July 20th was the first full day we were in Bogota and it is also the Colombian Independence Day (as well as Andy’s birthday….big 42!) There were a lot of people around but just like in the US, all the stores were still open. In the morning we took a walk around the neighborhood on our own. Maria Jose had taken us for a quick tour the day before so we felt a bit more comfortable.
    As we left the apartment building it was really different to have the front door opened for us with a cheerful Buenos Dias. Every apartment building has a security door man who is really just like the doormen you see in the movies. He runs to get the door for you, will call you a taxi, help you with your groceries, check ID of your visitors before he calls up to ask if you are expecting them, and is always smiling.
    Kirsten observed that it is like living in a little neighborhood. There are all kinds of little stores and shops for everyday things (not shops like clothes). There are bunches of beauty salons (pedicures are $4.00!) dry cleaners, a gym, little convenience stores (a latino 7-11!), small little restaurants, a fruit and vegy store (all fresh), a butcher, a cheese store, and icecream and fruit shop, a few bakeries, movie rental store, computer repair, telephone store (it is cheaper to go to these to make calls than to use the home phone), a few internet cafes and stores, and at the end of the 150th at the autopista del Norte (main N/S highway 5 short blocks away) is a small grocery store. If we go to the autopista and turn south, there is a vet and pet supply, furniture store, and my favorite place that I have to check out, a tile store (if you don’t know, I love to do mosaics and am looking forward to see what I can do with local materials!). The really cool thing is that every single one of these places will pick up or deliver directly to your apartment! Restaurants, grocery store, vet, all of them. You go around and collect all the phone numbers and just call for whatever you need! That is taking a bit to get used to, but will it ever be hard to give up next year!!!
    Anyway, we walked down, almost to the autopista to this little bread store that sells pan del horno….bread sticks with cheese mixed in the dough. Oh are they good! They also sell this drink called arena. This actually means oatmeal which is in the drink, but there is also milk, maybe coconut, vanilla….like a thick sweet milk. For 5000 (5 mil) pesos we had breakfast.
    After breakfast we went to visit Robert and Noelle who live just 2 blocks from us. Noelle was the high school principle last year and Robert works full time with his missionary organization (although this year he has apparently been recruited to teach 9th grade science at ECA as well!) They introduced us to a great phone service called Lingo which will let us get a phone number with an OK (405) area code and we can make and receive calls via the internet. I have subscribed already and am waiting for the equipment to arrive; will give you the number when we get it. I am trying to get our 285 number that we had in Edmond.  They have really been life savers in explaining how various things work, how to do things, etc.
   That afternoon, one of the high school girls, Natalia, was able to arrange for a group of the kids to go to the newest and supposedly largest mall in all of South America, El Centro Commercial de Santa Fe. It is located on the autopista about 10 minutes north of us. One of the dad’s picked us all up (9 of us squished in this SUV) and off we went. Because it was a holiday the mall was pretty crowded. It doesn’t appear that the mall has “anchor stores†as we think of them. There is a large store attached that is like a Target. But it is primarily high end small retail shops and it is fairly expensive. Being a holiday, there were a bunch of bands and as we were leaving a large open coffee shop area there was an incredibly good saxophone player performing. (The coffee shop is called, of course, Juan Valdez and apparently they are really expanding….watch out Starbuck’s!)
    After 2 hours of walking around we walked across the autopista (lots of pedestrian bridges) and had dinner with one of the other teachers, Kathleen. She and her husband are here with a mission that is serving very low income boys who live and learn at a farm outside of Bogota. If I understand correctly they are serving about 24 children. That evening, they drove us home and were we ever exhausted!
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