to desist from drinking and that hopefully the medication would work. Gloria stayed over for the afternoon and the guard said 'otra' when she entered. Bastard. It was the start of a long running war with my guards. They accused me of using drugs and prostitutes to the landlady. Which is bollocks. Manuel was the only one using drugs when he was smoking weed and Praveen brought back way more women than me, bu seemingly my country stereotype was coming before me. On the plus side I solved the last political issue that had been causing me problems in a delirious bout of fever. I knew exactly where I stood on everything except abortion. I considered it murder, but felt it should always be legal, but thats hard to square. Then I figured it comes down to persona choice. Whether people believe abortion is murder or not comes from their idea of when life begins. If you think it begins at conception it is obviously murder, but if you don't then you will struggle to see what conflict there can be. This is a matter of opinion not fact and therefore each person should be free to make he decision on abortion as to their own beliefs and then it can quite comfortably be legal without any moral conflict. And so ended my fourth week in a whirlwind of delirium.