Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Good and the Bad (but more Good or Amusing)

After two years away from Colombia, there's many things that I'm happy to have again, like good coffee, good music, libraries, and decent public transportation including Jeep Willys that are at least thirty or forty years old. Cheap food. Good fruits and veggies. Cultural events. Fresh flowers. Artesanias. The termales. Beautiful countryside that I don't want to stop looking at even to take a picture. An empleada to wash and iron my clothes every week and clean the apartment (this is not because I'm lazy, but because it's so cheap and people need work). There are some other things that I wish had gotten better in that time, such as:
  1. Driving. Put a taxi driver on a mountainous road, and I'm bound to feel sick within 5 minutes. Taxi drivers who insist on asking where you're from as soon as you get into the taxi and then propose marriage. Good thing is they believe I'm from all kinds of strange places that I'm not, which can be fun.
  2. Bagging grocies at the supermarket. The baggers love tying the handles in knots that makes the bags hard to carry. They're also very good at putting way too much or way too little in one bag.
  3. Starting on time.
  4. Building sidewalks and entrances....bathroom and indoor tile gets slippery when it's wet don't you know.
  5. Banks. After one month my Bancolombia account still isn't working right.
  6. Building in general. I can hear everything going on in my brand-new aparment building, everything.
  7. Customer service for television/Internet/gas. Especially since it's outrageously expensive.
Granted, these things don't really make me mad, they just make me sigh and say, "Colombia!" There's many things in Manizales that are better than they were on the coast, like the DAS (who smiling at me and flirted while giving me my cedula instead of scowling and mumbling), and the roads, which are well taken care of and clean.

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