Easter holiday (I am very up-to-date)

Xiomara and me in Villa de Leyva in Boyacá

I don't even know what happened to time. I was just on holiday, seeing my friend and former youth delegate in Tromsø, Xiomara, and in the city of Medellin, getting to know all the friends of current youth delegate from Colombia to Norway, Franco. Then I came back to Cali, did some work, went out a few times, went to my language exchange, met new people and old people and WHAT I am almost on my way home to Norway and I haven't even finished editing my holiday photos because of all the activities I want to do before I leave this place.

Some day, you might even get to see more of the Amazon photos.

A little introduction to our apartment in Cali

 I hereby present to you my living room

 our dining table with it's normal mess, the hallway and our abnormally large fake fruit bowl

 My bedroom with all the messy parts hidden from view

Me in the living room mirror with my book shelf and our random decorative pine cones in the back

This week, I've gone completely hedonistic and have taken a two day weekend in a country which has a 48 hour working week. Therefore, I've had the time and energy to finally photograph our apartment a bit to show you where I live and exist most evenings and weekends (the rest of my life is at the Red Cross office). The dining table is where I eat, read blogs and watch Eddie Izzard, Dara Ó Briain, and Nicaraguan soaps on my laptop, often all at the same time.

Los Hongos - a film about Cali

or at least set in Cali, Colombia

Man, I'm fed up with computers. And reports, and blogs, and photos. Because this is now what I spend a lot of my days working with. Did I link you to our youth delegate blog? If not, I'll do it later. Now I only have just enough energy to post the trailer to this brilliant film: Los Hongos, which we saw at the cinema a few weeks back. It's all set in Cali, where I live, in this beautiful and somewhat troubled city in Colombia. And the film is absolutely beautiful.  It's already screening at international festivals. See it, if you get the chance.

Simple things that make me happy

 Cali is an incredibly green city. Even the red zones, which we've only passed in vehicles, have a lot of trees and greenery. 

It makes me very happy.

The avocadoes here are giant, squishy, and slightly more fruity than the ones you get in Norway or England.
This is half an avocado on a dinner plate.

Also food related: I was incredibly disappointed the other day, after buying a massive water melon that turned out to be green, because it wasn't ripe. Today I bought a baby watermelon and it was perfect (and I ate from it with a spoon).

Now, all these photos are from inside our apartment, because I haven't yet plucked up the courage to carry my camera around outside (we have had a lot of security training). They are also from my phone, much for the same reason. And they are mostly about food and the view because that's what I mostly do when I'm in the house - if we don't have visitors for dinner or I'm out swimming. I'll try to take more photos with our work camera, which might be slightly better than my phone, and I will show you more of where I work and with whom.

Until then - enjoy dreaming about watermelons and avocadoes!

Extremely awake and incredibly lively

Me, in our house, where we are welcome

The only thing that hasn't been amazing about the past few weeks (because yes, amazing house, city, work place, colleagues and volunteers) has been that the internet in our house (well, apartment) hasn't been working. We'd pretty much stopped believing in the internet ("You'll have it tomorrow! Mañana, mañana, mañana.") when it suddenly appeared today.

So here's an end to facebooking at work (unless it's work-related), and replying to non-work-related emails at work, and reading random blogs at work, because we can do it all at home. And to our defense, we've only been using facebook when we've arrived before everyone else, or during our lunch hour, or after work, which is just plain tiring, really. 

The only downside to this is that I will mostly be available after 18:00 here, which is 01:00 in Norway, or at 07:00 in the morning, which is 14:00 in Norway. 

ANYWAY INTERNET EXCITE, now bed time.