Back at work after the second three-day weekend in a row!! Colombians celebrate anything and everything, which I do not mind at all. Carleton should really get more in the spirit.

Anyway, I went on a little 2-night trip to a town called Salento, in the coffee-growing region of Colombia. I went with John, Theresa (seriously, there should be prizes for third-wheeling. I would win them all), and a few of their friends who I didn't know very well. Salento was beautiful; the town itself was very touristy, but most of the tourists were Colombian so I didn't mind at all. There were little stands lining the streets, selling arepas (these corn cakes that are really kind of like cardboard. I'm not sure why people eat them), and fresh mango and trucha (trout, the area is famous for them). On Saturday we took these jeeps up to this place  where we rented horses up into the mountains with cloud forests!! Unlike in the U.S. where there are lots of guides, and you wear a helmet when you ride horses, they pretty much just gave us the reins and said go, and off we rode. It was a little more exciting, just because I really was not sure that my horse was not going to go wild and throw me off down the mountain. Or that it wasn't going to fall on the really steep, rocky paths, that the horses slipped on more than a few times. But we made it, and then spent the rest of the day hiking up higher, and then all the way down through the beautiful forests. Cloud forests aren't the same as rain forests, but they still have different layers. There are some reeally, really tall trees, some shorter trees, and then some tall bushes with HUGE leaves. All of the plants looked really exotic and jungle-y though, and there were vines and enormous, colorful flowers everywhere, and tons of these huge butterflies.

So that was all good, except that the other people I was with were kind of weird. It's hard to get a sense of people when you don't really speak the same language, but after three days with these guys I've decided it isn't just a language barrier - they are not people I would be friends with even if I spoke Spanish. For one thing they are all about thirty, and you really do change a lot and enjoy different things at 30. But for another, sometimes you don't change a lot, apparently, since these guys seriously just made sexual jokes the entire time. Even after I learned the appropriate slang to understand the meaning of these jokes, it just was not THAT funny, not for 3 days. I'm not that good at being subtle though, and they could tell that I found them all a little bit annoying, so I feel bad about that. Seriously could not be helped though. Especially since one of the guys got pretty drunk the first night and would not stop asking me why I was single, whether I wanted to go out to eat with him when we got back, why I wouldn't dance salsa with him, etc, etc. And classically unsubtle, I finally just left the bar and went to bed, so HE FOLLOWED ME BACK, not understanding why I wasn't having the time of my life.

It's good to be back in Cali though, and Dan and Sammy are coming to visit tomorrow, so can't wait to speak LOTS of English!!