Prado, Colombia

What a way to end spring break. I was basically at Shady Shores except in Colombia.
Wednesday night I spent the night at Beth (the director of ECA)'s mother-in-law's house so Beth and her husband, Rafa could pick us up at the same place at 5am. We got picked up Thursday and went to go pick up another girl, probably at least 2 years older than me named Anya. She's friends of Beth and Rafa and a Russian missionary here to work for a church as a Russian/Spanish translator. We drove 4 hours to Prado, which is south of Bogotá in what's considered "hot country", and for a good reason too. We parked at a dock to load our stuff into a boat and as soon as the car turned off I was sweating, and don't think I stopped sweating til I got home. We loaded our stuff on the pontoon and waited for Rafa's brother, Francisco and family (wife Carry, kids Sebastian 10, Silvia 7, and Cecelia 5) to arrive. Once all on the boat we took the 45 minute boat ride to the house. This lake was hand made in the 70s, it's a dam surrounded by mountains and it's HUGE. And gorgeous. The house has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a straw roof, a pool, 5 hammocks, a pontoon, and 2 jet skis. Talk about living the life. Thursday consisted of lunch, then a nap and swimming at 3:30. We jumped off the dock and just kept swimming (Dory would be proud). While Beth, Carry, and I swam, the others were learning how to drive the jet skis. They periodically drove to where we swam to see if we wanted a ride, so at one point I got on one. Now the first time was somewhat awkward seeing as I did not know Francisco or Sebastian yet and here I am behind them on a jet ski, and I've never been on one before so I was absolutely terrified but as soon as he started driving I was in heaven. It's like as close to flying as I'll ever get, unless I decide to go skydiving. It was magical. The mountains were gorgeous and the sun was setting behind them. At some point we were going so fast and the wind was in my face it almost made me want to close my eyes but I couldn't miss out on seeing anything. We ate dinner and played games and went to bed fairly early, as we had all been up early to travel. Friday morning the pool is clean! We decided to take a pre-breakfast swim to cool off and work up an appetite. After breakfast the 3 kids end up becoming my best friends. They wanted to play games with me all morning and afternoon. It was fun honestly! And the cool thing was I hadn't had coffee yet. Until after lunch at 4pm I did not have coffee. Breakfast and lunch on Friday were very typical colombian meals that I already forgot the names of but breakfast was a soup and chocolate (hot chocolate), and lunch was rice, beans, ground beef, chorizo and avacado. I've had that meal so many times at this point. It's good but getting old. And the breakfast soup with hot chocolate is very common on the coast which doesnt make sense to me. It was so darn hot I could barely move and the typical things to eat are hot foods? I couldn't do it but I'm not from there so I'm not one to judge, it was still good food! After lunch we waited again for the sun to be less strong before going out into the lake again. This time we all got on the pontoon and went further out into the lake before jumping off (the kids and most adults had life jackets on). This way abuela Victoria could sit in the boat and watch so she wasn't alone in the house. We swam around for a while and there was 1 jet ski taking people out and back, which I naturally went on! Dinner was leftovers I think. Let me say one more thing about the food though: 1st I can't get enough of the juice! You literally take th fruit, put it in a blender with water and some sugar and that's your juice. And the types of fruit we used to make them were amazing! Passion fruit, guava, orange for breakfast, and some others I don't even know! And 2nd, the fruit!!! It's 10,000 times better than in the states. I ate mango and loved it and didn't even realizing I was eating mango! It's a while new world of fruits that is going to change what I eat when I go back! But back to the trip. Friday night we played more games (I'm bringing Dutch Blitz to Shady Shores!), I read some more and went to bed. Saturday breakfast was french toast with juice, salchicha (sausage), mango and mini bananas. Played more games with the kids and read some more before lunch. It was actually funny cuz they kept wanting to play games with me but I kind of wanted t read so I suggested we go to the hammocks and read/talk. These girls are so cute they talked the entire time! It was like one of those where they were mostly talking to themselves and I was just reading and saying yeah every few sentences. Before lunch we swam in the pool again when it was Shady and Beth, Carry, Sebastian and Silvia created a cute water show to perform before lunch (Cecelia was hanging onto me in the shallow section but we made 1 apearance in the show). After lunch again we took the pontoon to the lake to swim and go on our last jet ski rides before heading out. We ended up leaving super late considering the 45 minute boat ride to shore and the 4 hour drive home. The boat ride was in the dark which was pretty scary and cool at the same time. There was traffic though so we didn't get back til almost 1am. Also we made the obligatory stop on a place called Espinal for a smoothie thing called avena. It's like an oatmeal smoothie with cinnamon and milk. It was super refreshing on the way there but it made me a little carsick on the way back because the road back was super windy and we were going pretty fast, I could feel it moving around my stomach and it didn't feel good. But I made it back and went to bed around 1:30. Leaving me exhausted now at 9pm and about to go to bed cuz school starts again tomorrw. Ready for a week of learning and teaching!Read more