Colombia Forum

yolatengo
Joined 2019
Posts: 545

4 years ago

Blog post (again!)

4 years ago

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Today is the 2nd full day of mandatory quarantine in Medellin. It started at 7pm on Friday. There was a mad flurry for people to stock up on supplies and food during the day Friday. As a result, there were lots of shortages. Including toilet paper, like everywhere else. I hope history is kind to us!

Number 2 is a nation-wide quarantine arrives on Wednesday, giving us a 1-day break to live almost like a normal person. That’s scheduled to last for 19 days.

I am okay. Hopefully, there will be no interruption in getting meals from the woman that normally cooks and delivers them. She has to use a delivery service.

It was a real hassle getting newspaper delivery to my apartment. Of all days, they pick today to start! Fortunately, the porters know me and treat me well as I do them. It was under my door this morning. Pleasant surprise at first. Then the reality. I spent the next few hours or so trying to decide what to do with it, haha. I’m super sanitary now. I don’t let anyone in the apartment. I received a grocery delivery yesterday and wiped everything down before it entered my apartment. A possibly virus-infested newspaper was messing up my plans.

I was jonse-ing to read the paper. Finally, Terry had the solution. Rip off the first and last pages and voila!

Every Sunday for about the last 4 months, we’ve been going out to different places around town for an early morning brunch. It was only Terry and me for the first 4 weeks or so. James joined us after about that time. Occasionally, there’s a guest, but James, Terry and I are the hardcore. Most recently we’ve been eating in Provenza, the nice part of the nice area in Medellin (Poblado). The stated meeting time is 8:30 but we’re all usually early. We’re trying to set an example to the paisas, haha. A ritual is a ritual. We stick around one place that we like until we got tired of it and move on to another restaurant. For the past number of weeks, it’s been Ganso y Castor, home of eggs benedict that rival anything in the US. After hogging a table for a while (someone actually yelled at us as we were leaving for taking a prime table for so long, a gringo of course), we went to the usual café #2, Pergamino, a few blocks away. Pergamino doesn’t open until 10am, on the late side for us. So we do the 2nd best thing and have our 2nd coffee there. They also happen to make excellent coffee. There’s lots of American food and English spoken in Poblado, especially Provenza So, we’re right at home. The “event” probably takes up half the day. A tradition broken.

This is the sort of thing I miss, that and just being around people.

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