Feliz Año

¡Happy New Year and Feliz Año! It´s much more fun being on a spanish keyboard than a regular american one. Funnily enough the last 2 weeks or so since I last wrote have passed by in much more of a blur than any of our travelling in India. Probably because it´s been much less punctuated by singular events. We´ve spent a lot of time in Colombia´s capital, Bogota, seeing the city and more family than you can imagine. Collectively Hernando´s parents are 2 of 19 total siblings, which all of course have one or two subsequent generations behind each one of them. If I can figure it out as far as "mom´s side" and "dad´s side" I feel I deserve a pat on the back. Anything more intricate than that escapes me, despite Hernando´s mother´s best efforts to thoroughly educate me.

We also visited another city quite a distance away where Hernando´s grandparents and yet much more family live. Everyone is very warm and friendly and I do my best at Spanish, though a good number of people speak good English allowing me to be lazy, or take a break once I have thouroughly toungue tied myself.

Today stands out as the most lovely for me thus far. We rode horses in the countryside and it was a dream. Like any girl I love riding horses. I would say I can´t get enough of it but my body would beg to differ especially after losing any extra padding I had before going to India. I am so sore! But it was so worth it. An interesting moment was when Hernando´s cousin Valentina and I went out for a second ride cantering down dirt country roads at sunset and we come towards a woman bent over a body lain on the side of the road and her two children standing protectively in front of it and she´s lighting a match over it´s stomach. Now I´ve just come from India where I spent a few days watching family funerals at the burning ghats and it brought to mind some kind of crude funeral that absolutely did not make sense. Well luckily and obviously it wasn´t, and I figured as much when I saw another stuffed scarecrow figure of a man sitting in a chair with a can of beer in his hand. They make a figure of a man here and burn it to symbolize burning the old year and welcoming the new.

Now if you were to ask Hernando his favorite day it would have to be when we went go-karting with 8 other cousins. And I had fun too because I beat Hernando at it by half a lap! And that´s how I measure my success, mwah hah ha. He asked me not to write that on the blog but what could he expect? Though since he loves it so much we went a second time and that time he lapped me, but I wasn´t racing as well as before.

We still don´t really know what we´re doing as far as making plans. We´ll be in Venezuela by mid-January but we´re not really looking forward to it. Colombia is so nice and safe they can enjoy the luxury of walking around on the street and being perfectly safe here, it´s so much better than before. Though things are different in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. The situation is worsening day by day and people are starting to flee to Colombia. Everyday Bogota´s newspapers print somewhat disapproving articles about the current Venezuelan influx as though the tables have never been turned and Venezuela never had the same happen there with Colombians in the past. So basically being in Caracas to us means we stay in the parent´s apartment a lot especially since most of his close friends from there live abroad! Though we of course most look forward to seeing our friends who are there. There´s a great PBS frontline video on Chavez and Venezuela that you can watch online. I would find you the link if the internet here just weren´t so sloooow that I´d rather pull my hair out.

So as it stands after that we´re leaving the fate of our plans in the hands of Expedia. Wherever we can find a last minute bargain flight to once the peak season passes, we´ll go!

till then, ciao and ¡feliz año!