Semana Santa

Hello everyone, offering number three from Bogotá is right here.

This post has taken a lot longer to publish than I'd planned but things here have been rather hectic and stressful so I've only just got round to finishing this.

So this past week as you all should know was Semana santa (Holy week) or as we know it in the UK, the Easter holidays. In Bogotá it's common for people to use this week to leave the city to visit family in the countryside or to go on holiday. For this reason, originally Nico and I had planned to leave the city as well and spend a few days with Nico's friend Santiago at his farm in the country. I was really excited for this as I had already been to and seen most of the best things in Bogotá and fancied a change of scene. The night before we were supposed to leave, I was about to start packing when Nico sent me a message saying that Santiago had had an accident and therefore unfortunately couldn't receive us. Understandably I was pretty disappointed and what's more, cancelling our trip left a big hole in my week. So I used this time effectively by continuing with my main job in the studio-translating the website into English which despite having to repeatedly type 'All Rights Reserved' was actually quite an enjoyable activity.

Good Friday was the highlight of a somewhat bleak week when I spent the day in the city centre. I took the Trans Milenio out to the Museo Nacional which is slightly northward of the cultural downtown. The museum houses a large scale amount of artifacts dating back to the Muisca (Pre-Hispanic) period as well as many sculptures and paintings- expect to see some more fat naked pictures by Botero and tonnes more information on Colombia's history. Although many of the exhibitions were solely annotated in Spanish, providing an extra challenge, I found the museum to be quite interesting and considering it was free entry- a bargain!

Museo Nacional

More Botero paintings 

 

I then headed into the centre and spent quite a while on the Carrera Septima. The street was a real hub of activity and it seemed like nearly every man and his dog had the day off and it was packed with people. There were loads of people selling things out on the street such as footbal shirts, shoes, electrical goods and LOADS of food and amusement was provided through the various street performers and entertainers. Later on, there was a parade to mark Good Friday which made la Septima even busier. The parade involved a large variety of people though the most prominent were the Colombian military who had a marching band and battalions of armed soldiers in full uniform who were then followed by members of the Catholic church carrying religious tributes to mark the occasion. All the music, shouting and shere mass of people made for a very frenzied atmosphere and it was a great spectacle.

Carrera Septima, street artists

street dancers

Guinea pig racing!

Good Friday parade

Since then, things have taken a turn for the worse. My Easter weekend was uneventful at best, I started feeling quite lonely in the studio and various issues between me, Maritza and Daissy went unresloved. Everything reached a point where I could no longer continue working and living in the studio so on Thursday I packed my bags and left. I met up with Mauricio again who invited me to football training at the university before then spending the night at his home. Friday morning I moved into a hostel in La Candelaria which will now act as my base for the rest of my time here in Bogotá before I fly back home to the UK next Thursday. So far, my experience in the hostel has been very different to that in the studio and I look forward to telling you all about my final week.

Until then.

FP

#FraserOnTour

New Friends, Studio Life and more sightseeing. WARNING: contains nudity

I'll be honest, I've had a bit of writers block trying to start this post. Literally stared at this page for the last 5 minutes and had no idea what to say. Well, here goes nothing. 2nd installment of my stay in Colombia, here's what's been happening in my world this past week.

The more interesting moments to talk about on the agenda both happened on a wednesday. This one and the last one. Starting with last Wednesday, I returned to the La Candelaria for a guided tour-all in Spanish. I was a bit apprehensive beforehand as I imagined I would be the only non-hispanic person on the tour, attempting to understand the rapid fire accent of the Colombian tour guide as they would be telling us detailed facts about the various sights. However, the reality of the situation wasn't so adverse as I found that about half of my group weren't hispanic either! Half the group was made up of women from Venezuela, Brazil and Peru respectively then there was me, a guy from Israel, a guy from Switzerland and a group from Belgium so I found myself using more English than Spanish which made for a nice surprise. The tour was still in Spanish though and I DID find it difficult to understand many of the facts our guide told us but because he spent a lot of the time talking about Colombian food, it wasn't too hard to follow what he was telling us about.

FOOD OF THE WEEK: an Oblea, basically a wafer with Caramel inside

Once the tour was over, I joined the Swiss guy, Steven (who used to study at Uni in Salford so we had a lot to talk about), Oriana from Peru and one of the women from Venezuela to go around some of the museums together, of which Bogota has plenty. We went around the Museo Botero and Museo del banco de la República, which was great fun as we admired the various bizarre works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero who had a strange obsession with painting obese people/animals and fruit as well as paintings from other famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Claude Monet and Salvador Dali. I enjoyed the museums much more than the tour itself and when it came to the end of the day I didn't really want to leave my new friends behind.

Museo Botero

Some of Botero's paintings

Posing with the chubby statues

Group Photo

True dat

Trippy picture, changes colour depending on the angle you look at it from

Fat Mona Lisa

The rest of the week wasn't particularly eventful as I was forced to spend almost all day in the studio. The reason? the altitude sickness I'd experienced going up Montserrate on my second day came back for me meaning I couldn't do a great deal and felt terrible. During this time, I really got to grips with my work in the studio. My first task was to help decorate one of the walls in the studio by tracing the outline of a floral pattern using a projector, a pencil and a footstep. I finished the wall on Friday feeling proud of myself considering my lack of artistic ability. Since then, I moved on to a project much more suited to my skills in which I am using my skills as a linguist to translate the studio's website from Spanish into English-my main task whilst working here which should take at least another week to do in between my various other activities. So far, I have enjoyed the challenge of translating the website and I believe it is useful experience to have before going to University in September.

Me in the studio working on the wall

A section of the wall that I did. Will post another picture when Mari has coloured it all in

Now onto the second Wednesday. This time, I went to the city centre once more to visit the granddaddy and by far the most famous of Bogota's museums: the Museo del Oro. The Museo del Oreo houses the biggest collection of gold in the whole world, much of which is from pre-hispanic South America. Many of the pieces look like those you'd find in an Indiana Jones film and while being easy on the eye, I found it fascinating wandering around the various exhibitions and learning more about the Mayan and indigenous cultures and traditions before and during the conquering by the Spanish invaders. It's an area in history that I don't really know a great deal about so as a former AS level History student I was intrigued to find out more. Nerd life. Later, I met up with Mauricio at the University, another of my cousin Michael's friends. We had a good chat in Spanglish over lunch and found that we had a lot in common, especially our love for Football. Mauricio was really friendly and we have agreed to meet up again once he's back from his Easter holidays.

Museo Del Oro

After bidding farewell to Mauricio, I wandered back down into the centre to get the Transmilenio bus back to the studio but to my surprise and confusion, the bus stops were closed and no buses were running. I soon found that the reason for this was a long procession of people down the Carrera Séptima (the main pedestrian street in the city centre). The people were parading down the street in colourful t-shirts, carrying banners, waving flags, banging drums, playing musical instruments and shouting various chants. I'd seen one of these before in Mallorca except I was part of the marching brigade. It was a protest. I followed the people on their procession which ended in the Plaza de Bolívar where there was a big stage set up upon which there was live music acts and the occasional public speaker addressing the crowd. Amongst the raucous environment of the crowd, I couldn't help being a bit confused by something. While there, I also bumped into the Israeli guy from the tour who seemed equally confused by the spectacle. Yes, people were protesting but unlike the anti-TIL protests I participated in Mallorca, there wasn't any common cause. It was essentially a free-for-all in which any group in society that wished to be heard could join the procession and raise awareness for their cause. I saw a variety of causes being supported from political movements, to animal rights supporters to women's rights activists to anti-government groups opposed to the violence and starvation in the country to one guy standing stark-bollock naked in the street who seemed to be promoting the rights of indigenous people yet it wasn't obvious, could've just been a crazy guy who got a bit lost! Despite the whole disorientation of the event, it added an extra bit of unexpected spice to my afternoon. Turns out Colombians are just as passionate as any other nationality when they feel issues need to be addressed.

Chilling in the street, naked, as you do

Music on the stage

The band were joined by two breakdancers!

Revolution without deaths

So that's everything in my world at the moment that's worth telling you about. It's nearing halfway in my time here in Colombia and I hope to have plenty more things to share with you before I leave. Next week is Holy week (Semana Santa) so I expect there will be.

Until then,

FP

#FraserOnTour