I disregarded the advice this time, so this is going to be looong ;) But it will have everything that I haven't told you so far, meaning that, probably, I won't have anything to write in a long time, so take your time to read it!

Let me start with the most obvious: what have I been doing here those past weeks? I am still not a hundred percent sure, but I'll just pretend for now. I am a volunteer at a little theatre in one of the poorest parts of the city. People here are not really the social class that you would regularly expect to visit a theatre so a local actor decided to found this organisation which offers plays with free entry once a week and different workshops for children and youth almost every day. The workshops include acting, circus and dance. And, well, I am giving them Karate classes. Whether that fits with the rest of the organisation or not, is open for everyone to judge. It's not like I got much support from anyone in the organisation, they mainly leave me to do what I feel like doing (which is part of the reason why I am not so sure what I am doing - or rather, not sure if what I am doing is what is expected of me). But the kids love it, and even apart from the classes, they are happy that I am there to keep them company, to chat and play with them, and once we even went to the local swimming pool together (although I would technically leave the 'swimming' out and just call it a pool, but the kids had fun, so who am I to complain). It's quite funny to see how the theatre has become a meeting point for so many children in the neighbourhood and how it has become something so important to them. The children also get to show off what they have learned in the workshops every once in a while and when they are lucky they even get some money (or at least food and drink) for their presentations). But it is quite obvious that the only reason why they take part in the first place (for most of them), is the simple fact that they have nothing else to do. It is a little bit strange to compare these children with European children. Well, first of all, European children you hardly ever see on the street. I remember distinctly living in any bigger city in Austria or the Netherlands, where after months of living there I barely even knew my nearest neighbours even by sight. Well, I have been here only few weeks and the whole street (and lots of kids from a few streets away) knows me and drops by regularly just to hang out because they are bored. It is not even the lack of a TV set in their house, or the fact that their parents are away working, both of which are certainly true for some of them but by far not for all. It just seems to be more natural to them that, when they are bored, they look for something to do out in the streets rather than inside the house. Probably a little bit like living in the countryside in Europe, only here we are far from countryside. Mind you, they do go to school but only half days. At least here in this part the school infrastructure seems to not be enough for all the kids so half of the children attend it in the mornings and half in the afternoon. So, the rest of the day they are bored...

Now, as to the Karate classes, I knew before, from my experience in Mexico, that teaching kids here would be different than in Europe. And it is a nightmare for every teacher because the attention span of the kids here is about five minutes long. I tried to teach them Karate the first day but by now I decided to just teach them some techniques and fun stuff and ignore the fact that, probably, in the end it has very little to do with real Karate. Which, in the end, doesn't really matter either because it's just so they have something to do. It's not like they are training to compete in the world cup or something.

The other thing about teaching anything here is, that as soon as you assume the role of a teacher, your name is gone, and everybody just calls you "profe". Which is strange because I am a teacher at best but certainly not a professor. Also, there are many "profes" around and I tend to not get it, that it is me they are addressing unless they say it right to my face (or we are actually in class). Well, I have long learned to not look interested if somebody is calling and you are not sure if they mean you.

A nice little comment about my name, which I do use when I meet people on the same level (which, for now, is mostly other 'profes'): There is a medium-famous artist (actress/singer) from Colombia who calls herself "Martina la peligrosa" (Martina the dangerous). Which is what many people here think of, when they hear my name. Which I take as quite a step up from Mexico where people, when they hear my name, tend to think of a song (by a male singer) which features a certain Martina who first was in love with the guy and then left him. Which is okay but la peligrosa is much preferable to me. This is how other people work on your own image...

Talking about image: In most other countries I have been to, more often than not it was men who wanted to get married to me. Here, this is surprisingly rare. I have literally not gotten even close to a marriage proposal. When I walk around sometimes I hear people (mostly men above 50) saying something like "pretty girl", but they say it to my back and not very loudly so I can only guess they mean me, but they do not seem too eager to draw my attention towards them. Which they wouldn't even when they were saying it more loudly but then it would be more annoying. This way, however, it feels not disturbing at all and apart from the looks I get I barely notice that I don't belong here, unless someone while talking to me, mentions my eyes.

Well, when I go shopping people also tend to ask me where I am from, but it is out of genuine interest and not because they want to get married to me. And both men and women ask the same way. By the way, The vast majority of people here have black hair and apparently nobody else has blue eyes but when it comes to skin colour you get the whole range from almost white to real dark. This being the result of a history including indigenous peoples, Europeans, and African slaves. Everybody here is a mix of everything, it seems. What is remarkable is the fact that the average skin colour gets a lot lighter when you leave the poor parts of the city and move towards the richer parts. Still, apart from a kind of institutional racism, which seems to be visible from this, racism in everyday life seems not very common here.

Now, I don't know if I have mentioned this before or not but if not, well, here it is: I know this is a major sin for any Austrian but more often than not, when people ask me where I am from I say Germany, because this is something they know, or have at least heard of. They may have heard of Australia and may even have an idea of kangaroos but I believe, they have a much better understanding of Germany (due to it being on TV more) than of Australia, plus Austria is certainly more like Germany than like Australia, so I prefer people thinking that I am from Germany than from Australia. So, you are allowed to hate me for that, but I am just not patriotic enough to enter in a ten minute discussion about Austria every time somebody asks me where I am from, especially considering that they won't know it anyway and I will always end up saying that Austria is next to Germany, so in their heads it will always be Germany anyway. Mind you, there was this one lady who, when I told here I am from Austria, told me about her sister that lives in Vienna. Well, these things can happen too, it's always a guessing game.

In fact, I am still very unsure about the world map in the head of Colombians. Other than Mexicans they do seem to know very clearly that there is a difference between Europe and the USA. Many of them seem to know Spain some even having been there. But then, it is also all depending on the level of education.

Well, anyway, the reason why I say this: when people talk to me about Germany, there seem to be two things that they have all heard about it. One, unsurprisingly, is Hitler. The other, possibly more surprisingly, is racism. Now, take that! Mind you, again, there certainly is some kind of institutional racism at work here, which maybe even Colombians themselves are not aware of. But I do think it is rather sad that Germany is known in Colombia literally only for its racism, well and its football team but racism being the more important one. Also, mind you, this wouldn't stop people from wanting to live there, because they still think that all Germans are rich and happy. The normal contradictory thinking of people who have never travelled...

A few more things about (my) life in this country: the Spanish spoken here has a few differences to the Spanish spoken in Mexico. Which is not surprising. Of course, terms for food are different (as is normal since they are culturally different). They also have a different way of pronouncing words in the diminutive form, which is used very often both in Mexico and in Colombia. At first, I thought they just have a different way of pronouncing them but then I saw it written too. For those who know Spanish: rato (a while), in Mexico is normally called ratito (a little while), whereas here they call it ratico (same thing). Takes some getting used to. The most difficult thing for me to get used to, however, is the way they address other people. Normally it's easy: you say "tu" for someone close to you or a child and "usted" for elderly people or adults that you do not know. Here, this is not at all so. I read (so don't know if it's true) that different parts of Colombia use different ways to address other people. This may be the cause for the fact that here all forms are being used and they confuse me wildly: "vos", the more southern (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) version of "tu" is used along with tu and usted apparently not at all depending on closeness or politeness. "Usted" being used towards children and between children, same as vos and tu being used the same but less often. I just decided to stick to my way of talking to people, because it is easier. Just making sure that when I address people that are higher in the hierarchy than I am, I use usted, just to be on the safe side. Which I normally don't like, but I believe that as a newby in the country I have to first earn the right to act contrary to social and cultural norms. It is very strange to address your football coach that way, however, I did that in Turkey too, so I slowly start getting used to it.

Another thing which is very different from my experiences in Mexico is the fact that people, once they asked me, where I am from, always complement me on my Spanish. It is certainly nothing better now than it was when I lived in Mexico - I still mix Italian words in, once in a while. But while in Mexico (I will never forget that one) there was this one guy who, after talking to me about life, work, politics and cultures for at least half an hour (in Spanish) said something to me like: "Oh, but you actually only barely speak Spanish, right?" To which I could barely answer anything at all. Just thinking of how every single Mexican (well, most) would gladly tell you (in Spanish) that they speak English very well but if you asked them (in English) where they are from, they wouldn't be able to answer the question (or even understand it). Whereas here I have never met anybody who thought that they could speak English well, even if they did so reasonably.

Now, let's get to the most important topic of all: food. Because, after all, life is all organized around food (and drink). I don't have a stove to cook here, but to be honest, even if I had one, I would probably not use it. Food you buy on the streets is just so cheap and then at least you get to taste the local cuisine. There are even vegetarian options available! So, the typical breakfast seems to be arepa which is kind of like a small but thick tortilla and they cut it open to put cheese, and if you want, ham, inside. They are cooked on grills just out in the street. Or else you eat eggs with something (meat or tomatoes, normally) for breakfast. The arepa-vendors disappear around noon and leave the streets to snack-vendors. Snacks are for the most parts fruits (mainly papaya and pineapple), which are eaten either as such or in a fruit salad or sold as juices (mainly oranges and mandarins). As for drinks, the biggest speciality seems to be the liquid that is squeezed out of sugar canes. They have special machines for doing that. I have not been brave enough to try it yet... The first part of the rainy season is over and it is now raining only about once per week. Although it was raining the last to nights and now it looks like rain again, so what do I know what the weather is really doing. Anyway mostly when I am out on the streets and want to buy something to drink I am not really looking for something very sugary. Maybe it wouldn't even be that bad, I just need to try it once when I am less thirsty...

Oh, well and for the other part snacks are fried slices of potatoes and bananas. Basically chips and banana chips, but they are freshly made, also right there on the street. I am sorry to say that the chips don't really taste different from any super market chips I have ever eaten. Next to that there are people selling ice ream on the streets. Well and then towards the night (which starts early because the sun goes down at six), the real food appears. This is then mostly meat - either pig or chicken, again they are roasted either on a grill on the street, or the more fancy version, in a thing that looks like a kebab-oven in good old Austria. When they roast a pig, then they put the whole thing on the BBQ - they are little. I guess cows are eaten too but only in little pieces and mostly as sausages (which are eaten a lot too). Well, next to all the meat there are tons of potatoes (evidence of the Inca heritage). The speciality are stuffed potatoes (I am afraid they are with meat but still need to find out) and breaded potatoes - literally like a little schnitzel but with potato instead of meat - which is actually quite tasty - and vegetarian if you don't mind it being fried in the same oil as the meat.

Next to that there are also empanadas, of course, with meat, and again fried. In fact, most things here seem to be fried and accordingly very fatty.

With all of this you can get sauces, but none of them are spicy. I met a few Mexicans here who hated the food because for them it doesn't have any taste at all.

Next to all of those, there is a bakery at what feels like every five steps. Some of them are open 24 hours. They sell bread of all kinds (well, white, sweet bread of all kinds), and all kinds of pastry. And dairy products. And drinks. It is true that all the bread is sweet, even when it is bread with cheese, which takes some getting used to, but I was quite quick, I must say. Well, clearly, you won't starve in Colombia!

Oh, I should also add, there is a pizza place in our street but I haven't tried the pizza there yet, both because I think it somehow doesn't belong and because I suppose it is probably quite expensive - things quickly seem expensive when you can have a whole meal for less than 1 Euro, but this is 3000 pesos... There are also Subway and other restaurants. There are also real fancy restaurants, but of course, I wouldn't go there.

Now, by now I have my places to go for food around here. But while the bakery and the supermarket are open according to their opening hours, the street vendors are a different story. They are usually there, but sometimes they are not. So you go out in the morning to get your arepa but your regular vendor isn't there. Which is not a big issue, of course, because the next vendor is just 100 metres down the road, but it is a little irritating still. Or, at least, different from what you are used to. That you are looking forward to a certain food and you go to get it but for an unknown reason, it's not available that day. And those days are not related to days of the week or holidays. Today is the second holiday since I came here. Other than that there are Colombian flags everywhere (which are rarely seen otherwise), you wouldn't know that. All shops and everything is just open as usual. The street vendors seem to just take days off according to their fancies - and very right they are!

Another remark on the food: as mentioned you can have a proper meal for 1 Euro or so. A bread with cheese at the bakery costs about 30 Euro cents when it is big. A serving of fried potatoes maybe 50 cents. I don't know about the prices for the meat but I assume they are not much more. A slice of pineapple costs also 50 cents (well, depending on the area of the city you buy it in). An orange juice costs up to 1 Euro, depending on the size. (That, actually is another funny thing: you get to buy juices in different sizes - like, big or small, but the would ask you how much you want to pay for it, rather than the size as such. So, say, you buy a juice for 2000 pesos. Then they take the plastic cup of the according size and fill it with juice. So far so good. But then, they hand you the cup and tell you to drink some, so they can top it up again. Why ever they don't just give you a bigger cup in the first place, I don't know but it certainly feels much nicer this way!) As I said before, there is sugar in all the bread, but the worst is the drinks: just like in Mexico, the cheapest drinks are coke-like things with water, sugar, colour and sparkling or not. If you want to drink something proper like an orange juice, you spend more money on drinks than on food - that is, if you get tired of tab water with chlorine in it. One good thing though: I get the feeling that prices around here are a much better representation of the real costs of food than elsewhere. So vegetables and especially fruits are cheap whereas dairy products are more or less the same price as in Europe and meat, I don't know the prices here or there but if I buy potatoes only it costs only about a third of when you buy the traditional potatoes with sausages. So probably meat also has a much higher price than vegetables.

Mind you, I still don't know what they eat when they cook at home, but will find that out later...

For now there is one last topic I need to touch before leaving you with this for the next few weeks: violence. Well, supposedly Colombia is one of the more dangerous places in Latin America. Colombia also has a rather difficult geography. Well, mostly, it is huge. It has mountains, coasts (both Atlantic and Pacific) and it has a lot of territory in the Amazonian. However, the vast majority of its cities and population are concentrated in the mountains. There are three big cities, Bogotá, Medellín and Cali, which form the triangle where most of everything in Colombia is happening. There are some bigger cities and some tourist places at the Atlantic coast, but really, most of everything is around here. On the other hand, around here is also where the violence of the drug war is basically completely eradicated. It may still be going on elsewhere but around here not. If you are unlucky you might get robbed but that's just about it.

Policemen (and women) are seen regularly around here, but mostly I see them buying food or chatting to random people. From what you see they have no fire weapons on them, only batons. Private security is common mostly in the richer parts of the city, where they guard parking lots, shopping centres and big shops. They tend to have fire weapons, which is a little strange if you know that policemen don't. But it certainly makes me feel saver than in other countries to see very few fire weapons around. In Guatemala you couldn't even get out of the airport without seeing a few machine guns and in Mexico military with machine guns used to drive by almost daily. I mean, as I said before, I do not seem to be prone to any kind of attacks but I certainly feel perfectly safe around here.

Oh, and a few last things I needed to report. As I said, we are in the mountains here, well, actually in a valley between two of the major mountain ranges of the Andes. You may remember what I mentioned about smog in Izmir. Well, I am sure there is smog here too. But more than that, the high humidity means that the air is always somewhat foggy at least in the distance. So for the first two weeks (until the rainy season ended or paused or whatever) I didn't even realize that the mountain ranges are all visible from within the city. It's funny how, one day, I walked the same road I had often walked before and suddenly I saw mountains in the distance wondering if I had been blind all that time but then realizing it was the clouds and mists that had covered them. Now the air is somewhat drier and the mountains are visible to help orientation. Which, by the way is perfectly easy anyway because the streets are numbered like in North America. And just like in North America this doesn't mean that people understand who it can be easy for a stranger to find their way around. Well, I won't comment on that.

Another interesting comment though: I must say I am sooo glad I am finally immune to the poison of mosquitoes and thank evolution or whoever for the fact that being immune to the poison in Europe obviously also means being immune to it here. It helps a lot! There are a lot of mosquitoes here (and black flies which I am slowly getting immune to - the hard way) and I am quite impressed with the fact that nobody (apart from myself) seems to even notice them. Nobody is complaining, it's like I am the only one who notices them, really. Everybody else must have been immune for years. Mind you, when I say, there are a lot of those, I mean, you constantly have five or so in your house. Not like in the Amazonian. They are just enough to be really annoying and when you kill one another will come to take its place. Like a universal law. Next to mosquitoes, by the way, the house is inhabited by cockroaches (1 or 2, I believe, two more died after I came, I don't know what I did to them), mice (or at least one, which is really, really cute, it is tiny and I am not sure what it feeds on but it is about the size of the cockroaches and when I am alone and don't move sometimes it comes out and I can look at it roaming around. Well, and then lately I also saw a gecko, although it might have been something else, I couldn't get close enough to find out and I only every saw it once. It might not get along all that well with the mouse...

Okay, now, finally, I will leave you with this. I know it is summer in the Northern hemisphere (which is a strange knowledge, knowing that there are no seasons here), so if you are there, enjoy it. I will write again in a while. Maybe by then I will know more about how long I will stay here and what I will do afterwards or not.