I arrived in Medellin at about 11 PM last Saturday from Mexico City, and my awesome AirBnb host Marco picked me up from the airport for about an hour's drive to his apartment in Envigado, a neighborhood at the south end of Medellin.
The next morning, I woke up, looked out the window, and the anxiety of being alone in a country where I know no one and don't speak the language really hit me. I considered curling up on the couch watching movies on my computer until Tuesday, when my Spanish school commences.
But then I went to the kitchen to get some water, where I met Emil, the other guy staying in this AirBnb apartment. He is from Sweden, and has been traveling for THREE YEARS. He's been in Envigado on and off for something like 3 months, doing a lot of volunteer work. He offered to show me around town a bit and help me find a place to get some food. I was really glad to be with him, since he knows the area and speaks fluent Spanish. We stopped at a small place near the main plaza where I had a traditional Colombian lunch (soup, meat, rice, beans, plantain) and then he showed me some of the other main streets.
After our stroll around town, Emil was going with Marco and Marco's mom to Olaya Herrera, a very poor area of Medellin where Emil has been working to help build a house for a family there. They invited me to join them, and since I literally had nothing else to do, I decided to tag along. We took the subway and then a bus to get there (so I also got a primer on how to use the public transportation which is very clean and safe here), and it was a world away from Envigado.
Emil and Maria Ceclia walking to the site of the new home
The family Emil is helping is a young family; the mother is only 18 but has twins, and the father looked just as young. The homes in the neighborhood are all small shacks; a few are made from bricks, but many out of wood planks, with tin roofs. We climbed down a muddy hill (among a bunch of chickens) to get to the site of the house, which is almost finished. It's smaller than my SF studio apartment for a family of four- talk about a great way to get some perspective on your life!
A neighbor girl shoved one of the twin babies into my arms and I spent the next 10 minutes hoping I wouldn't drop him, because the only thing worse than an awkward gringa is one who drops your baby on the ground. Since the cement was still wet, the group decided they should put the twins' footprints into the floor.
One of the twins leaving his mark! (That's Marco in the background with the other baby)
Happy with the progress on the house, Emil and Marco decided it was time to go. Maria Cecelia really wanted "fruits salad" so we headed back to Envigado to satisfy her craving. We went to the fruits salad place, and spent a long time trying to figure out the differences between the choices on the menu- there were about 20 different fruit drink/salad/ice cream things and in the end I just copied what Emil ordered.
Turns out, "fruits salad" in Colombia is ice cream, with a little fruit. I'm not complaining!
Fruits Salad. Yes please!
To try and learn some basic Spanish before the rest of my trip, I'm doing classes at a Spanish language school, Colombia Immersion. The school is a bit of its own world here in Envigado. It has about 20-30 students across different levels of fluency and aside from us, there are no other tourists or foreigners in the town. In addition to 4 hours a day of classes and extra 1:1 coaching, the school organizes tons of activities, from local tours to movie nights and salsa lessons, so it's easy to spend all of your time wrapped up in activities with the school. The students are all different ages, many are in their 20s and traveling until their money runs out, without plans for when they'll go home or what they'll do when they get there. Then there are some older folks like me who are just taking a shorter break from real life :)
Our awesome teacher Sebastien
It's so different to be back in school again, and liberating to know it's not for a grade or paycheck, so I can put in exactly as much effort as I want to. I'm working hard at it, but it's hard to be confident enough to strike up a conversation with any local people. This weekend I took a bunch of Uber rides, and the drivers were always very chatty, so that was a good chance to pratice
I took a group class last week, but want to move a little more quickly than I think is possible in a group environment, so starting today I'm going to be doing 1:1 lessons so I can hopefully make faster progress.
I'm staying with a local woman on the same block as the school- my commute is one minute which is a nice change from the usual 1.5 hour bus ride to Google! Fatima is from Spain, has a huge smile, and is constantly smoking (as is pretty much everyone here, including most of the students in the school- not my favorite). The first night she took me and the other student in her home to play a game called "Tejo" which is a little bit like cornhole...but with low level explosives. You throw a heavy metal stone at a mud target that has two small explosive triangles in it. The goal is to explode the targets. Hard to describe- just watch the 5 second video below from our outing.
There's an amazing public track here which I'm trying to work into my routine to get a bit of exercise while I'm here. In the morning, the weather is perfect for a jog or a few pushups in the grass.
My local track (in the morning it's packed with locals taking laps around the field)
During the week I was so busy with school activities that I didn't ever leave Envigado to see any other parts of the city, so spent the weekend exploring a bit more. I went on the most popular tour in Medellin, the Real City Tour, which took us to some sights in "El Centro" and provided some interesting background on the turbulent past of Medellin, and its recent transformation.
After the tour, I went to check out the botanical gardens, more like a big park than gardens, but a great place to relax with a book or have a picnic with friends (I only had a book, no friends, ha)
Part of the gardens where they sometime hold events.
I met a Swiss guy on the walking tour, so we decided to meet up for dinner in the neighborhood he's staying in, El Poblado, It's a very popular area for tourists to stay - so many people recommended I stay in this neighborhood. The streets are lined with TONS of restaurants, bars, and clubs, and on Saturday night it was totally insane. It definitely felt much more western than Envigado, and I can see how it would be a really fun area to stay in if you were visiting Medellin for a short time. The food and drinks selection was much better and much much more expensive than what we have in Envigado. I am glad I got to check out Poblado, but for my longer stay, happy to be in a more calm and local area.
Yesterday was a bit lazier, but in the evening I went to a hostel where one of the girls in my class works, where they had a great Colombian Irish band playing- who knew there was such a thing!
This week, I'm gearing up for more Spanish, and some more interesting activities with the school. Then it will be time to leave Medellin :( and to Cartagena and the caribbean coat for more exploring!