"COLOMBIANADAS"

On February 25^th I was reading a magazine and I found an article, which I think, describes us Colombians very well. The article is called “manual to distinguish a Colombian abroad” written by Maria Jimena Duzan (revista semana online).

The author begins by saying that Colombians are the only ones that, when they want to buy something, say “Me Regala” which means to get the product for free. According to Maria Jimena Duzan, if you go to Spain for example and ask the waiter: “Me Regala…” he will probably answer that you have to pay for it.

Another fact is that Colombians usually clap when the plane lands; this is the best way, according to the author, to know if there are any Colombians on the plane. This might be because Colombians love to clap; they do it even when it is not necessary.

I know many of you who have family or friends abroad have suffered from the famous “Encargo”. Colombians do not have any problem to ask you to take them whatever whim they have, and they are usually things which are difficult to carry like Obleas with Arequipe, Bocadillo, Coffee Delight or sometimes even bigger things like decorative items for their house.

Finally, something I think should not be this way, is that when Colombians travel abroad they do everything they do not do inside Colombia, they do not throw trash in the streets, they respect the lights, in general they are well behaved and obey the other country’s; laws and traditions. So I do not understand why it is possible to do all of this outside Colombia instead of doing it within Colombia and taking care of our country.

You have probably noticed how Colombians tend to name everything in English, that is why you can find someone called Usnavy or Onedollar and restaurants with a terrible misspelled English name. This may be because many Colombians wish to be North Americans or from any other place but Colombia; basically in Colombia there is a lack of patriotism.

To conclude, we Colombians are full of weird and funny features; if you stop and take time to think about it, you will notice how special we are.

WEEK 3 UPDATE!

 This is my third week of my 30 day challenge, this week i only forgot to take a picture 1 day i was really sick so i completely forgot about it, this week was really particular; i chose to publish these pictures so you can get an idea of how was my week.

This is a picture of a friend trying to fix his car, he wanted to take it out for a ride but when he turn it on he notice the brakes where broken, so he decided to fixe them, the funny part is that he knows nothing about cars he was making everything up, but at the end i don’t know how he managed to fix them.

 This picture I took on Monday, when we arrived to class two friends had the same sweater, they bought it to other friend who was selling things she brought from the United States. They where strangely happy about wearing the same so the sat together all class end enjoy being “twins” that day.

This picture is very special, this was on Thursday mi aunt arrived to Colombia, she lives in Washington dc since 2001 and she hadn’t come back for all those years. We made her a welcome home party with all her friends and family, she was really happy to be back in Colombia after all those years.

This picture was Saturday when I was going to my 7 am class I woke up earlier so I could get on time to class but when I arrived to school there was a huge line of cars waiting for a space in the parking lot, I waited in line almost 20 minutes I was annoyed but I had nothing to do I was stuck in traffic I could not go anywhere. It’s amazing how many people take cars to class on Saturday traffic is chaotic that day!

Finally this picture has a scary back round, Saturday night when I was going home after clubbing, my best friend called me begging for help, she was crying and was really desperate, she ask me to go immediately to her boyfriend house, when I arrived there I saw her crying and her boyfriend was laying on the floor. Two guys in a cab tried to rob him and drugged him, but somehow he got to my best friend and that is when she called me. We had to run to the hospital because he was really bad, we stayed there until he got better that was today Sunday 7am. We were really scared and we learned that it is really dangerous to take a cab in the street. (This picture of the license plates number is not the real taxi is just another taxi I took picture of).