Rainy Season

So it seems cold-rainy season is back.  It was a lovely 2.5 month interlude of sunny, warm days but now we are back to reality.  Rainy season here starts with sunny mornings and afternoon showers and ventually evolves into all day general cloudiness and drizzle and strong afternoon rains. Think Seattle or Portland.

On my way to work this morning from a friend´s house, I passed the tombstone street, a solemn looking block selling nothing but tombstones and funeral flowers.  It´s located next to what used to be a very prestigious cemetery and looked particularly gloomy in today´s morning clouds and drizzle. Like a scene out of some period piece showing life in a nameless, despondent, pre-industrial revolution European country. I will take pictures one of these days.

First Colombian Hold-up. (Not Mugging)

As the title indicates, I got mugged today.  I was making my way to the bus this morning when a woman came up to me and demanded I give her the COL$5,000 bill I was carrying in my hand.  Taken aback my her boldness, I said no.

She then pulled out a piece of glass and told me to hand over the bill, or she'd cut my face. Those who know me well are aware that I am a extremely vain, so this made me rethink my refusal. I told the woman to please hold on a moment and pullled a COL$1,000 bill out of my pocket, but she wasn't having any of that, so I had no choice but to hand over the COL$5,000 bill.

I was actually pretty lucky. I had my credit cards, laptop and $100 in cash on me. Luckily I carry my big bills close to my heart.  And in the end, she only took the equivalent of US$2.50. But lesson learned:  Don't walk around with my laptop and don't carry money in my hand.

Egyptian

I remembered to day that when I was really little, my aunt told me one time that my grandfather was European.  Somehow in my young mind, I confused this with Egyptian.  So through second or third grade, I very proudly told anyone who would listen that I was Egyptian.

Thoughts

I was doing a little facebook stalking and started getting a little depressed. As it is with facebook photos, my facebook friends (some actual friends, most people I know and am nosy about) were posing in all sorts of happy-looking photos: On vacation with friends, partying in D.C., drinking cocktails on a nighttime Alexandria cruise, celebrating birthdays, white water rafting, getting engaged, getting married, having babies, buying a house – always these smiling, dynamic nano-second stills of life moving forward. Made me feel like my life is somewhat on stand-by, that everyone is making strides toward something and I’m missing out. I think to move forward I need to make a decision: Am I here for a year? Two years? Forever? At any rate, I’ve decided against late night facebook stalking…

Being in a foreign country that isn’t completely foreign isn’t always easy, I have to admit.  Of course, I want to make it work because my roots are here and who doesn’t want to think they come from somewhere great? When I was younger, whenever I came to Colombia, I’d have this feeling of euphoria and enlightenment, like everything that made “us” different from “them” (from “real Americans”) finally made sense. I can’t pinpoint what exactly it was that gave me this feeling of relief and belonging, but I guess you could say I was in love with Colombia.

I don’t have that feeling anymore.  Maybe I’ve been here so many times that it’s all more familiar now.  Even in the most passionate of romances, love fades. Or maybe living abroad for the better part of three years has made me realize how much I enjoy being American. How free being from the U.S. is. In fact, I am realizing lately how very American my mindset is, and how I’m trying to impose my U.S. mentality on my life in Colombia. Which isn’t particularly right either.   

Sometimes I think there are aspects of my personality that are irreconcilably incompatible with Colombia. I have never been a particularly delicate or diplomatic person and have always just kind of been myself (sometimes difficult, distant, rough, short) without apology, not caring too much how much or how little people liked me. I always had a nagging thought that this was something I should work to improve, but I had enough friends to feel like I couldn’t be that bad of person, and got away with a lot just by being Jiji. I enjoy being alone (though not in hermit-like proportions) and need a lot of space to feel comfortable.  I don’t particularly enjoy unsolicited advice (though I tend to give it), and I like to do what I feel like doing. Here, it seems like someone eating lunch by themselves is pity-worthy.  And forget about going to a bar alone.  As for advice, it’s everywhere.

Here, it’s harder to be myself. I don’t know if this is specific to me or a more general thing. I love my Colombian family and am thankful for them – I’d probably be back in the U.S right now without them – but sometimes I envy other expats because they do what they want without the fear or dread of reproach or judgment.  They hang out with and date whoever they want, party wherever they want and live wherever they want and there is no one asking them what so and so’s last name is or asking them what the hell were they thinking going to this place or that place. They experience Colombia from a completely foreign perspective and I experience it from a sort of undefined middle area, where I’m not really Colombian, but not entirely foreign either. So I’m not completely excused from social norms, so I always feel a certain degree of pressure. If I go out with a guy, it’s always, “what’s his last name, where is he from, what did he study, what company does he work for, what neighborhood does he live in, et cetera.  And when I answer that I don’t know on any count, I’m informed that I still don’t get it, that I just don’t understand How Things Are Here. But because I'm not from here, I just can't bring myself to care what someone's last name is or what part of the city they live in. 

I grew up in a place where 85% of people were middle class and the small remaining percentage were divided between super rich and quasi-lower middle class. I don’t have experience with massive class/social/economic differences. So basically, I can’t make sense of this social/class system.  I try to wrap my mind around it, dissect it, analyze it, come to some kind of understanding with it, but I just haven’t been able to figure it out. In the U.S., if an investment banker married a public school teacher, no one would think anything of it.  Not the case here. And I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m just really not made for this.

But then again, there are so many things I love here that I know I could never get in the United States. I suppose every country has positive and negative qualities and I just need to figure out what qualities I can live with. A slightly more honest post than I usually write. 

Colombian Honesty Part II

My grandmother's supportive answer when I told her what the lady said was:  "She's just saying that because she didn't see how fat you were before."