Category: Travel
-
Silence Is Beholden
I was on a solo hike a few weeks ago on a beautiful northern Californian day in Shasta Trinity National Park. It was a weekday morning, so I had the place to myself. I followed the Waters Gulch trail for about a mile or two as I trekked the path toward Packers Bay. The river…
-
Chacho En Bogota: El Fin
I’m sitting in the El Dorado airport in Bogota, waiting to board my flight. I’ve been here for 100 days, and I must say it will be bittersweet leaving Colombia. I met some great people here and got to live in another country and culture for a prolonged period, which has always been a personal…
-
Chacho En Bogota: The Napkins Are Free, Right?
So in the time of my last posting, two milestones were passed: the one-month-left-in-Colombia date, and the 55th anniversary of lightning striking the Hill Valley Courthouse clock tower on November 12, 1955 at 10:04pm. I’m here, I’m a nerd – get used to it. In other news, on Friday Jorge brought out the ping-ping table…
-
Chacho En Bogota: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Extend My Visa
I was technically an illegal alien for a few hours yesterday. I forgot to renew my tourist visa until a day after it expired, so I was nervous going downtown to the DAS office (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad). After a two-hour wait, I got fingerprinted and a woman looked over my papers, stamped my passport,…
-
Chacho En Bogota: SpongeBob
Matilde, almost 4, came to my room to show me her new SpongeBob Squarepants band-aid and this conversation followed: MATILDE: That’s Patrick and this is SpongeBob and they live underwater. CHAD: Yeah, they do. MATILDE: Do you think they have special beds? CHAD: Yeah, they probably have special underwater beds because they live in the…
-
Do: Write a Novel. Do Not: Shave.
Who has two thumbs and is participating in No-Shave November and National Novel Writing Month? This guy. Participation in the former will be quite easy; I’ve been spotted with all kinds of facial hair in the last few years of my life. I also figured I should start preparing now for my reentry into the…
-
Chacho En Bogota: Fortuitous Times
I took a cab by myself (in a foreign country) for the first time yesterday. I was going to an English tutoring session for two 13 year-olds and was going to bike there, but then it started pouring so a cab suddenly looked a lot better. I ended up walking back after the session, which…
-
Chacho En Bogota: The Cows Are Off To Pasture
SuperVacas has ended. Ninety kids showed up on Friday. Monday there were about 50. It’s incredible how good news travels around the neighborhood. A lot of the kids were first-timers. It was an exhausting week because there were only 10 adult workers for the 90 kids that showed up, but everything got done and the…
-
Chacho En Bogota: Blessed Indeed
Some 70 kids came to SuperVacas today, which means the good word is spreading ’round the barrio. The kids played ping-pong and soccer today – I pinged a little pong before they did and remembered how much I loved playing. My backhand, though, is much stronger than my forehand. The Encisos invited a boy from…
-
Chacho En Bogota: Cows That Are Super
Today was Day 1 of, as Jorge would say, ¡¡¡SUPERVACAS!!!! It’s basically an AWANA-type day camp hosted by the church from 9am-12 every day this week. About 60 kids showed up today in total, so it was a lot of controlled chaos. It definitely brought me back to my days as a counselor at Lake…