Two acquaintances of mine, Sarah and Sergio, broke up around August after being together for two years and living together and even buying a house together. I went out with Sergio last week and we talked about our heartaches without going into any details– sin entrar en detalles. Well, we didn’t really talk about our heartaches. We just talked about what we’ve learned from our breakups. I told him I didn’t want to know any of the reasons why they’d broken up, nor would I allow him to say a single negative thing (true or not) about his ex. Of course, I did the same thing for F. Not that that was difficult–there is not one negative thing I could say about him, nor would I if there were. All I can do is sincerely heap praise on him and express to others my gratitude to him for being who he was/is. For loving me the way he did. After listening to my loving words, it’s only natural that Sergio and others would then wonder if perhaps there is any chance of us getting back together, or if I’m still in love. Of course, the answer is no, no, and a thousand times no. There can’t be going any back in life. What’s done is done. I have to move on. I have moved on. (For the second question, of course I am. It’s a process– you don’t fall in love in a day. How can one expect to fall out of love so quickly? Can some people do that? I wonder. I mean, I’m over him in my mind. But logic doesn’t always trump the various chords in my heart. Which get pulled at at the most unexpected of moments. Won’t I always love him at least a little bit? Don’t roll your eyes. If you’ve been through this before, you’ve come out on the other side, and I’m still in it. It’s hard to accept as possible something you’ve never experienced yet. Falling out of love will be just as much a miracle for me as falling in love was, but I do expect it to happen in time.) At some point as I was saying how over him I am, seriously feeling as calm as could be, Sergio told me he could tell I was still immensely sad. Which I then became, all of a sudden. It’s okay to me, being sad. I don’t see it as a fault in any way. What would it say about me if there wasn’t any sadness? It’s only been just over a month.

I did move on. I broke up with my boyfriend and left the country. Sergio and Sarah broke up and as they have many of the same friends and are both very involved with the small dance scene in this city, they end up at the same events constantly. Last night, they were both at Mad Donna’s, an extremely small space to begin with. I spoke with both of them. Which must be harder? Leaving or staying put? Changing countries or having the courage to see your ex over and over again? I can’t imagine. Not that there was any possibility of me staying in Medellín. Still, I am fortunate in a way. I got to come home, finally. I got a “clean slate” and a homecoming. He’s out of sight . . . which surely helps make him a little more out of mind as well. No, it does. It definitely does. Whatever the circumstances, though, no matter who does the breaking up, no matter who seems more likely to be broken, who stays and who goes, who gets to keep most of the stuff, who has had their heart broken countless times before and who is suffering for the first time, who is more emotional and who is more stable, who seems to get over it quicker, who was more in love in the first place, who starts dating again sooner or even sleeps with another person first, who this, who that. What does it matter to try to quantify pain? How can one ever know? It is a terribly painful experience for all involved. It must be felt and then must be let go of. I’m still feeling it, absolutely. I take a lot of deep breaths and try to keep busy, social, and distracted, but I don’t mind it when profound sadness comes over me all of a sudden. Not that you’d know. (Or do you? You can tell me.) All day, I’m smiling and laughing, dancing and blogging and looking for work. I don’t think anyone who’s been around me would say that I’ve been wallowing in it. It almost always strikes when I’m alone, anyway. I know that it has its place. I swear, I’m learning so much from it. I am growing. I am deepening. But, I’m not trying to rush it, either. I have to grieve our loss.

I’m incredibly grateful that his sister, Lina, has kept in touch with me. We’ve emailed and chatted many times, and she’s been unspeakably kind and loving to me. We cry together. Just because I’m supposed to have stopped loving him at the drop of a hat doesn’t mean that I’m obligated to stop loving his family, and I’m so grateful that they have been nothing but wonderfully supportive. One of the hardest things for me, something that just racks me with grief, is the fact that not a single person from “my life” ever met him. Not one of you. No family, no friends. A few people from Bogotá did, though– Fanny and Flavio and Renee and their three kids, Franchesca, Franco, and Alessandro. I so longed, longed for you all to know him and love him like I did, and he also longed to meet you. He really did love all of you. It’s a moot point now, of course, but it kills me that I can’t really talk to a single person here about him. I mean, with anyone that knows him and could say anything meaningful about him, understand why I loved him, have any observations of our relationship, or insights on why we broke up. Yes, of course, you all know why. You’ve heard why; you just never got to see us. It makes me feel much more lonely, to be honest. He’s just a stranger to all of you, and this grief is something that I have to bear alone. Of course, at the end of the day, even if you had known him, I’d still be alone in this. (I hope I don’t sound accusing– I know that you all loved him as well, across the distance. Kayla and Francisco sent him a present and note and emailed with him; I talked about him very in depth with Anna Laura and Marshall, and they read each other and wrote about each other. Of course, things couldn’t have been otherwise, and the distance was very real.) Anyway, all that to express why I am so grateful to Lina. Thank God that there is at least one person I can talk to who knew us. I love his family.

Today, I went and cleaned a family’s house for five hours and made $100. They had a seven year-old girl named Nadia. I know it sounds silly, but F. and I, even before we met, had decided that we were going to name our daughter that. You know… if we’d gotten married and stayed together forever and all that, which we took for granted, of course. I had only ever met two other Nadias in my life. When the dad asked me why I’d moved back to the US, I briefly mentioned having broken up with my boyfriend of one year. He expressed his condolences and then asked, “Was he the one?” What an unexpected question! It really sent me reeling. I practically tripped over myself to quickly stammer, “Well, of course not. We broke up.” as if that settled it. It’s just better for me if I look at these things as having easy, simple answers. He then went on to say, well, you never know. Sometimes you make a mistake. Ahh, that’s something I can’t consider. It doesn’t really work like that, right? There’s no right and wrong, and none of us have soulmates. Sure, I loved F. a tremendous amount and he loved me, but he and I both know that I was unhappy. Which then made him unhappy. We were very different in many areas. My life was a mess. There were just too many holes in the dike that we had to put our fingers in to keep the water from gushing out, and we were both exhausted. Was he the one? I don’t know what that means; all I know is that we couldn’t be. We weren’t. There was a lot of love, yes. Many, many other things were lacking. I was lacking, especially. I took much more than I gave, not out of selfishness but out of a great neediness. We just weren’t set up for success, and we eventually both let go out of love. I wish both of us the best. All good things must come to an end, anyway, and I am immeasurably grateful for the year we had.

I can’t imagine that anyone has read this whole thing. If you have, thank you. I just needed to get some things off my chest.

One of the most interesting parts of having a blog is seeing how people find you through Google. I’m sure you all have some interesting search terms. You know, lately I’ve been all wrapped up with my Spanish blog, Vocabat, and I’ve been pleased that it’s been getting a pretty strong amount of traffic, both from people I know and people I don’t. I do get a lot of visitors via Google, but I haven’t had the blog long enough to have many search terms worth writing home about. This blog, though, for all its many faults and disappointments, does have the factor of relative longevity, and so it’s accumulated its fair share of colorful searches. Here’s a compilation of my favorites.

michelle rouillard (#1 search term)

empanada costume (#2)

importance of stars in the sky (asked many different ways)

the back of shampoo bottles in english and spanish

praying caricature

sensual caricature

caricature horse

two men having lunch caricature

empanada caricature

flouried language

floury scent

floury weather

you look floury

floury ass

saying cream off the top

a very small man came shyly into the room

Saturday, my friend Lorena and I saw a movie called Desert Flower at a theater downtown. We decided on the movie when we got to the theater, and it was literally the only movie that interested me even a thread. I had already seen Eat, Pray, Love twice (once in English, once in Spanish, neither time by choice, though it was ok), and all the others looked insufferable. Trying to be flexible, irrationally optimistic (well, you never know, maybe I will like the movie about the owl warriors) and separate the very bad from the merely bad, I resigned myself to a mediocre movie and decided that I could still be happy. At least I had a friend to spend time with who wanted to treat me to a movie. (Really, I talked myself into thinking that I could sit through Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole as a better alternative to most of the other movies that were showing). The aesthetic of the poster for Desert Flower looked like it might be good, though, and we decided to see it, even though it meant waiting two and a half hours. There was plenty to do in the meantime. It was actually a very good movie. It’s based on the true story of Waris Dirie, a supermodel who grew up in the Somalian desert. Like most women there, she was subjected to female genital mutiliation when she was only three years old. When she was 13, she ran away in the middle of the night to escape having to be the third wife of a a much older man, crossing the desert and somehow making it to Mogadishu. She eventually made her way to London, where she was homeless for a period (long? short?) and was eventually discovered by a famous photographer while scrubbing floors at McDonald’s. She became an incredibly famous and successful supermodel (look her up- you’ll be stunned by how beautiful she is), and apparently became the first famous person to speak openly about FGM and bring light to the issue. The barbaric procedure is performed worldwide on 6,o00 girls daily. Dirie retired from modeling and became a UN Special Ambassador for the elimination of FGM and has dedicated herself to launching campaigns against the practice. Incredibly brave and compassionate. A wonderful surprise of a movie. Who knows how it got down here to Colombia? Informative and moving, I definitely had tears in my eyes at the end and sorrow in my heart, thinking of the incredible suffering and danger that it is to be a woman in so many parts of the world. I must do something that truly helps others and brings light and hope to those who need it most. Or maybe I will teach and train those who will. Either way, my life has to count. I don’t want to be frivolous.

Today I went to church, came home and napped, and then went to the movies again and saw Inception with my friend Diego. Two good movies in two days- I’m turning a new leaf.

Yesterday, though, I went through the side door around the back, waylaid by a passageway of terra-cotta pigs and wooden utensils. I went in and stopped at the first produce corner I passed. The seller was sitting with his back to me, a large piece of lettuce on his head. I immediately decided that I liked him, smiling wryly to myself, and went about my business looking at the tomatoes in the crates outside his section. He presently noticed me and swaggered over, and I noted that he had taken off his hat. Oh that, he said nonchalantly, well it was just so hot and you really can’t even imagine how perfectly refreshing it was. He then graciously offered to hold on to the mirror for me as I dallied with the tomatoes. I chose three and then asked him to weigh them for me and tell me how much they cost. I arrived at the market with exactly 5000 pesos in hand (US $2.80) and hoped to spend all of it on produce without going over. When it turned out that they were only about 700 pesos– oh, that’s nothing, I said– I sauntered over to the apples.

He then walked up to me, a granadilla cupped in his hands. Te la regalo– take it. It’s a present. Smitten, I beamed and thanked him, and then verbally tried to remind myself how to eat them, being as they are such peculiar little fruits. You have to press in your thumb right here, he indicated, yes, that’s it. I did so, puncturing the strange fruit’s cardboard-like armor and then held it while he helped me peel away the weird bread-like interior that covers the fleshy, seedy center. It can be such a mess to eat these, I remarked, and quite sensual, trying to insinuate that I would rather like a little privacy while slurping up those juicy, succulent seeds. He walked off and I stood there, placing the fruit to my mouth, my head tipped back, and I downed the seeds with their soft liquid capsules in two gulps. My eye caught those of a young employee in the counter, leaning on his broom, watching me. Pero no me mire! Don’t watch me, I implored. He smiled and shyly looked away.

I talked with the store owner about granadillas and other fruits, and he held up various fruits and asked me if I’d tried them. Of course I had, although many of them exclusively in juice. I may be obviously not-from-here, but I’m no spring chicken either. He held up the strange cactus-looking fruit, reminiscent of dragons, and I identified it as pitaya and rattled off to him its wonderful properties for curing constipation, although it’s best to be avoided, however, if you’re not trying to open the floodgates. Yes, maybe talking about constipation with a complete stranger was what endeared us to each other.

I chose my six apples and asked him why apples are relatively so expensive here, compared with other fruits. Are they all imported? Those were– we checked, Chile– and he told me that Colombia does grow one kind of apple, but he confessed that they were rather tasteless. A slight easy to overlook when you compare all the other delicious fruits they excel in. I asked him to weigh the apples for me and tell me how much it all came to, the tomatoes and the apples, sharing that I had only 5000 pesos to spend. I’ll give you the tomatoes for free, he announced. What? Why? No, really, there’s no need. What I have is more than enough. No, I just want to. Well, all right. So, how much do I have left? 1000 pesos (56 cents). Okay, then what can I buy for that much? Whatever you want. I looked around and the first thing that caught my eye was a big tray of bright red strawberries, about the amount in those large cartons they sell in the US, if not more. How much do those cost? 2400 pesos. Oh, well, what if I brought you the rest of the money tomorrow. No, you know what, don’t even worry about it. He slipped them into my bag, I shook his hand and asked for his name, Juan Guillermo, and told him that from now on I would always enter through the side door, that he would be my produce seller of choice. Which I meant, wholeheartedly.

And that’s the story of how I bought my produce yesterday and made a new friend.

So, now I’m living in Medellín with Felipo. Our neighborhood is either called La América or San Juan– it’s still a little unclear to me–and life is wonderful. I couldn’t have picked a better location if I’d tried, which is why I’m so glad I didn’t and left things up to my highly intelligent boyfriend instead. It’s close to the metro (yes, Medellín has a metro! and it’s beautiful! and NO, Bogotá, the country’s capital does not have a metro–draw your own conclusions), smooshed in between lots of great neighborhoods, and is the perfect mix of residential and interesting. Too residential and you get boring and have to cross town just to have fun. Too interesting and you get a place that’s too noisy and traffic-clogged and possibly dangerous. The area is calm and tree-laden and I feel very safe here. About three blocks away is a large food market/plaza where we get produce, fresh herbs and meat; around the corner there’s a store just like Aldi where I get staples; and about a fifteen minute walk away is Carrefour, a French supermarket chain where I can get all the fancy stuff you just don’t find in most places– feta cheese, Dijon mustard, lots of other stuff. But there are also lots of restaurants nearby, a legendary salsa club called Tibiri Tabara that we’re positively itching to go to, the main soccer stadium surrounded by sports complexes where you can work out and even swim for free, etc. etc. etc. We’re really centrally located and with the ever-present transport options of the metro, buses, taxis, and our own two feet, we’re far from stranded.

I’ve been working at home as a translator. I love it! I’m being paid mere pennies, but I enjoy the work and it’s a good way to get experience and my foot in the door, since the field–especially interpretation–interests me for when we move back to the US (no, I won’t be here forever!). Whereas the vast majority of translators are stuck translating toaster manuals and copyright law and other mundane documents, I’m actually translating literature! Woohoo– as you can see, I’m still very much in the honeymoon phase. Still, at least I can stay awake while doing it. Right now I’m translating a spy novella about a loony Colombian drug lord who hires Al Qaeda agents to destroy the Drug Enforcement Agency with missiles. Of course, only the CIA can stand up to the guy, hidden in his bunker in the Amazon, plotting biological weapons, and take him out. I spend my days now thigh-deep in dictionaries and thesauruses and it’s pretty great, if a bit lonely, so I’m trying to see if I can find some teaching hours on the side. We’ll see.

I’ve been cooking tons (way more than I’d cooked in the last two years in total) and maybe I’ll actually soon have a response to when people say to me, Oh,  you like to cook, do you? Well, what’s your best recipe? I’m no longer just a fan of the idea of homemade meals… I’m making them. Better late than never. Since Colombian food is highly traditional (cough cough) and not very varied, as well as on the insipid side of things, I decided I didn’t want to be that whiny, negative, ungrateful foreigner who just moans about the food here. I think my best conversion tactic is just cooking my own food and introducing others (and myself) to a fuller palate of flavors and combinations.  I try to make enough dinner every night so that Felipo can take the leftovers to work the next day, and I have a secret fantasy that the mouth-watering aromas of the succulent food I prepare will mercilessly waft over to all his coworkers, and they’ll start sending money home with him for me to make lunch for them, too. Though why be passive about it? I may just send him with a box of toothpicks and my business card, forcing him to spend his precious lunch hour going out and offering samples.

Well, let’s consider this a decent sample of life right now. I’ve been here for a month, couldn’t be happier in this city and with this man, and desire to share so much with all of you. More to come! And pictures, promise.

first of all, dispel any ideas you have about it being very hot here and me coming home with a tan. it´s cold, man. it´s officially winter here, though the weather feels more like when winter is shyly turning into spring.  today´s nice, though, as if the sun has decided to assert himself and remind us that he can do more than just sit there in the sky, looking pretty. the house we´re staying in is always cold. it´s sort of small by American standards (most non-American houses are), and the kitchen opens up to a covered patio area which leads to a few other tiny rooms. hard to explain, but it´s kind of like half the house is outside. and they always have all the doors open, meaning it´s no big deal to wander half-awake into the kitchen and see a tiny bird flitting about the pots and pans.

now that I´ve led you to the kitchen, I suppose I have to tell you about food. the juices here are amazing. we have fresh juice every day from the most delicious fruits. mora (blackberry), marracuyá (passionfruit), mango, lulo, tomato-from-a-tree (??), and sometimes feijoa, which grows on a tree out on their patio. they´re so good. actual food-wise, as you´d expect, lots of rice and beans and meat. everything here is so fresh. I open the refrigerator and feel like I´m looking at the produce section of the grocery store– the shelves are overflowing with vegetables. naturally, this doesn´t lend itself to snacking, unless you´re the sort who´s happy to ´snack´ on a carrot (and I, as a rule, am not.)

the driving here is so fluid, and two lanes change into three which change into four in the blink of an eye, or one aggressive taxi driver. there´s so much weaving in and out between cars, and cutting people off is just the way things work. you really have to have quick reflexes. there are lots of motorcycles on the roads, as well as bicycles on the far right. there´s no designated lane for the bikers, but everyone gives them just enough room to get by. you do sometimes see horse-drawn carts, and occasionally even poor chaps drawing heavy carts on their own backs.

finally, there´s one feature of Bogotá that I just can´t get over. on every street corner and sidewalk are several people, men and women, with open boxes like small, brown briefcases filled with cigarettes and candy, a row of lollipops forming a colorful, plastic hedge around the whole thing. people can come up and buy one cigarette, or a piece of gum or two. the vendor usually also has a cell phone, which people can borrow and then pay for the minute they used. I don´t know, it´s just something about the smallness of the thing that I love. I mean, one cigarette!!! the simplicity of it all is so nice. makes so much sense, in a way. in another way, I guess not. anyway, that´s how things are here in Colombia.

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I wrote that four years ago, right after my three-week stay in Colombia. It was tucked away in an old, abandoned blog that hadn’t seen the light of day in millennia (sound familiar?), but now someone, Felipo, is in love with me, and all the younger Katies within and everything I write and have ever written, think and have ever thought, so when I remembered that old blog’s existence, I let him fall in love with the 20 year-old Katie as well, silly and unabashedly eager as she was.

I reread this and it makes me smile, I make myself smile, but it also makes me cry, really hard. I miss being so full of life, so readily charmed and captivated by its details and surprises. I miss having my heart open to people and places, to piquant joys and dashing disappointments. I want to reawaken.

I read this line in an article in El Tiempo today. The article was about an experiment performed in several countries among young adults, studying the psychological effects of requiring them to disconnect from technology for twenty-four hours.

Y el pasar 24 horas sin conectarse fue, para muchos de ellos, una experiencia que rasgó el telón tras el cual ocultaban su soledad.

Having to go twenty-four hours disconnected from technology was, for many of them, an experience that pulled back the curtain behind which they had been concealing their loneliness.

My basis for Plan B was an article I read a few weeks ago about an American who was recently released from prison after fifteen years in Peru. I watched a video made shortly after her arrest in which she spoke well but with a very strong accent that really grated on my ears. Fast forward to fifteen years later- the difference was remarkable. She is now completely fluent and has little to no accent. It shouldn’t come as much surprise; fifteen years immersed in a sea of Spanish will do that to you. So, I wrote about how I envied her and how prison would be the ideal environment for a language learner. You’d have no distractions, unlimited time, and lots of new friends to practice with (the guards and fellow inmates). Heck, in fifteen years’ time, I could probably come out fluent in five languages.

Since I’m already here in Colombia, it shouldn’t be too difficult in theory to think up the perfect small crime and get myself locked up. However, it’s almost impossible to go to jail in this country, despite how much one might want to. The political system is so corrupt, and crooked judges release major criminals all the time. Bummer for me- it will take some real creativity to think of a way to get myself committed. So, I asked others to help me think of a good crime so I can start setting my penal dreams in motion.

Ok. And then. AND THEN.

The post was pretty popular, with a lot of people reading it and commenting, most of them laughing. One guy, however, was oblivious to the joke. He wrote me very concerned:

I’m not going to correct you, but you should know that your Spanish is very good. What you wrote genuinely caught my eye. To be honest, I don’t know if you wrote it as a joke or if you actually want to carry out these plans.

I don’t think that marrying or going to prison are the best ways to learn a language. So, don’t take it lightly. Going to prison is the worst idea you could ever have. In prison, you’re not going to find cultured politicians who swindled millions of dollars; no, you’re going to find ordinary prisoners who raped, killed, kidnapped, etc… Prison is a complicated place. In addition, the day you get out, if you have a prison record, you’re not going to be “the bilingual” or “the trilingual” that everyone wants to employ in their company. The truth is that, in the outside world, you will be totally discriminated against. It’s not uncommon at all for people to not trust people who were in prison. You’ll just end up creating a terrible reputation for yourself all because you just wanted to study Spanish.

On the other hand, marriage… hmm, that could also be dangerous, especially to do it that way. Many men (not very advisable or good) might say to you, “Oh, of course, I’ll marry you!” But I don’t think you’re going to be very happy with a guy you don’t love and that you don’t even get along well with. Not to mention bringing children into this world with a person you chose completely randomly, without love…

I think the best way is through hard work. Look, there are a million ways for you to be able to talk all day in Spanish (or all the time you have free). For example, since you have internet access, you can use Skype to talk to be able to work on your accent and pronunciation. You can meet a lot of people this way, and it’s free and very safe. You might even fall in love with someone this way, but at least it would be with the right kind of person and not some kind of arrangement.

Ö Ö Ö

Wow. This guy really thought I didn’t have a clue! I mean, I ‘m crazy but not THAT crazy. Sheesh- I’m a little alarmed that I came across as so convincing in my post. I assume that most people know tongue-in-cheek when they see it, especially with half-baked ideas like these. I guess they´re just crazy enough, however, to have a ring of truth to them. Well, count this as my laugh of the day- laughing so hard that it was painful. I mean, can you even IMAGINE? Voluntarily getting yourself sent to prison just to have some peace and quiet to study a language?? You can’t make that stuff up… or even consider believing it if you hear it.

Because Colombia is passion!

As we read these stories… we can have some morals and some answers of dudes that we have and we need help to solve them.

(Dudas in Spanish = doubts)

People often say tengo una duda to say that they have a question, a lingering doubt, something they need cleared up (literally, I have a doubt). I will smile really hard the day someone innocently raises their hand in class one day to announce that they have a dude.