It’s been a while since I (Seth) have posted, mainly because so much of my Colombian stories are work-related, and probably shouldn’t be shared.  But I do have a few quick stories from the past month or so that I thought I’d share.

We were watching American Idol through our slingbox last week and right after the show was over it went into a new show (at least for us) called Lie to Me.  We were slightly intrigued because the commercials were talking about a murder at a diplomat’s wedding and something to do with an ambassador.  (Since we’ve been to a diplomat’s wedding, we quickly realized that the story was overdramatized.)  Anyway, the opening scene showed a hispanic man shooting another one in the chest.  Then in the corner the location of the murder popped up.  Cali, Columbia.  The only thing is that Colombia isn’t spelled Columbia.  It’s a common mistake, but it was especially embarrassing we thought because here is a show on Fox and they don’t know how to spell the name of the country.  I told my co-workers the next day, and we all got a good laught out of it.

The nice thing about living in Colombia is Valentine’s Day.  Mainly because the “holiday” hasn’t caught on here yet.  I remember last year we were driving to a restaurant for VD and at the stoplight there was a guy selling roses.  I bought some for Kristen thinking I was being all romantic.  And then I told Kristen how cool I thought it was that they actually were selling roses on VD.  Then Kristen reminded me that they always sell roses at stoplights and it had nothing to do with VD.  Which brings me to why VD is nice in Colombia.  One, it’s super easy to get a reservation for VD since no one else is wanting one.  Two, roses are super cheap.  On any given day, you can get a dozen for like 3 bucks.  And Kristen said she’s seen a truck that drives around selling 2 dozen for 75 cents!!!  Remember, all the flowers you buy from your local florist come from Colombia.  Three, there are no Hallmark cards in Colombia, so you don’t get ripped off buying those.  Instead, you can write something on your own…from the heart.

The traffic here can be horrendous.  The other day we were driving 3 miles each way.  It took us 45 minutes to get there and 45 minutes to get back.  Unbelievable.  They’ve tried reducing some of the traffic by institutuing “pico y placa” which means that if your license plate ends in a certain digit, you can’t drive on that day.  Up until a month ago, “pico y placa” was just from 6-9 AM and 4-7 PM.  But they are doing major construction around town starting in a couple of weeks, so “pico y placa” is now extended to 6 AM until 8 PM.  Thankfully as diplomats with diplomatic license plates, we aren’t affected.  But I will say, we haven’t seen a dramatic decrease in traffic despite these new rules.

A few weeks ago, a bomb went off at a Blockbuster about 7 or 8 blocks from our house.  We have friends who live about 1/2 block from the explosion.  And my boss was at that exact Blockbuster only 45 minutes before.  Thankfully, no Americans were hurt, although 2 people did die.  Needless to say, things were quite tense around here for several days following the explosion.  The next night, Kristen and I heard three explosions, and immediately called the embassy.  Turns out they were only fireworks.  Which led us to think that fireworks should be banned for at least 48 hours after a bomb goes off.

And the biggest highlight of all.  McDonald’s is looking at building a restaurant at the embassy in the coming months.  I am quite pumped, although Kristen has said I’m going to have a monthly quota on Big Macs.  Before we got married, I average meat on a bun at least 3 times a week (Justin can attest to that).  We are now down to about once a month.  McDonald’s won’t be as good as Whataburger coming, but with only about 7 months remaining, it’ll suffice.