It is becoming clear that all is not well with my digestive system. I may have made a mistake in trusting the many people who have told me the tap water here is fine, or eating in places that aren't exactly the cleanest, but I am making frequent trips to the bathroom and not having much luck keeping things regular down there. I am hoping it is just an adjustment period, as a trip to the doctor is the last thing I want during this trip. My small stock of medications have done a decent job thus far, and I guess there is little else to do than wait it out and be smart about what I eat and drink.
After a fiasco during the morning with the accidental deletion of my second journal entry, a quick lunch of pea soup with sauteed chicken and vegetables, and a short walk in the local park, Sebastian and I struck up conversation with a newly arrived traveler: Kora, a bright student of anthropology from Hong Kong. She was passing through Bogotá after having completed a few internship programs in Mexico and Peru. Her Spanish has grown from nonexistent to conversational, and her English is great so I definitey hold her in a place of esteem for the kind of intelligence and adaptibility it takes to be multi-lingual. Obviously I still have a long way to go.
Despite her initial timidness, we were able to convince her to come out with us, and we took her around the historical sites as Sebastian had taken me my first day. In the Plaza de Bolívar, we were stopped by a homeless man who absolutely blew me away with his encyclopedic knowledge of the architecture and history of the cathedral. He had a solid 8 minutes of material, and I was both impressed by his dedication to the subject and saddened by the fact that it was likely one of the few ways he could come up with to earn money. I couldn't lament for long, though, as the sun began to shine in la plaza, a rarity during this season of winds and clouds. The plaza was painted in a deep golden hue, we all unzipped our ever present jackets and breathed in deeply to warm our insides. Kora then spotted something across the plaza that made her squeal in excitement: amongst the chaos of pigeons and shouting vendors was a llama. She went running off, and I had trouble wrapping my head around her excitement, having grown up in a place where llama and alpaca farms are commonplace. But after excitedly snapping a few photos (enough to make the llama's handler demand payment if she took anymore) she came back and explained that she had never seen one, and it had been a dream of hers to photograph one. Dream completed, we moved on to other sites that were slowly becoming familiar to me, another thing that is difficult to believe, as all things are on this trip so far.
For whatever reason, all the museums and historical sites are closed to the public on Mondays, so we went for a few drinks at Doña Ceci. Kora made it clear she isn't much of a drinker, taking three times as much time to finish her drink as we did. Probably for the best, she has too much going for her to get carried away partying like an aimless American. I had a fantastic conversation with her comparing the Communist Party in China with the Conservative Party in the US. We each feel like they do not speak for the majority in our countries, but are so outspoken and ingrained in the political system that it will take quite a bit of time before they lose their grip on control of their respective countries. It made me smile to make that kind of connection with someone from the other side of the globe. Exactly the kind of connection I was hoping to find during this trip.
After spending a few hours to update my journal, Sebastian and I went out to find a bar that wasn't Doña Ceci's. We went upstairs in a cantina-style retaurant, paid too much for an absolute failure of a mojito, and then back to Doña Ceci's we went. A few beers, a shot of rum, sometimes I think the only way to get over my anxiety is to let loose like that. I know it's an illusion, but I rolled with it nonetheless. Sebastian decided to buy a small bottle to take back to the hostel, where he taught me how to play La Última Carta, a simple and fun card game that reminded me a bit of Uno. After a few games, the doorbell rang. Javier, the manager, asked us to answer, saying it was a friend of his who had paid for a private room. Sebastian let them in: man and woman...private room...if it wasn't already clear what was going on the explosion of noise from the room made it clear. The bed crashed into the wall again and again, the woman made no effort to be discreet, and neither did her partner. We tried for about a minute to continue our game in the common room, but the walls weren't exactly thick and we couldn't keep from giggling like idiots. We went outside to chat, and Sebastian regaled me with stories of his own sexual adventures. My head began to spin a bit, rum is not my typical drink. So it was off to bed, and, as every night thus far, I hit it like a sack of bricks.
