Photos and Fotos

After some radio silence, I thought I'd share with you some photos of My Barranquilla Life. In the last couple of weeks, I've had a lot of my Colombian friends commenting on my blog.I've gotten mostly positive feedback and have been asked, on separate occasions, to put up more photos. So, here you have it. The following photos are brief excerpts of my daily life here on the caribbean coast. 

I've spoken about it many times before but I'll say it again. Latinos, no matter how hard they try, tend to arrive at places late. I took this photo of Drew, a fellow FCC worker and PC Volunteer, at his surprise 30th birthday party. The party was set for 6pm on a Sunday and I had told everyone to get there before 5:30pm, so as to not ruin the surprise. In the end, a quarter of the people, including myself, arrived before Drew did, so the surprise ended up being on everyone else who got there after he did. So, in the future, when planning a surprise birthday party for your best friend in Latin America, please do advise the other guests to arrive at least 3 hours ahead of time! This photo will forever speak volumes about the punctuality in contemporary Latin American life. 

This next photo is just special. There are so many things here that don't always make sense but this one took the cake. I took this photo about 2 months ago while visiting a friend in Santa Marta. Santa Marta is a cool Colombian city about two hours east of Barranquilla. I stopped dead in my tracks while walking around the city and had to take a photo of this restaurant's logo/name. The combination of the words "fast food" and "gourmet" in the same advertisement was truly five star.  I also really like the name of the restaurant - "MR. BEEF". The devil's horns, although not very visible in this photo, are like the icing to the cake of this ridiculously paradoxical restaurant logo. I was never able to eat at Mr. Beef but if the book is as interesting as it's cover, it's got to be something special.

This next photo comes to you from La Playa where Kendra, my site-mate, and I are hoping to construct a children's park out of recycled materials like the tire shown in this photo. As of now, our attempts to work with tires have gone as far as "tire-gardens" or recycled flower pots made out of old  tires. A public recreation area for the younger generations is something that our neighborhood desperately lacks and so we hope to fill that void by constructing a children's park/ playground. The playground would be made out of recycled tires/ materials and would hopefully represent a sustainable and ecologically friendly place where the kids of La Playa can play.

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It has now become common place to kill a couple of flies, handful of ants, a costal-roach or two, and see a lizard in my room. This lizard is, from head to tail-end, about a foot long and was underneath my bed. I constantly have unannounced reptile and amphibian visitors coming into my room to say "hi"and literally hangout. I also have to report that up to this point none of them have spoken to me in a british accent or tried to sell me car insurance. Rest assured Dad that if I met one, I'll let you know ASAP. 

Finally, this photo was taken last month here in Barranquilla before the kickoff of the 4-0 drumming that Colombia gave to Uruguay. As I mentioned in Back to the Future, Colombia's road win against Chile has them sitting currently in 2nd place in the South America World Cup qualifying. A win tomorrow against Paraguay and Colombia will definitely finish in 2nd and possibly in 1st depending upon what happens in the classic clash of Rio de La Plata powers Argentina and Uruguay. I bought my ticket to tomorrow's game in August for 40 thousand pesos. Although, I've heard that now, due to Colombia's stellar form, they're going for up to 100 thousand pesos. Needless to say, I'll be in attendance as no amount of money could sway me from watching Colombia play.