First Day of Class/Power outage

Yesterday morning, Bill and I went in for our Spanish placement test. This wasn’t as useful for as as for the other students because we have private lesson rather than a class, so we don’t need to test into a specific class. But, it gave us a chance to finalize our enrollment with the school and go through orientation. There are a couple other American students but also some Dutch students and a woman from France. I tried to speak to her in French, but I couldn’t remember any French words! I have a very hard time switching back and forth between French and Spanish. I can do one or the other but not both at the same time! Dominique, the French woman, is probably in her 60s, she lives outside of Paris, and seems really nice. She said she had a hard time switching between English, Spanish and French here. Almost all of the students speak English.

When Bill and I got back, there was a plumber named Alejandro in the apartment fixing our washing machine. We have clean clothes now! He had partially flooded the apartment, and Bill helped him mop up the floor. Alejandro stayed until the washing machine cycled to make sure there weren’t any problems. We had an interesting conversation with him in Spanish. He seemed happy people were talking to him and asking questions about Colombia. He’s a working class guy who speaks informal Spanish so it was a very difficult conversation for me to understand, but we did okay and learned some interesting things about Colombia.

Our first class was yesterday at 2pm. Bill and I both have good teachers and we enjoyed our lessons. Bill has suggested that we speak Spanish as much as possible together. We sit silently most of the time! After class, we found a money exchange place in a sketchy-looking tourist shop and got some more Colombian pesos. We ate at a nice restaurant with an English menu and a good Trip Advisor rating. I had really good fish, and Bill got St. Louis-style ribs. While we were waiting for our food, there was a major power outage that cut off power to part of the city. We ate with my phone propped up on two menu cards with the light on. It worked pretty well. We were concerned that power in our building would be out. We are on the 12th floor, and that would have been a long walk up the stairs in the dark plus no lights and no air in the apartment. Fortunately, we had power, and we only lost internet for a while last night. As we were coming up the elevator last night, it stopped at the 10th floor, and this little white dog came in all by itself. It was very cute. We were trying to figure out what to do when it’s owner (an 11 year old girl) came running to retrieved it!

We have class again at 2pm today so we are headed to the beach to swim in just a little while. Bill is working on his update now. The beach is mostly empty on weekdays, especially in the morning.

In a fun side note, mom says my little dog Lucy will only take her allergy pills if they are hidden inside hamburger meat balls that have been seasoned with garlic salt. It’s a rough life she’s living! I don’t have pictures from yesterday, but I’ll try to get more for my next post.