It’s getting harder and harder to get home any time after about 5pm.
Yesterday, the taxi driver asked me where I was going and reluctantly let me get in and only then realized that he had mixed my hill with another less congested one but by that time I was in the taxi and i wasn’t going anywhere.
“Look at that,” he grumbled, as we passed the gridlocked traffic on the way down the hill.
But then I realized he was turning up my hill.
“So you are taking me home,” I said.
“Oh, the princess has to get home,” he said.
Tonight, the metro was closed when I go to my station, there were no taxis when I got off the metro (once it opened), the bus got stuck at the bottom of my hill because of an accident and when I got home, the power was out.
I was in a taxi and the driver was talking on this radio about this accident, which left one person dead and 5 injured.
Is it true about the accident on the Balsos?
Yes, there is a car overturned, literally, on its back with its feet in the air.
Yes, like a cockroach. Completely on its back with its feet in the air, like a cockroach.
So it hasn’t been smashed, it’s been cockroached.
We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t know about the casualties as they gleefully played with the image, and marvel instead at the vividness of the Spanish language.
Patrona = also boss, but it always sounds a bit feudal to me.
It’s as if he couldn’t quite decide on the right tone to strike with me.
I really admire these women. See these women, making a living on the street, selling their chewing gum, not prostituting themselves. She doesn’t have to pay child care, she’s got her child there, where he grows up, he can help her sell. if it were marihuana that would be different. But chewing gum… Because it’s hard you know. I have a friend who sells minutes [for mobile phones] in the centre. And she’s not pretty. And men come up to her and say “How much do you make in an hour?” and she says “$15,000″ (=£4 approx.)” and he says, “Look, I’ll pay you that, and I’ll buy you a nice lunch and then we’ll go to a hotel, and I’ll give you $30,000,” and she’s good, she knows how to handle the situation, and she’s starving but she says, “No thank you, I bring my lunch box.” No, there are some women the street doesn’t devour, and that’s admirable.
TD: You’re foreign, aren’t you? North American?
TD: And how long have you been in Medellín?
TD: Well, I’ll tell you what the problem is.
It’s that us men just don’t want to commit.
so many, that we are afraid of being unfaithful.
So my advice to you is to have affairs and not to fall in love.
and if he doesn’t come along, I’ll stay single.
Me: Because I want to please God.
TD: Well, that’s wonderful. What a sweet thing.
Well, I hope that man comes along for you.
I’ve noticed I have tendency to commentate my taxi journeys.
Very busy time of day, I say.
Or: This might take a while, as we crawl along.
Or: I think there must be an accident ahead because it’s not usually like this at this time.
[When we pass the accident] Ah, I was right.
Why the need to state the obvious?
I just have a compulsive need to communicate.