Bogota Week Thirteen

I decided to extend this through all of my remaining 9 days there, including the weekend away on the coast. This was basically the farewell to Colombia. I am very close now. Just took some time out to write to Dom and chat with Tom. Need to catch up a bit. Good to see my prediction of Brazil taking over from the States as number one country in the World seems to be coming to fruition. I predicted it not China would take number one. I will slap the prediction down now and explain why so I can gloat if it happens in my lifetime. Four economic reasons. Firstly the just struck oil deposits the same size as those in Norway. Secondly if biofuel kicks off they are pole position to be the World's leading supplier with sugar based ethanol. Thirdly if the Doha free trade talks ever work they can be the World's granary basket. Finally Ecuador is trying to pass a law that would mean countries have to pay other countries to maintain their eco systems. With the Amazon, Brazil would be the biggest beneficiary of this law. So take those four as a start. Then you have linguistics. Chinese is too complex. Portuguese is similar to Spanish. Spanish is the only language that can rival English and if the States becomes bilingual or even tips to Spanish then it can roll English back. Portuguese is close to Spanish and Brazil could easily emerge as the leader of a badly underperforming Latin America if it kicks into gear. Its a democracy. This leads to the crux of American power. America was not number one due to its economy or its military as some people think. The key to US power was culture. Obama understands this. America was number one and trounced the Soviet Union, because people wanted to be America. They loved American ideals and its lifestyle (from films, to sport, to television, to cars, to appliances etc). America dominated the global market. Think Nike, Coca Cola and Disney for only three things. Where the hell is China's cultural appeal. Represion, lack of freedom and bland conformity. Hmm attractive. No democracies will line up behind a non democracy. They did not with the Soviet Union and they won't with China. If China democratises it could be a different ballgame, but at the moment they aren't. So I will concede if anyone can tell me in what way Chinese culture is more atrractive than US? To throw the deciding punch how about Sex, Football and Samba. That's Brazil's culture. Who does not find that appealing? Brazil's whole culture and people are attractiveness personified. If they could just find some work ethic to go with it. Look at London. The world in a city and its being conquered by Brazilians. Many Brazilian clubs and bars, everyone wants to learn latin dancing and capoerinha has practically flawed the other cocktails, with the mojito right up its arse. Now I know salsa and mojitos are not Brazilian, but I foresee Brazil as the head of the Latin nations, like the US led the Anglo/European alliance. Now what Brazil is doing to London, will be what Brazil does to the World eventually. Now go on hit me with the persuasive argument that China can out do it? Oh and I ban you from using stats (that should prove why it won't work). What looks good in stats and on paper does not always translate. After all the US started as a backward outpost and I believe Britain once bet on it being so insignificant that its system of government was laughed at (democracy). Much like the Scandinavians can provide the future model for systems of government, Brazil will do it. In 1804 Napoleon said he sold the US the Louisiana Purchase to make a rival to the UK and that in 200 years it would be the global superpower. He was laughed at. He was right. This is my punt at a Napoleon moment.

Anyway I was late meeting Eduar at his hometown as I had gone to play him at tennis. Sadly it was clay courts and a proper clubhouse and I did not have the correct shoes. So we could not play. He had not told me he was number one in his club, so he would have wiped the floor with me anyway. Instead we played pool and I whipped him. Luckily the change os sports worked to my advantage. I finally ate good patacones. My God they do exist. Then again this clubhouse was quite special so it might be just due to that. Then I went to his house (nice place) before grabbing some lunch. I came back to Bogota and Lina stayed at mine. She was on her period. Then I planned my two part debate or at least began to set it up. Was a bank holiday weekend by the way.

Went into the British Council. Long day of study and then I prepared in the evening for the two parts of the debate. Another rocking day it seems. Gloria had calmed down a little bit by this time, but the relationship was still not on firm footing.

I taught my penultimate class. It went well but that damn 'above standard' was still alluding me. Fucking hell. This time my timing was tight as I wanted to set up all of the necessary vocabulary for the debate so my instructions were a little rushed. Dammit. Well I always thought lesson 8 would suffer for lesson 9. Got all my assignments back and I had passed all of them. Excellent. Was now free at the weekend as I only had one more class to teach. It was a good day overall for our team, with three very strong lessons. We were a well oiled machine at this point. Lina was supposed to stay at mine, but could not make it so I went out to Aguaspanelitas for the last time. I went with Angelica M and drunken Cesar. I was disappointed to see tramp Cesar. He did not have any of the clothes and had clearly not gone to Villavicencio. Dammit. Praveen had told me he would not do it. Shitty. Always crap when your gambles don't pay off, but I would do it again for such a small outlay. If he had taken the chance then it would have been 12,000 pesos well spent. We went out for drinks with a whole bunch of people. Was fun. Got quite mashed. Noone was up for clubbing. They wanted to go the next day. I was not going to go out the night before my last class. In the end I stayed out till 2am with a Swiss guy and his Korean girlfriend. Was a decent night, but I was too hammered for how good it was.

Francois' birthday and Guy Fawkes' night. Two years without the mental fireworks. I went in and we learnt some Arabic script that day. Leonardo already knew some. It was to give us an idea of how to teach people who had never seen a different type of script before. Was an interesting lesson. I think I want to spend at least one year in an Arabic country. I mostly got bored watching the others teach that day and then prepped my final class. I had designed everything myself and even set up a complex rule structure to get them to do what I want and use the language I want them to use. There had been a huge smash on the transmilenio and the road was covered with ambulances etc. Two buses had really mashed each other. Colombia were still somehow banging on in the U-17 World Cup as well and would end up coming a very surprising fourth. Switzerland of all countries won the thing. The other group had got its third below standard when Ben fell apart. Juan had missed a class as well so he could not pass. Megan had the other one, ut her young son had been sick so it really was not her fault. Our group in comparison was cruising. I spoke to Franny and Lina had gone out to an adidas party. She wanted me to go as well, but I could not. Had to teach. Nonetheless she rang me at 3.30 am to tell me she was drunk and tha party was great. Great. I need to sleep. Then she rang me at 4.30 am to tell me she had found an inflatable thing for the beach and they had an after party. Very nice, but I still needed to sleep lol. Thank God I had gone to bed early.

I took my class and I had to give mine along with Leonardo in front of the assessor. Debate went awesome. Assessor was very impressed. I think it was the best class given on the course. I said only about 10 lines in one hour for some minimalist teaching and the students spoke loads. I had been the first trainee to set them homework and they really worked hard at it before delivering an excellent lesson. I was smiling a bit as it was better than even I had hoped. A whole class of Colombians debated without interrupting, listened to each other, jousted and even used all of the target language I wanted them to use. 'The problem with your point of view is...', 'I am sorry to interrupt, but..' and similar. Cracking. Leonardo had technical issues again. The 8th lesson the cd player had just started to play what it felt like and speak when it felt like, sort of like the talking toaster from Red Dwarf. Then today the god damn cd player refused to play even after we had tested it before. Damn thing. I got a thumping 'above standard', but the best stamp approval was that Ekhaterina wanted to use my lesson to teach her class. She was the best of us, so that was encouraging. I was done and free. Thank fuck for that. Woohoo. Off to the coast. I met Lina at the airport. We ended up drinking a fair bit of wine before we left and had too much fun on the plane. I really have become too bold in public. Will be a problem when I am back in the UK I think. I am not sure what I wrote here. Must have been drunk, but we met her friend and her boyfriend from Barcelona. He had a cool flat on the 10th floor overlooking the old town of Cartagena. Very beautiful. He had broken a bottle of red wine before we got there and it looked like one of those random crime scenes. It was pissing down with rain. The others took some strange drug I had never heard of called Micropoint (something akin to acid I believe) and Lina then said she felt weird for the rest of the night. Horses? What the fuck. What was I drinking. We went out to the casinos of Bocagrande and we were due to stay at her friend's place. Lina instead decided we should get a hotel. At 3.30 am. In Cartagena. A Colombiana and an Estranjero. Good luck. There is only one thing the hotels are going to think if we turn up at that time, in that combination, without luggage. Prostitute and creepy foreigner. Unsurprisingly we were treated to a string of Bible style, no room in the inn, welcomes. Eventually the last place we tried let us have a room. It was the room of the guard himself. I did not know that at the time. Lina told me later. Now it was dingy and shitty. Lina said it was the worst place she had ever stayed in. Hmm I had been in worse, but I am a bit of a tramp. We had a great 2-3 hours of non sleeping, though I had left most of my stuff in her friend's house so we were falta more than one condom. Shitty. She did say she would like to keep my tongue though. Ah some prostitute bitch keeps tapping me on the neck with her rose in this cafe. Ah God. Its that stupid bint that me and Dom met last time and could not get rid of. Funny how you meet the same old people in the same old places 6 months later. Especially gringo hunting putas. They really have nothing better to do.

We left early with no sleep. Lina was now two nights without sleep after the adidas party. We grabbed our stuff from her friends and grabbed a bus to Santa Marta. It went about 2 hours and broke down. Fuck sake. The axle snapped. It took them over an hour to get a replacement us as we just lay by the side of the road with the crazy dog. We eventually got a second bus. It stayed nearly an hour in Barranquilla, drove for five minutes and broke down. Flooded engine. Two fucking buses in one day. Motherfuckers. We got a third bus. He went five minutes and then stopped to have lunch. Right. Enough. I could have gone out and murdered the bastard. Then we eventually got a bus to the Tayrona entrance, but the idiot missed it by 1km and we had to hike back. The company was Brasilia by the way. They deserved to be named and firebombed. Eventually we arrived and its still spectacularly beautiful. We stopped at the restaurant and it was too dark and dangerous to push on. There was also an almighty thunderstorm so we set up Eduar's tent using a flashlight that the bastard on reception eventually lent us. The floor was rock hard as we pitched it on concrete and in the middle of the night a bunch of people arrived to set up more tents. Lina got quite nervous with this, but I was not too worried, although one idiot did crash into our tent. I get the impression Colombians don't take risks that often as they are always scared of everything. Then again I probably have an unhealthily low fear level.

In the morning we got up and hiked to the mirador and then hiked through the jungle to the Arecifes beach. She indulged in some topless sunbathing as the beach was nearly deserted while I got some breakfast. She believed foreigners were less likely to perve on someone than Colombians. I said I doubted it and there were many perverts in Europe as well. We spent all of the morning lounging on the beach, getting burnt and swimming in the sea that is apparently dangerous. I don't think so really. We had to leave the park and get a bus back to Barranquilla. We only just made it back in time, but I did manage to get her to cum on the us. Was an interesting us ride. We landed back in Bogota. I fucking hate flying. I am not getting in a plane until I leave this continent if I can help it, with the honorable exception of the Nazca Lines. Kind of need it for there. Lina came and stayed at mine that night.

It was now my penultimate day in Bogota. Would be sad to leave. Had some good morning fun before I headed into the British Council. Mondays classes were uneventful. Paola got mugged that night as she was going to join me at some point. People could not make it after class so I ended up drinking at some shit ar on my own. Oh yeah Spurs had beaten Sunderland 2-0 despite being battered. Liverpool somehow drew with Birmingham and we were back up into fourth for now. We had beaten Everton 2-0 in the league cup as well and were rewarded with a quarter final away at Man U. Should be rough. Lina, Sofia, David, Angelica M, Alice and Justin joined me for a farewell drinking session. We moved bars and had a fun time with some really good conversation before I left. It was some bastard Spanglish conversation. Lina stayed at mine. She was really sick with some sort of fever and that may have been what was dogging me for the last week or so. Wow I have really caught my own tail here. It was a really good last night and she left early as she hates goodbyes. I am not brilliant at them myself.

I went to classes and we wrapped up the lessons. I felt that an A for me was impossible, but Ekhaterina may get one (she did), but that the last lesson had made a B a possibility. They had promised to e-mail me my results but would forget until I reminded them. I got my B in the end and I believe I pretty much graduated in 3rd place. Not bad as I was probably 12th after lesson one. Everyone passed except for Juan and not sure what he is going to do now. We had some good goodbyes as it had been an intense four weeks together. Then I went home, packed up everything that was important before leaving an almighty mess of everything else behind. Was supposed to meet Jennifer for a leaving coffee, but she did not show up. I took a taxi to a station and ended up with a 23 hour bus journey to the border. It was touch and go if I was going to be able to cross while my visa was still valid. I wrote to the International Houses in Buenos Aires for jobs, but they are not looking to recruit yet. Dammit. Agus gave me a list of institutions to contact and may do that tomorrow after I create my CV. My money was slowly dying on me. Would have to call on the reinforcements soon.

Woke up on the bus and this was D-DAY for leaving. This journey is forever. The bus was painfully slow and there was a serious danger I would not make it. Then it got stuck with an accident. Shit. Nobody on the bus knew when the frontier was going to close. Shit and I had not enough money to get across. In the end I made it with one hour to spare, but that was mighty close to a nasty fine or worse. I was ack in Ecuador. Shit. I was going to miss Colombia. I had crossed the border for 5 seconds and I already missed it, but help was at hand.