Re-Integrating From Vacation

The Bogota Journal is now closed so anyone reading this will have already made the generous effort of clicking aaronbenjaminzacharias.BlogSpot.com
and if it doesn't click then all you have to do is cut and paste the link onto your URL bar and Bob's yer uncle.

Today I am enduring my re-entry into Vancouver and I am going to have to be patient.  The second emotion I experience upon returning here is always one of disappointment.  While enduring the various inconveniences of visiting a developing country it is always easy to paint an unrealistically glamorous and beautiful picture of my beloved city.  This by the way is a First World Problem.  On the scale of things it is not that important, neither Vancouver nor the difficulty of adjusting to being home again.  During this my first full day of being home all the lovely fantasies of this place have already vanished like the second hand cigarette smoke I have been choking on today while walking on our beloved sidewalks. 

It is also helpful to remember that even though I am statistically poor I am still able to travel down to Latin America every year for a month or so and this puts me in a very privileged category of people, especially when I think that many people I have talked to down there can only dream of making this kind of trip and that it even feels out of reach to many Canadians earning twice my income.

The first thing I am aware of is how cold it actually is here, being much closer to the Arctic Circle than to the Equator.  Bogota is very cold for a tropical city but it is a tropical city and the daytime temperatures often go up to twenty or warmer.  Even though my beloved city is warmed by the Japan Current it is April 2 and I don't think the temperature has gone up past ten today (okay, I lied, Stephen Quinn on CBC Radio One just announced that it is actually eleven, and everyone knows that Stephen Quinn is never wrong, especially Stephen Quinn!) Still the spring flowers are abundant and our clean sea level air is refreshing and oxygen dense.

I actually feel sick today.  Weak, exhausted and fragile.  I did manage my minimum five miles walking today but with difficulty and I have had to spend time at home napping.  I was scheduled to meet with a friend late this afternoon but he fortunately has had to cancel so this gives me time to rest.  I have also seen people sleeping on the sidewalk and I am reminded of how difficult life in this city is for people who are only a little bit poorer than me.

I did have to fight with people at my bank to reinvest all my Colombian currency in my account.  At first the teller was not going to accept three notes, all worth more than fifty dollars, because the small note looked obsolete (one thousand pesos but worth only forty-five cents Canadian.)  The two large notes, fifty thousand pesos each she did not want to accept because there was writing on them.  I asked to speak to her manager and proceeded to explain in high dudgeon that unlike the one thousand peso note these other two had been issued to me by this same bank and I was not going to leave until they accepted them.  I won and the one thousand peso note I will keep as a souvenir.  I also bought a large bag of groceries then came home where but for a short walk I was just on I have been for the afternoon.

I am avoiding coffee shops today.  I am treating myself as though I am ill and taking appropriate measures to get well.  It is a First World Problem, yes, but nevertheless it is a problem.