Wow. My first day in Medellín, Colombia, has passed. I've done more cool things today than I have the last four weeks of the summer. Let's start from the beginning.
At 3am, we left my house in Festus for Lambert Airport, saying goodbyes to my family, etc. Flight leaves St. Louis at 6am, and I arrive in Miami. An hour later, I leave Miami for Medellín. Here's the first interesting story.
When checking in at Miami, the nice airport employee sees that my seat is in the 27th row of the plane, and asks if I want to be moved closer to the front. I tell her that would be great. Then, she asks me if it would be okay if I flew in First Class. That sounded good to me, haha! So, I was in the front of the plane, and I got served a three course meal! Starting with salad and bread. Then, I had the halibut with potatoes. Finishing it off with an ice cream dessert and a glass of wine. And I didn't have to pay for any of this! Every time they brought me something, I just kind of laughed to myself a little bit because it felt so weird that I'm enjoying this fancy meal on the way to a foreign country to work with an organization that helps homeless kids. But....I very rarely will turn down a free meal.
When I arrived in Colombia, the airport people were very nice, showed me where to go, and helped me cut through lines (wheelchair powers at work!). I was told my Spanish was very good...though, I can't understand anybody unless they speak pretty slowly and enunciate.
I was picked up by Luis Eduardo, a guy who works for Open Arms and knows barely any English. We had a good time talking (and attempting to understand each other) on the drive into the city. He was super-friendly and said that the kids will love me and that I'll learn a ton of Spanish. Here, things were feeling pretty surreal as I was taking in the sights with the windows rolled down....it was great.
Before I go on, I need to describe how people drive here. It's not like how people drive in the US. In the US, people stay in their lanes and try to avoid conflict. Here in Colombia, there are motorcycles weaving in and out of traffice, people passing each other contantly, cutting each other off, cars stopped in the road...it's just insane. Yet, it's a controlled chaos, and I felt oddly safe in the van with Luis Eduardo.
Curvo Peligroso = Dangerous Curve
The city of Medellín!
Road leading up an insanely steep hill to the place where I'm staying.
We arrived at the house of Bill and Wanda Perrow, the founders of the Open Arms Foundation. I got to see my room, which is great. There's only two steps into it, and I have my own bathroom. I hung out here for a while with Justin, Michael, Juan Guillermo, and Christian. Then, we and a guy from the US named Doug who may be living here indefinitely working with Open Arms (he's still trying to figure that out) went down to the city to try to get a battery for Doug's laptop. This journey had us walking up the hill pictured above (so steep!), me riding on a motorcycle for a while (intense, but I'm still alive), traveling on the Metro over mountains and buildings (shown below, but earlier in the day), riding the subway, and riding a taxi back. We didn't find the right type of battery, but I did make my first purchase using pesos, which was a juice beverage.
Back at the Perrows', we had burgers for dinner. I haven't met Bill yet, but his wife Wanda is super nice, and they have an incredibly cute little girl that likes to push my chair around. Then, after watching the end of the Resident Evil movie with some of the guys...here I am writing this and going to bed. Crazy day.
The team from West Virginia gets here tomorrow night, so I'll probably just be hanging out here tomorrow. I still haven't seen the Open Arms building or the Boys Farm or met any of the kids in the program...but I'm okay with taking some time to adapt first! God is good!
And I can't kill this stupid mosquito in my room tonight. Grr.....
Free meals will make you do some crazy things. The other day I almost volunteered to go to this stupid meeting that would be really boring and long. The only reason I considered it was because it was at Ryan's, and I thought "Unlimited free food?!?!".
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm glad your first day was awesome.