I am getting ready for Bogota, but with all the research and Google street views I can't say I can be any more prepared than now and so I'd might as well be there. I think I am over the fear that I won't like it there, that I will be bored to extinction, suffocate on the thin mountain air, get shot at and kidnapped, or worse simply chronically annoyed every day by people who want my money. The altitude is high, over 8400 feet above sea level and it rains a lot.
So why am I going? Besides the mountains, the mild climate, the quiet neighbourhood with many parks I'll be staying in, the friends I'll be meeting with, the long walks and ample time to sit in cafes with my sketchbook as well as all the Spanish I get to speak, you mean?
It is all in the preparation which is a lot of fuss. I was at the bank again, this time to buy enough American dollars to pay for my lodgings (they insist on US. Your guess is as good as mine.) I was going to do it yesterday but I slept forty-five minutes later than I intended but no regrets, I needed the sleep as well as the strange and bizarre dreams, so I had time to have breakfast while working from home on my computer to prepare the art sessions at work for after I'm back from my trip in April. I also wanted to walk outside for a while for part of my daily ten thousand steps, take in the fresh air, enjoy the early flowers of this phenomenally early spring while mindfully refusing to get freaked out about climate change, then showing up on time at the café where I was going to have coffee with the priest in charge of the Anglican church I attend. After that I had my client to meet with, then time to walk to my next assignment (more of my daily ten thousand), then following work where I was given a free sweater, off to the local mall to buy a new coat, then for something surplus to my ten thousand and walking in the pissing rain to a local vegetable market for overpriced cabbage before returning home.
But that was Friday, yesterday, Friday the thirteenth, but a pleasant and lucky Friday the thirteenth.
Today I got up early, rested, got my travel money at the bank (including prepaid Visa Card for my meals in flight since United Airlines is a bunch of chiselers who expect us to pay for our meals). Thursday morning I had time, thanks to a last minute shuffle with one of my clients, picked up the fifteen hundred or so Canadian in Colombian funds for my trip, but still had to wait till Friday for a deposit from work, which was a week late.
It all gets too complicated but it gets done. This is a time for new beginnings. I have bought new shoes, two pairs of almost new jeans (less than thirty bucks second hand), got this new coat on clearance for less than forty, this free new sweater at work, and my birthday comes at the end of this month, one day before my flight. This will be a time for renewal as the new person I shall be for this year comes into being and begins to take shape. This is otherwise another typical Saturday.
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