Ya vamos.

We left the city of Bogota for the coastal city of Cartegena.

Bogota, was great. We made great friends, had an amazing place to stay and ate tons of fruit and bread based street foods.

Through the busline was innessecarily complicted and a dought lead to three hillside forrest fires we could see from our windows, Bogota's charm shined through in the form of fake plastic Christmas sunflowers.

Though it is wonderful to be on the coast by the ocean, the breeze and historic Spanish forts that fought off pirates, I will keep you in mind Bogota, and return in March.

Next post: Forget Bogota, this is Cartagena.

Adventures in Colombian Fruit: Part 1

This is a Granadilla.

The gooey sweet seeds in the center resemble fish eyes. But once you get past the look and the consistency, they are quit delightful.

The outer "gel" has a banana/orange sort of flavor, while the crunchy seed has a bitter peeled white grape taste.

The tiny white "tentacles" that surround the center try their damnedest to grasp the seeds from your slurping mouth.

The entire experience is like eating a little alien fruit. Which it just so happens to be.

New Year's Eve in Bogota

(Big ole plastic Christmas tree in Plaza Bolivar

Our new year's eve was much more exciting than I had expected. We started the night on a walk down 7th street, covered with lite up flowers and vendors selling cotton candy and roasted corn. Along with all sorts of Colombian couples and families we walked all the way to the city center where the tallest building in Bogota was lit with waving rainbow bulbs. People were selling beer,street food and glow sticks. I asked a police man (note: Bogota is swarming with police) what the drinking in public laws were. He laughed at me at first but then explained that you can walk with an open beverage in you hand but you can't sit down and drink. No wonder he laughed. That's one of the most ambiguous laws I've ever heard of. "Sorry officer I'm not really sitting drinking, I'm just resting for a moment on my 9 o'clock beer jog.

Supposedly you can just pay the police to leave you alone. Of course there is good and bad that comes with authority. We have only encountered good police here, one gave us a handful of grapes after the countdown. Tradition has it that you eat something like 12 grapes and for each one you eat you make a wish for the new year. I only ate three grapes, we all had to share the handful.

Jameson and I ended up drinking a bottle of wine (secretly because we were sitting) in a park hillside full of christmas lights formed in the shapes of squirrels, mushrooms, elves and all other kinds of trippy stuff.



The hill overlooked a big public concert stage. At 12am fireworks burst out the top of the large rainbow building and the band played the Colombian national anthem.

We made some friends in the park. A Spanish-Colombian couple who insisted on walking us home to make sure we arrived safely to our hostel. It seems like the older people in the city are still very wary of the places dangerous past. Younger people shrug off questions like "can we go out after dark if there are only two of us?" They say "yes, of course!" This older couple we met was not so. They ended up freaking me out a bit with stories of mugging. Things get in your head after someone says it a few times. But two of my three grape wishes were that we would stay safe during our stay here.

Our new friends ended up taking us out to a little cuban hole in the wall bar where we drank two bottles of the anis flavored liquor which everyone drinks here. The wife, Raquel showed me how to shuffle around seductively to cuban music. She also taught Jameson how to dance with his hips. Then he showed her how to dance with everything but your hips.

It was a good night. It's Jan.1, 9:30pm and people everywhere are still setting off fireworks, getting drunk, and eating meat on sticks.

-Laney

-----------> Arrival

We arrived safely to Bogota this morning, and made it just in time for the countries Alumbrado Navideno (illuminated Christmas).



In which many cities and towns compete to have the best light displays in public plazas or wherever they want them. Normally the city of Medellin wins. A city we were already planning to visit, but now we are going to try and get there before the lights end on January 7th.

We will be in the city´s historic distric La Candelaria tomorrow for a warm weathered new years!



This was the best decision ever.

Plane----->

Today:
Washington DC-------------> Bogota, Colombia



Weeeeeeee!!!

13.5 inches of snow

So while house sitting in Lynchburg the sky decided to drop lots of snow on the ground. The entire town has pretty much shut down, though we hear you can still order delivery pizza.

So what do you do when your stuck at the house with lots snow on the ground?...

...Build a GIANT Snow Monster!

*inspired by Calvin & Hobbes.

If you look close you can see the scared faces of little snow people being eaten by our killer snow monster.

Farmville, the New Bethlahem

Every year in the little town of Farmville Virginia the community Church of Christ (whose pastor happens to be Jim Price, Jameson's father) puts on a very special reenactment of the christmas story. It's a drive-through live nativity with scenes representing various stages of the biblical account of Christ's birth. It's really quite a production requiring lots of work and faithful volunteer actors. Last year when Jameson and I drove through ourselves we thought about what a wild road side attraction this must be for people who are not familiar with the Bible, or how strange it would seem to a foreigner. Its a special time for the church.
Jameson's mom thought we would make the perfect Mary and Joseph this year with Jameson's beard, our dark features, and our angelic way of carrying ourselves. We spent four hours sitting in the hay with a baby doll and a donkey.
Needless to say, it was cold.
But at least now we have the perfect picture for our christmas card.

Snow in DC.

We didn't snap any pictures while it was coming down, but trust me, it was beautiful.

Here are some photos of the aftermath, at the grandparents house in Great Falls.

We took the metro deep into the city Saturday night, and I watched the snow fall in front of street lights.
There is something wonderfully tolerable about cold weather mixed with snow. It makes you feel like there is a point for wearing a coat.

Just when I thought I had bled all of my mid-west blood, I see snow, and I want to go sledding.


- Jameson

Food Log

I started keeping a Food Log about a week ago.
Goal: to monitor what I am eating and to keep track of my poops. That way I can see if they have any correlation. Which would mean that my digestive issue is based on diet and not some inflammatory bowel disease.

*It was here that I had posted a sample of my food and poo log, but Laney found it inappropriate to discuss on the blog, so I removed it.

My "movements" have been looking better, and now lack the scary details from the past.

Still, I probably need a colonoscopy. I am thinking that Colombia may be the best place to have this done.
___________

Beyond my issues we are both in DC, happy, healthy and helping Oma..

..I promise to stop blogging about my poops.

Fall in the Blue Ridge

Jameson, my mom and I went up to Great Uncle and Aunt's home in the mountains to enjoy the end of the leaves turning. The next day my Grandma called to make sure that Jameson and I hadn't gone roaming around in the woods. It's hunting season and she heard that there have been mountain lion sightings in the last couple of days. We wandered a bit, but were not eaten.

My Great Aunt's Owl Collection

The House was full of Owl's and White Horses
Here are some of the owls, owl towels, owl candles, wooden owls, glass owls, ceramic owls, painted owls, sticked owls...you get the idea.

Halloween

Here we are on a porch during Halloween with our friend Lindsey.

Laney is: A giant Day of the Dead Skull head with accordion

Lindsey is: Jennifer Lopez in Anaconda

Jameson is: A green hill with a shrine and spot light on top (I zoomed into the shrine so you could see it)

We were in Richmond for this holiday, and honestly there isn't any other place in the world I would rather be on this day.

Reasons:
- All The Saints Theater company, a radical puppet group aligned with Bread and Puppet, puts on a HUGE parade, open for anyone to march, completely absent of city government help and consent. Proof of power in numbers.

- Gallery 5 puts together a Carnival of 5 Fires, which includes seances, fire dancers and burlesque.

- A neighborhood in the city designates an entire street to children to come Trick or Treat, its called "Hell Block". Parents decorate their houses like pirate ships or human butcher shops.

- A haunted party ship floats along the downtown canals

- There are parties EVERYWHERE!

And this is just the stuff that occurs on Halloween DAY. It does not include the month long festivities that build up to this night like maize mazes, pumpkin patches, hard cider brewing, fire pits, haunted houses, confederate ghost tours and candy.

Though it rained and our vision was limited, peripherally. It was an awesome night!