Wow, the end of my first week of classes down here in Bogotá! I still feel like I just arrived... maybe I'm still not quite accustomed to the Andean air, who knows? I only had three classes, and they flew pretty quickly in spite of my brain's inability to comprehend three hours of Spanish in one sitting each time. I have a little bit of homework (reading) to do this weekend, but I'm not that worried about it. In spite of the work, let me share with you some more highlights of the tail end of the work week.
Laundry: One mildly irritating thing about the Chapinero neighborhood is its ostensible lack of laundromats, or even full clothes-washing services. I assume everyone must have washers/dryers in their homes/apartments, because I broke down to the point that I had to ask my landlady to help me find a place. She found one... but I never said anything about it being close. There is a laundry service about 16 blocks south of my apartment, and another six blocks east. Safe to say, I had to bus it there. I want to give a big thank-you to all the people who did not bust out laughing at the kid on the Transmilenio who clogged up the aisle with a loaded laundry bag. That's one small step for kindness, one giant leap for public decency. Even when I made it Calle 57's terminal, I still had to hike six blocks east to get to the laundry service. Those people along the way deserve a shout-out too for not getting all pissed off as I smacked them with a swinging sack of dirty clothes.
So I arrived at the place around five after eight (so much pride in waking up on a morning that I didn't have class!). The website said they were open from like 8:00-7:00, so I figured I'd be their first customer... that would be incorrect. They had a sign on the front door that gently pointed out that they were *still* on holiday hours, meaning they wouldn't open through the week until 9:00. Great. Now I've gotta find something to do for an hour and come back. So, laundry in hand, I hike it over to a Juan Valdez Coffee and enjoy a delicious muffin and coffee while I explore the cheapie smartphone I bought last week. After devouring about eight websites' worth of news, 9:00 rolled around. Yay! Now I can go drop off my clothes... wrong again. Ten minutes after nine, the doors still weren't open. What to do? Still with clothes in hand, I walked back down to Carrera 7 and sat down at a local café for a big bottle of water. I was dehydrated, so why not pump my body full of H2O to help me cope with the workout of carrying 20 pounds' worth of clothes? Finally, around 9:45 I walked back over, and the place was open.
The one good thing about getting my laundry done was that one of the washerwomen in the place offered to switch over the loads for me to dry them, so I could have an hour and a half to myself. Still satisfied with Transmilenio prices, I went home for a little while. Ninety minutes and about $12 later, I had clean clothes. It wasn't the cheapest venture, but I'll take it as a nice trade-off for all the cheap lunches and bus fares I've experienced. Hopefully, in the future, I can find a more efficient way to get my clothes cleaned. If not, this will be my typical Tuesday morning for the time being.
Going to the Gym: Yeah, time to get back in shape!!!... not quite. As you have heard from me before, Bogotá sits about 8,500 feet above sea level, so while getting into shape is a noble venture, the first couple times going to the gym have little to do with trying to regain muscle mass and boosting cardio. The first time I stepped on a treadmill at the UniAndes campus, I reminded myself of how much I had to climb just to be able to get to the place. I'm not even just talking about a physical climb... to be honest, it was a mental one. Once I arrived at the gym on Wednesday morning, immediately I discover that there's a little more to entering the Centro Deportivo than just handing them your ID card. No, no, no... in fact, not only do you have to visit the guy in the equipment room whose computer is the only thing organized amid a room of jerseys and equipment strewn all over the floor, but the guy hands me a medical interview form! Incredible. So now I have to take this form to another guy in another room to announce that, yeah, unfortunately, I'm a little overweight. Still, no one needs to freak out when I decide to hit the cardio for a little while, at least I hope not.
Finally, after dealing with layers of bureaucracy just to enter the gym, I entered the gym. UniAndes' gym is surprisingly... small. I mean, it's a MASSIVE building, don't get me wrong. However, floors two and three are dedicated more to low-intensity activities, such as pool (not the watery kind, that's on the fifth floor) and table tennis. Fourth floor has treadmills, spinning bikes and tumbling/martial arts, and fifth floor has the weight room and what looked like places to use an elliptical. Showering is kind of a mess, as 90% of the lockers aren't actually located in the locker room, but rather, out in the hall. I had to do some magic to be able to get changed without losing anything along the way. The whole experience makes me miss the Baierl Rec Center at the Pete, crowded-ness and all, but nonetheless I push on, as I need to get into shape. I've been to the gym now two different times: Thursday and Friday. I did notice, at least, that running got a little easier on Friday, but recovery afterwards was still the same. I found myself breathing semi-heavily just walking down the hill to get back on campus. Fortunately, I've found some places to walk where less people can see me wheeze on a typical morning.
Printing: As with most of my experiences with Latin American universities, one distinct advantage is that you're not shelling out your first grandchild's inheritance to buy your textbooks each semester. Generally professors will ask you to photocopy chapters of given books, and it's your responsibility to find it in a vocabulary or some other external (away-from-university) source. In UniAndes' case, they have this nice little shop called HaceCopias, which is about half a block away from the Mario Laserna Building, essentially UniAndes' home base. Although the print shop is convenient in that you can get most (I emphasize, most) of your reading materials from there if you need to photocopy them, it doesn't mean it's cheap. I had to put up another $12 just to get the week's worth of reading materials for two of my classes. I'm on my own for the third: fortunately, I found articles for that class using Google Scholar and PittNet+. The lady there was pretty friendly, and laughed when I told her where I was from and what I was doing at the school. Apparently my Spanglish was amusing to her.
As I rush to catch yet another Transmilenio bus to get the hell home, I remember that it's a privilege to be down here. I'm representing my school and my country in a place that, as I've heard, doesn't see as many Americans around as I originally thought. Nonetheless, the city's been good pretty far, and I have not only learned a lot about it, but also a lot about what I'm made of. This is truly a study abroad experience that is already making lasting memories. I wish all of my Pittsburgh friends a good night from Bogotá, and I hope you all stay warm! And to all of my friends outside of Bogotá and Pittsburgh, that you all sleep well too! I'll be updating again next week with more amusing blog entries.
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