I'll be honest, I've had a bit of writers block trying to start this post. Literally stared at this page for the last 5 minutes and had no idea what to say. Well, here goes nothing. 2nd installment of my stay in Colombia, here's what's been happening in my world this past week.
The more interesting moments to talk about on the agenda both happened on a wednesday. This one and the last one. Starting with last Wednesday, I returned to the La Candelaria for a guided tour-all in Spanish. I was a bit apprehensive beforehand as I imagined I would be the only non-hispanic person on the tour, attempting to understand the rapid fire accent of the Colombian tour guide as they would be telling us detailed facts about the various sights. However, the reality of the situation wasn't so adverse as I found that about half of my group weren't hispanic either! Half the group was made up of women from Venezuela, Brazil and Peru respectively then there was me, a guy from Israel, a guy from Switzerland and a group from Belgium so I found myself using more English than Spanish which made for a nice surprise. The tour was still in Spanish though and I DID find it difficult to understand many of the facts our guide told us but because he spent a lot of the time talking about Colombian food, it wasn't too hard to follow what he was telling us about.
 |
| FOOD OF THE WEEK: an Oblea, basically a wafer with Caramel inside |
Once the tour was over, I joined the Swiss guy, Steven (who used to study at Uni in Salford so we had a lot to talk about), Oriana from Peru and one of the women from Venezuela to go around some of the museums together, of which Bogota has plenty. We went around the Museo Botero and Museo del banco de la República, which was great fun as we admired the various bizarre works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero who had a strange obsession with painting obese people/animals and fruit as well as paintings from other famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Claude Monet and Salvador Dali. I enjoyed the museums much more than the tour itself and when it came to the end of the day I didn't really want to leave my new friends behind.
 |
| Museo Botero |
 |
| Some of Botero's paintings |
 |
| Posing with the chubby statues |
 |
| Group Photo |
 |
| True dat |
 |
| Trippy picture, changes colour depending on the angle you look at it from |
 |
| Fat Mona Lisa |
The rest of the week wasn't particularly eventful as I was forced to spend almost all day in the studio. The reason? the altitude sickness I'd experienced going up Montserrate on my second day came back for me meaning I couldn't do a great deal and felt terrible. During this time, I really got to grips with my work in the studio. My first task was to help decorate one of the walls in the studio by tracing the outline of a floral pattern using a projector, a pencil and a footstep. I finished the wall on Friday feeling proud of myself considering my lack of artistic ability. Since then, I moved on to a project much more suited to my skills in which I am using my skills as a linguist to translate the studio's website from Spanish into English-my main task whilst working here which should take at least another week to do in between my various other activities. So far, I have enjoyed the challenge of translating the website and I believe it is useful experience to have before going to University in September.
 |
| Me in the studio working on the wall |
 |
| A section of the wall that I did. Will post another picture when Mari has coloured it all in |
Now onto the second Wednesday. This time, I went to the city centre once more to visit the granddaddy and by far the most famous of Bogota's museums: the Museo del Oro. The Museo del Oreo houses the biggest collection of gold in the whole world, much of which is from pre-hispanic South America. Many of the pieces look like those you'd find in an Indiana Jones film and while being easy on the eye, I found it fascinating wandering around the various exhibitions and learning more about the Mayan and indigenous cultures and traditions before and during the conquering by the Spanish invaders. It's an area in history that I don't really know a great deal about so as a former AS level History student I was intrigued to find out more. Nerd life. Later, I met up with Mauricio at the University, another of my cousin Michael's friends. We had a good chat in Spanglish over lunch and found that we had a lot in common, especially our love for Football. Mauricio was really friendly and we have agreed to meet up again once he's back from his Easter holidays.
 |
| Museo Del Oro |
After bidding farewell to Mauricio, I wandered back down into the centre to get the Transmilenio bus back to the studio but to my surprise and confusion, the bus stops were closed and no buses were running. I soon found that the reason for this was a long procession of people down the Carrera Séptima (the main pedestrian street in the city centre). The people were parading down the street in colourful t-shirts, carrying banners, waving flags, banging drums, playing musical instruments and shouting various chants. I'd seen one of these before in Mallorca except I was part of the marching brigade. It was a protest. I followed the people on their procession which ended in the Plaza de Bolívar where there was a big stage set up upon which there was live music acts and the occasional public speaker addressing the crowd. Amongst the raucous environment of the crowd, I couldn't help being a bit confused by something. While there, I also bumped into the Israeli guy from the tour who seemed equally confused by the spectacle. Yes, people were protesting but unlike the anti-TIL protests I participated in Mallorca, there wasn't any common cause. It was essentially a free-for-all in which any group in society that wished to be heard could join the procession and raise awareness for their cause. I saw a variety of causes being supported from political movements, to animal rights supporters to women's rights activists to anti-government groups opposed to the violence and starvation in the country to one guy standing stark-bollock naked in the street who seemed to be promoting the rights of indigenous people yet it wasn't obvious, could've just been a crazy guy who got a bit lost! Despite the whole disorientation of the event, it added an extra bit of unexpected spice to my afternoon. Turns out Colombians are just as passionate as any other nationality when they feel issues need to be addressed.
 |
| Chilling in the street, naked, as you do |
 |
| Music on the stage |
 |
| The band were joined by two breakdancers! |
 |
| Revolution without deaths |
So that's everything in my world at the moment that's worth telling you about. It's nearing halfway in my time here in Colombia and I hope to have plenty more things to share with you before I leave. Next week is Holy week (Semana Santa) so I expect there will be.
Until then,
FP
#FraserOnTour
