A little, just a little!

It happens to me from time to time that I ride my bike along the street in Bogota and think: Wow! I am in Colombia and I have not been run over on the street yet and I have almost finished all the bureaucratic appointments, even though I don't understand a single word of official Spanish!

Terry and I have been in Bogota for 2 months now and I still can't believe it. I now have a work visa, I have had a bike tire explode on the street, and I have received a kind of school referral.

I wouldn't say that we understand Bogota, but in some way we manage. We live in a very interesting house that is crooked and has a plastic roof where cats dance at night. The house is very big and we live in the back area on the second floor. Below us lives Heimi, an architect from Mexico, and Catalina, who will unfortunately move out soon because she has made up with her husband and is moving back to her own apartment.

The back of the house, which clearly looks like someone had no idea how to build such a house. You can also find Terry in the picture and maybe it becomes clear from this picture why there are slug in the bathroom and why I don't leave any towels there :D

We also have termites, it rains in 4 places in the house, and sometimes the power suddenly goes out, but otherwise everything is great :D

Our landlady lives in the front house and has about 10-12 rooms for herself, one of which is lit day and night, as she is the COO in Colombia of a cannabis company from the USA. She is also very pleasant and I have had to let her into the house several times as she constantly forgets her keys. Maybe she shouldn't spend so much time in her special room. The best thing about our place is not necessarily the mountain where we live, but the garden that belongs to the house. I have already started planting lettuce, spinach, and various flowers, and I think I couldn't live in Bogota without my green oasis. Bogota has 8 million people, and I already thought Mississauga with its 700,000 was too much.

The friendly man on the left is just finishing my new tire after my old one exploded in the middle of the intersection with a loud bang and I had a hand-sized hole in the tire. He took only 3 minutes and then I could continue driving. These people are my personal heroes! I wish there were more of them everywhere. He even has solar panels to charge the e-scooters!

It's incredibly nice to finally have a permanent place to live after spending a week in a hostel and then 2 weeks in an Airbnb. We actually found this apartment in the first week we arrived. When I saw the garden, I immediately handed 100,000 COP to the nice cannabis lady and said I would like to move in here right away :D (And yes, we had to get used to the currency. Since I received my first salary, I am now a multimillionaire :D)

The best part I haven't told you yet, and no one living in Bogota believes me: The weather is soooo great! The temperatures are always between 15 and 21 degrees, it rains occasionally but never for long or heavily. At night it doesn't get colder than 8 degrees and everything is green throughout the year! :) That means I can dig in the garden all year round and there is no winter depression. Everyone in Bogota thinks it's too cold, but they have never been to Canada or experienced a German winter...

The temperatures here are not as high as on the coast because Bogota is at an altitude of 2600m and yes, breathing was not so easy at the beginning, especially when trying to climb the mountain.

It was also not so easy with my work in Bogota at the beginning, as when I was at the agreed training day, I was told that I was not expected. Yeah. So I asked them to please read the countless emails I wrote, and then I got a new appointment for my work training. The training was long (15 hours) and exhausting. Spread over 3 days, I didn't even get a break between the 5-hour sessions, but in the end I got a job and a work visa for 1 year.

After that, I immediately got my first class. My first class in my whole life. With teenagers... Teenagers who have trouble concentrating and don't give a damn about the English language. Luckily, my cover letter stated that I didn't want to teach children...

I also lasted for 6 weeks and then I snatched a student's phone out of his hand. He then snitched on me to the school's management. In the conversation with him and my supervisor, he suddenly became pitiful and said that I was terrible. When I was asked, I simply said that someone who knows they are not allowed to use their phone in class should not repeatedly show pictures and videos (!) to their seatmate or sing loudly during the whole class.

To my relief, I was allowed to leave the school and no longer have to go back there. Now I only teach adults and I love the work. I have also led several workshops, participated in language evenings, and receive the attention of my students at 7:30 in the morning.

Terry will probably start teaching in October. Right now he is in Canada at the TIFF Film Festival.

We have already explored a lot in our area. The part of Bogota where we live is called Usaquen and is more of the expensive part. We have a crafts market every Sunday which is very nice and also very expensive ;)

We have also visited the Museo Botero:

Höhö

In the Museo del Oro:

A little gold ship :)

In the National Museum:

We have also had several game nights and celebrated my birthday in our crooked house with super blurry pictures:

We have also been to Monserate:

It took forever until we could finally ride down with the cable car, but we treated ourselves to a round trip ticket and since we have to climb a mountain every day to get home anyway, I didn't think it was that decadent.

So those were all our adventures from Bogota. We still have a lot to learn, for example Spanish and where the heck the buses stop, as they are never where you expect them to be or where Google Maps expects them to be...

By the way, you can see me here talking to my phone provider, who read me my contract on the phone for 5 minutes and for legal reasons, I was not allowed to pass the phone on to David. The result: I didn't understand anything, but I now have a new contract :D Yeah!

See you soon!

Lea

P.S. I will be in Germany from December 14th to January 8th

*Bonus material, mainly consisting of street art, which is really amazing in Bogota!*

The guy who sold us one of the most awesome bags ever. I am still totally impressed by the creativity to make something out of completely worthless Venezuelan money that can be sold.

Plaza Major