the little things.

I had been thinking about how I wanted to write a blog post about the little things you create in a life and how strange it is that a life that is so real and rutted is suddenly gone?


Little things like the smell of the hallway of my apartment building, and the much stronger smell of my apartment. The sounds of the birds that hang out right outside my bedroom window, which is also above my head and sounds like they are flying into the room at least a few mornings a week.. they are pigeons, colombian style of course, which are actually much cleaner and more beautiful. A refined beauty and equally natural beauty, much like colombian women. The distinct sound of each door of this apartment. The sounds that initiates  any good aguacero, and the temperature drop. The smell of urine in the various places i frequent often, the walkway on the way to my bus stop, also coincidentally where homeless people pass out all the time, right in the middle of the sidewalk, just doesn't make sense, maybe its especially warm or something. The distinct smell in each of the three corner stores i frequent, and how i kind of have the same relationship with each of the families that own these stores. The smell of the pool, the english classrooms and the centro de idiomas. I was thinking about all these little things that have consistently been in my life here no matter how different the other aspects of my life were, it was a year of phases.  Tonight I had a realization of one other small thing. 


The tree outside our front balcony of the apartment. Particularly in the last four months I have developed quite a relationship with this tree, I have no idea what kind of tree it is but it  flourishes in unison with the weather. In the "verano" parts of the year the tree is a bright bright green, it creates long pea like seed pods and when the hot strong Andean sun hits them they heat up and pop sending seeds flying into its surrounding, including our balcony. On a hot, sunny day in a quiet moment on the balcony you can hear the pop, pop, pop of the seed pods. As it started to rain a bit more and the temperature dropped a degree or two the what we might call "otoño" or fall that only lasts a week or so.  There might have been a short period of flowers, but I am having a hard time remembering. The tree then changed to bright fall colors... orange, brown, red, yellow and green. It has now started to heavily rain again, el "invierno" and tonight i noticed that the tree is super lush. So lush, the lushest you could imagine it, it looks as if it is dripping green leaves. Beautiful.


On the eve of my last month in Colombia, its the little things I've been thinking about.


Much like the shifts in the trees cycle, my life this last year has been in shifts. Shifts of a short period of normalness. Then everything would change and the much used word "normal" takes on another meaning and continues to be a great joke, sometimes simply making too much sense, agreeing with all the idiosyncrasies of life. The development of this year and the plot of my colombian story have developed in phases. And in all those phases there were the little things.


But life continues to feel relatively normal and pleasant. Its a pleasant little life I've been living these past months and sometimes it feels like it could just float on and on, but theres a feeling in the air that i will soon be floating away, floating home. In fact, I believe Colombia will come to the perfect close. Things, people, pastimes and places have slowly begun to ex out of my life as my life slowly shuts down. But the amazing place about this city and this country is that there are always more amazing places to discover, things to do, people to meet, stories to hear, and things to learn.


This last weekend we went Guatapé. We being, team M plus a few. Its surprising that as bonded as team M is, we travel separately. This was our first time travelling as a team M unit. It wasn't just us of course, we had a few randoms and extras. Keko, meg's very 420 friendly, big smiled, likes to have a good time boyfriend has been visiting for about a week now and will stay about another week, Iñigo, a spaniard working at the engineering university up in Envigado, makes a good Spanish tortilla we ate three of them this weekend. Damien, Iñigo's roommate, a French dude doing his "práctica"/internship at the same engineering university and takes many candid pictures. Daniel, Elly's "parce" from the international program at the university she works at. Daniel has become quite a dear friend to the group over the past 10 months. I had some good laughs with dear Daniel. And for our Saturday night barbecue we were joined by a french random, Charly, who has been travelling for three years, definitely had the travelling bum feel to him, you can tell he's seen many things and places. That was our crew and it was a great weekend. We had a barbecue, climbed the Peñol, ate lunch, went on a 2 hours boat ride throughout the lake, went swimming, and learned about and saw quite a few of Pablo Escobar's 300 fincas in the area. So crazy. Quite a wonderful weekend, my camera is unfortunately pretty broken so I didn't take many pictures, but I will have to steal some from my friend's.  


It is pouring rain, once in a while i see a lightning strike then hear the roaring thunder. Its 11:30 I think its time for bed or atleast time to head in that direction.


See ya'll in one month.