First impressions

[This was actually written on my second day here, but it is only being published today because the power in the internet cafe went out yesterday].

Whenever I arrive some place new, I am always kind of overwhelmed as I take in all the things that are different/random/cool/weird about it. Yesterday in Bogotá was no exception.

First of all, there's my apartment & the building. It's in a neighborhood called La Carolina. There's a 24-hour security guard station out at the front gate, which is always locked. I have seen that before but hadn't really expected it. Then again, I live in what I think is a relatively swanky neighborhood. Its proximity to a giant American-style mall (both convenient and dismaying) is a dead giveaway. The apartment itself is tiny but really nice by any measure. The kitchen is microscopic, which I know will take me some getting used to, devoted cook that I am. I think of it as my Barbie-sized kitchen. It's just one of the many quirks that I will get used to. The same goes for the fact that it is inexplicably loud outside my apartment at night. I have no idea what the hell is going on in this otherwise really quiet neighborhood.

So then there are some of the different, kind of wacky goings on around me. To get into the mall I had to get my purse swiped by a metal detector wand. Also, I learned yesterday that a supermarket in an upscale Bogotá neighborhood is a total free for all. After about 15 minuted there I figured out that you have to go into outdoor street market mode to get where you need to go. That includes elbowing old ladies out of your way. Another interesting thing about the supermarket(where, by the way, you can buy hard liquor, cigarettes, tamales in the deli section, and Campbell's canned soup for about $7) is that there are people promoting different products all over the place. For example, there were two ladies in green jumpsuits hawking different yogurt brand in the dairy aisle. There was also a guy with a flat-screen TV mounted on his back pitching some other thing; I believe it was light bulbs.

Another cool and extremely convenient thing here (which helped me out majorly yesterday) is that you can go to a little phone stand, use a cell phone, and pay by the minute. How genius is that where not everyone has a cell phone?? Pretty clever, I think.

So that's the news from here. Tonight I will sit vigil in my apartment and pray to the heavens that my FedEx packages of half my earthly possessions arrive. You'll hear about it if they don't. I don't imagine there will be a whole lot else to tell this week. It's going to be a lot of me prepping for school and a couple of outings with the other new foreign teachers.