Moving in Bogotá

FOUR Co-Signers!

To get back to the getting off the chest...to rent a place through an agency is a major task, because the insurance companies differ from the ones in the States in that they take no risk. In order to assure this lack of risk one must find four (yes, one, two, three, FOUR) co-signers to sign a contract. That's when you actually find out who your fair-weather friends and your friends are. Actually, two or three appears to be the going number in most places, but the agency managing our place asked for four...and make a mistake on a document (no crossing out allowed here) means starting the whole process over, so if a mistake were to happen let's hope it's not after four copies of something had been signed, sent, received, sent, and received again, stamped, fingerprinted, notarized, authenticated....[catching of breath] catch my drift?

And Then You've Got To Move

And once it's all done, you'd think you can rest from that nightmare (which is a daydream compared with dealing with the DAS or the U.S. Embassy)...nooooo...you've got to move first, okay, so finally everything was stacked into a moving truck and dead to the world I had my first challenging Spanish-speaking experience in a while...sitting on a crate in the back of the moving truck chatting with the movers in the pitch black. They sounded like two costeños, the twins, and a cachaco. I suppose that was a bright spot, but then to move everything off the truck...we were helping the movers to get things done more quickly and cheaply...

And the House is Haunted

All this at the same time of reorganizing a two (two point five actually)-person business to a 3 to 5-person one...resting very little in a new place which we had just been told was haunted...of course leading to "una gripa tremenda"...

Speedwalking up the Slopes

A week of "aguapanelas" and no mustang rojos has almost done the trick, but speedwalking up any slope to be found has also helped to take advantage of the city, not just let the cold nights, and mornings, bureaucracy, family-life still foreign to me and "chismes" keep me down.

But its All Worth it!

If you have the chance to move within your Colombian city of choice or to a different city, don't let my steam releasing get to you...it's worth the while to learn more about this wonderful place, its people and yourself.