After two weeks of studying I felt that it was time to go from theory to practice. My host and flat mate speaks some English, though know that I understand a bit of Spanish he usually doesn´t bother to use it anymore. His friends don´t speak English at all, but they didn´t mind and dragged me along for the whole weekend.
Friday
First night we went to a birthday party of one of this friends. Cultural Note: Most unmarried Columbians live with their parents. So a birthday party or any kind of gathering at home always involves your parents anybody who happens to live there in the house as well. The family stays much closer together here.
Columbian Birthday Party (actually most people <30 live with their parents )
After some drinks with Juan's mom, we took a cab to Poblado, the posh up-scale party area of Medellin. There are mainly two kinds of people here: 1) Tourists, easy to recognize by their shorts (locals would never wear shorts) and rich Colombians, dressed in their smartest evening dresses. Prices are about 2x of what you pay downtown in a bar. But it was still a lot of fun. Especially the music is quite different. Salsa and other traditional kinds of music are very dominant and that's also what people dance to :D
Prepare yourself. Buy a bottle of Medellin Rum and finish it on the street with your friends
Saturday
On Saturday we went mountain biking to one of the mountains nearby for a picnic. There are reconstructions of an old Spanish settlement on the peak. Afterwards we went to popular underground Salsa club to dance. Since there is always a shortage of men, there were enough girls willing to show me the basic steps of Salsa. I was really worried at the beginning, but basic (primitive) salsa is actually not so hard. There is a rather large distance between you and your partner, so you don´t step on each others feet all the time. Luckily there are no pictures :D
The flowers are not plastic, this week is the Medellin Flower Festival
Picnic with tacos and handmade guacamole
Predrinking at the parque periodista, where the local punk, rock and hip-hop scene gathers
street rap
more street food: Bananas are deep-fried, squashed, deep-fried again, and then topped with meet and guacamole. Insanely greasy but even more so “yummy” :D
Salsa dancing doesn´t exclude the popular Medellin Rum
from left to right: my airbnb host Robin, my two Salsa teachers (forgot their names), and Juan who celebrated his 29th birthday yesterday
Tomorrow is the final day of Medellins “Feria de las Flores”. There was so much to see, I will keep that separated :D
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