a little jaunt to Cartagena

Mac has had this last week off of school for some Colombian-mandated holiday week. We decided to head up to Cartagena for a few days to enjoy what I have missed the most while living in Bogota: sun and warmth and humidity. Cartagena did not disappoint.

Some photos of our mini-vacation:


street scenes at dusk and at night

Outside of our hotel, Bovedas de Santa Clara

The view from our hotel room window

Our hotel was a small boutique hotel so part of their deal is that you can use the pool and eat breakfast at the very swank Sofitel across the street.
The courtyard at the Sofitel has a couple resident toucans who visited us at breakfast. (The breakfast there, by the way, is the best hotel breakfast I've ever eaten.)


And the pool was pretty spectacular as well!

a beautiful view from inside the really intimidating Inquisition Museum
courtyard

some lovely ladies from Cartagena

folkloric dancing in a square

My just-out-of-the-ocean-fresh grilled fish lunch on our day trip to the Rosario Islands

I'm already trying to figure out when we can go back!

baking at high altitude, part 2

Last week I made a promise to myself that I would bake a carrot cake from scratch before my dearest Brazilian friend in the world got here last Friday afternoon. When Gisele eats my carrot cake, she makes me feel like I'm Martha Stewart (except without that pesky jail sentence and the snooty attitude).

I did some research and between what I learned from my research and an email that my friend Trisha who used to live here sent me, I was armed and ready.

The problem is that when you've been taught to bake by a mother who taught home economics for a very, very long time, you learn that baking is a science, a chemical process that requires the exact precise combination of leavening agents and flour and liquid and whatever else goes into such scientific chemical processes. (Science was not my forte.)

So if a recipe calls for one cup of flour, I was taught to spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup (a cup for dry ingredients, not a not-wet cup) and then level it off with the flat side of a knife. That's how I've always baked, namely because I don't have confidence in my baking abilities or skills to just add a little of this or a pinch of that.

So you can imagine how against the grain of me it goes to read these high-altitude adjustments that say things like "add 1-4 tablespoons of flour to your recipe". I'm sorry, but how do I know if I need 1 or 4 more tablespoons? You also have to add another egg, add less sugar, add less baking soda and powder, add less oil, and add more liquid. It's all incredibly and completely imprecise and that makes me crazy.

The other thing that makes no sense to me is that you have to add more flour and more liquid. Shouldn't those just cancel each other out and take you back to square one?

Anyway, I made the carrot cake with great trepidation. It might not be the best carrot cake I've ever made but it was pretty good if I do say so myself. Sadly, to repeat it will require a stroke of good luck or heavenly blessing because I just sort of willy-nilly measured and added and took away.

I will relish in this baking victory because it may not be mine again any time soon!

P.S. I will post soon on our amazing weekend with Gisele and Flavio, including what was probably the best meal I've ever had in my life at a restaurant here called Criterion. To start salivating now, go to www.criterion.com.co ! We had the tasting menu and it was quite simply divine. More to come!

just so you know...

I don't want you to be worried sick about me, so I made it home safe and sound today. Mac and I had a very nice taxi driver this morning who agreed to call me in a reservation when we got to the sports club and he knew exactly where we were to tell the dispatcher. Mac's school van pulled in right behind us so I asked the driver if he had room for one extra passenger (me) on the way home. He said he did (and it turned out he had more than enough room because a lot of the kids had gone home with their parents or friends). I told the wonderful taxi driver not to worry, that I was going to ride home in the school van. He gave me his cell phone number and said to call him if I got in any sort of bind, that he would come get me. He got a nice fine tip for his courtesies.

Dia de la Raza was a lot of fun and eventually I'll post some photos and video. The Cha Cha Slide was a total hit and Mac had a ball (which you'll see in the video at some point). The food that I did eat was great - I had these two tostadas from the Mexican tent that were outstanding. And I also had two yummy homemade chocolate chip cookies from the USA tent because you have to support the home team, right?

And in other news of the day, Jimmy got promoted. Hurray! This means, in part, that our year apart wasn't as huge a sacrifice as it could have been. We're looking forward to celebrating this weekend with our best Brazilian friends Gisele and Flavio who hopefully will show up our doorstep at any moment. Their flight was supposed to land nearly 2.5 hours ago but they've yet to show!

I think it's going to be an exceptional weekend!

would you allow me to vent

I love Mac's school. I really love Mac's school. He's getting a top-notch education, of that I have no doubt.

Tomorrow is the Dia de la Raza celebration at school. Dia de la Raza is like their Colombus Day but they apparently really do it up here beyond just having a day off school or work. This is a full-blown festival to celebrate multi-culturalism and diversity in race, culture, nationality and religion. The actual holiday is October 18, but the school is closed for a vacation week between tomorrow and October 18.

What this means in practical terms for Mac is that Mac's age group has had to learn the Cha Cha Slide (which he performs with the gusto of a hip hop artist out of downtown Detroit); he has to wear red, white and blue and a baseball cap; and he has to march into the opening ceremony with the other Americans and Canadians (they lumped us altogether) in sort of an Olympic Opening Ceremony fashion with something like "Born in the USA" playing.

What this means in practical terms for me is that I have to send in Oreos and potato chips to be sold, I have to loan a crock pot for hot dog cooking, and I have to provide 200 cocktail napkins. Oh, and I have to be there from 8:30am to 2pm tomorrow.

The problem is that "there" isn't the school; it's some former German sports club near the school that the school bought for its sports complex but which mysteriously doesn't have a street address. I've booked a taxi to take me in the morning but I can't book a taxi to bring me home because to book a taxi in advance, you actually have to have a physical address. I'm sure this is not surprising for you, the well-above-average intellectual reading this blog. It's apparently an unusual concept for the woman at school who answered the phone because when I called to get the address today, she told me to just use the map. Well this is great, Ms. Rocket Scientist, but what good does the map do when it's in my hands and not the taxi driver's? On the online taxi order form, you actually have to fill in the address and not draw a map. And if you call to order the taxi, by golly you also have to tell them the address. It's novel, I know.

So right now, the odds are very good that Mac and I are going to be stuck out in the hinterlands tomorrow afternoon. Nobody seems as preoccupied by this as I am. If you don't hear from me after tomorrow, please email Colegio Gran Bretanha to see if they can go around all the cow pastures out by the school to see if there's an American woman and her child wandering aimlessly. Seriously. And if we're not there, we might be somewhere on the 10 miles of highway between there and Bogota.

Thanks. Oh and Happy Dia de la Raza. Here's to celebrating all the peoples of the world, including Ms. Rocket Scientist.

The Fighter

Last August, I went to Boston to visit our childhood friend who was working on the film The Fighter. If you need a refresher on my trip, you can read about it here and here.

The trailer's come out for the movie's opening in December and I thought I'd share it with you here.

I feel personally vested in the movie since I saw Mark Wahlberg up close and personal and got to sit in the producer's chair while they were filming. I mean, my name might even be in the credits somewhere since I was such an important hanger-on around the set. I'm just saying...

Tuesday musings

This morning my Spanish teacher was 15 minutes late arriving because of the awful Bogotano combination of rainy weather, bad traffic and aggressive drivers. For each of those 15 minutes, I prayed fervently that she wasn't going to show. But as the priest said in the homily on Sunday (yes, we did go to a Catholic Church on Sunday and quite frankly we got more out of it in one service than we did out of the last 4 weeks at the Protestant Church), sometimes God's answer is "no" and the teacher showed up.

In addition to my praying, I was reading the latest edition of Oprah's magazine and I came across a quote in an article about the interior designer Nate Berkus that I really liked. The quote from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem" follows:

"Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
that's how the light gets in."

In other words, we don't have to be perfect because nothing is and isn't intended to be.

This concept completely freed me during my Spanish class to just do my best. My Spanish will never be perfect, my flower arranging will never be perfect, my childrearing will never be perfect, but as long as I ring the bells that still ring, the light is getting in and that's what matters.

catching up

1. The cocktail party on Thursday night was fabulous. We had about 70 people show up, the food prepared by the caterer was marvelous, the bartenders we'd hired were exceptional, and I was just left to be the hostess with the mostest. While I did not like the lack of control I felt over the whole thing, I must confess in retrospect that it is really freeing to just show up at your own party with no other responsibilities. No worrying about whether the food is hot or needs replenishment or when people are going to leave because you have to wash 400 plates and cups. It's sort of like being the First Lady, I guess. I bet all she does is pick out her dress, touch up her make-up, and show up. Sort of like me the other day except she doesn't have to do her own flowers which results in nearly losing a digit. (My finger did provide a topic for conversation at the party!)

2. Speaking of the finger, it's coming along. I think it's healing?

3. Mac's grade did a Spanish assembly on Friday morning. Now school has been in session for about 6 weeks and Mac has been in Spanish classes everyday for less than that. Yet he had lines to memorize and say in front of other classes and parents. YIKES! But he did so great. I was bursting with pride. I haven't downloaded the videos yet but as soon as I do, I will post them. In addition to his lines, we also videotaped him dancing with a girl in some traditional sort of Colombian dance. But really the highlight of the videos will be these young 2nd grader girls shimmying and shaking to Shakira. It was AWESOME and so Latino; I can't wait for you to see it!

Hope you've all had a great weekend in your corners of the world!