Reasons to love Bogota
Or, reasons I have come to miss Bogota.
First, the weather. It is oddly and comfortingly consistent. Despite being on the equator, it is “2 miles above sea level” and proximity to the mountains means it is about 68 degrees (F) everyday. Yes, it rains. I live in Seattle, and in Bogota rain is about as “activity-defeating” as Seattle, which means not at all. It is SF weather at its finest.
The food. I had the worst palate as a kid. Afraid and unaccepting of all things spicy and unfamliar. I was a “bun-meat-bun” girl in a prepackaged, fast food world, and demanded my food world to conform to my elementary expections.
Yet over the years, I developed this crazy, “try anything” mentality. This was about the same time that I taught myself to cook. I once followed recipes faithfully, only to have them turn out like shit, and finally, after a good 2000 hours on the Food Network, finally realized that cooking is an art, not a science.
And then I fully found my art form. I need rulers to draw stick figures, and am equally ashamed and proud at my lack of art classes, both in high school and in college, but where I can really admire art? Watching good men and women cook. I am a disciple at the altar of open kitchens and now watch things that most people find tedious.
Most weirdly, I am now considered adventurous in terms of eating. I will try almost anything once, and even when I hate it, I find myself considering why others would like it. I am not a candidate for any extreme food show - I don’t want to taste something for the “wow” factor - but if there is something that has a substantive following, I will get in there.
Yet for all of my loving and current craving for Colombian food, the things I love the most about Colombia are its pride, distinctiveness, humility (no desire to be the States), and acceptance of all things international. This is the kind of place I want to take my friends, even though I wouldn’t travel with anyone this pass. And Bogota is a city where five days isn’t nearly enough, even for this seasoned traveler and former resident.
It is a city to be discovered on your own, on foot, and on your own time. And yes, I am biased, as I lived here, but I really believe that there is going to be a life-changing discovery at nearly every term.
The adjustment to Bogota
I was born in Washington to two very young parents, who eventually split up. She was (is) a singer, he (was - deceased) a piano player, but youth and nearly everything else was against them. Still have no idea how or why they got together, but still think it must have been a form of magic. I don’t get magic, and I don’t get that union, and yet I am here.
Saudi was, in many ways, a utopia, which probably sounds batshit to the ordinary American. Saudi, for us Aramco Brats, was a magical union of all walks of life, except remove the sociological aspect of that. I mean, there was every ethnicity on the planet, save for the Jews (more on that later), but no one was rich and no one was poor. We all lived in the exact same kind of housing. We all left Saudi and took (relatively speaking) the same kinds of trips. The richest girl I knew in Saudi was the daughter of the CEO of Aramco, and she just lived in a different house.
The real lesson here is that divides are about socio-economic differences, not race. The hottest guy in my school was from Pakistan, and you couldn’t be less boring if you were from Texas. Love sees no color, except for maybe green, and the blinking red lights of whatever particular railroad track place yourself on.
This was true, by the way, in Bogota, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Leaving Saudi, at that time (right before graduation) was almost like a castration. I had lived there since 3rd grade, had endured the horrors of moving away, then moving back, the awkwardness of middle school, and all of the embarrassments of being a junior high schooler (with the maturity, as we all had, of a high schooler). We went into Khobar (Al Khobar, for the purists) for fun and sport, not education, and, for the most part, we lived a treasured, Utopian existence.
I can never thank my parents enough for the experience, even if my hometown is a city and a country I will probably never get to return to.
Although less than you would expect, everything was illegal in Saudi. Booze, drugs, late night excursions, etc. We broke all of those rules, even though an infraction could have cost your dad his job. I stole booze from my parents, snuck out on the regular, had parties when I could, and generally skirted the rules. You never, EVER, ran so fast as when security was chasing you.
So when I left the all-prohibitive Saudi, I went to Bogota, where damn near everything was legal. In my first week, I got the most drunk I have ever been, and two weeks later, smoked the first joint out of my first (and only) pound of pot. A month later, I tried cocaine (and loved it - hell, you went up!), and although it always remained a part time indulgence then, I dodged the addiction bug. I learned to speak my core Spanish within months, and to this day, ply me with a couple of drinks and my accent even surprises me.
But for all of the fun, Bogota taught me something so obvious and fundamental, yet unknowable to someone who hasn’t lived it. Guys at my school watched US blockbusters and always assumed the girl slept with the guy at the end. This stereotype burned me in many ways, including getting drugged at a party (long before the “date rape” drug was in common parlance) and thrown down a flight of stairs when I dared spoke of it. I was the captain of the cheerleading team, but still a cultural outsider, as I never fully joined the local party.
I think, if you asked the folks at my high school, I was most known for throwing parties, including my 16th, when my parents were present. It was the talk of the school the entire time I was there, which always amazed me, as I went to better parties. Nearly everyone at my school showed up.
I won my unfortunate family gene pool, in that I have a propensity to develop a toned body pretty easily, have no sweet tooth, and a small appetite, and don’t get obese. I loved the food in Bogota, as back then, it really appealed to my love of simple, tasty, uncomplicated food. It complimented the weather, in a very literal way. Simple, comforting, comfortable and interesting.
Yet, for all of this, I chose to be an outsider, just abiding my time to get home. One of my best teachers was in Bogota, and I was the star of every musical (and I am not an actress). I also developed an appreciation for the puristic rituals of Catholic mass, and one of my favorite people I have ever known was our maid. She taught me real Spanish, and was my favorite wingman, when I could convince her to go out with me.
I know her name, but I haven’t been able to locate her online Of every person I knew in Colombia, she is the person I would most like to see again.
The inaugural post about me and Bogota.
Although I will probably post my favorite entries on my primary tumblr (karion), I am creating this one for more journaly purposes.
I went to high school in Bogota, from 1986-1988. It was here that I fought my great battle to graduate a year early, and it was here I lost that battle, even if I eventually won the war.
Backstory: At the tail end of my 9th grade year, my family moved from Saudi Arabia to Bogota. I was just pissed off enough at leaving in March of my 9th grade year (a tremendously big deal in Saudi, as that is the last year of education for kids of expats and it is the equivalent of leaving three months before your high school graduation) and, together with my Sweet Valley High induced dreams of being a “normal” high school student, I convinced my parents to let me live in the States and finish out the school year. I lived with my beloved aunt Arlene and finally went to high school in the States.
Saudi schools are pretty advanced, and I was a smart kid, so when I walked into the local junior high school in Bremerton, Washington with my transcripts, they sent me to the local high school. Just a few short hours later, I was enrolled, but as a 10th grader, not a 9th grader. In my mind, this made up for my dad’s decision NOT to let me skip a grade in elementary school. I skipped the latter part of 9th grade and most of 10th grade, and I believed I was going to be a junior in Colombia, with only two more years to do overseas before I got to resume my “normal American life” in the states as a college freshman. I also met some of my best friends, went to my first “American” dance, and finally felt like I was living the books of my tweenhood.
When I got to Bogota that fall, however, I was doused with a cold bucket of reality. My high school - Colegio Nueva Granada - was an international baccalaureate school, which roughly translates into rigorous. My “skipped grade” was dismissed as evidence of poor US public schools, and I was placed in 10th grade classes - where I rightfully belonged, by the way. But I had sold myself on only having to do two years in Bogota before hitting the promised land of US and college, so I undertook to finish three years of high school in two.
It wasn’t easy - I had been in AP classes since 7th grade, and was now taking AP classes at two different grade levels. Add to that the adjustment of living in a country with NO drinking age (and plenty of recreational substances), not to mention a student body with a different first language, and my grades drifted down to a solid B+ level for a while. My memory is a little sketchy here, but I think, especially in light of my previous grades and perceived intelligence, that this was a really big deal.
The subject of another post is the social adjustment. It was decidedly different from anything I had known. More on that later.
Anyway, I think, in light of all these things, coupled with the fact that my parents are kind of bad Americans when it comes to integrating overseas, I just never really got to know Bogota or Colombia. At least, not in any meaningful way I can now remember. I just wanted to get back to the States and resume my nascent American life. At that point, I had lived overseas since 3rd grade, and while I loved Saudi, it was a bubble. Bogota’s bubble was purely in your imagination, and me and my family had a great imagination.
So, long story shortened, I fought the Ministry of Education in Colombia and lost. They wouldn’t let me graduate a year early, on account of one semester’s deficiency of an elective (specifically, art, which is terribly funny). My school got a new headmaster in (what I believed to be my) senior year and while he was also an American, he didn’t want the first student who graduated CNG in three years to be an American. A friend’s mother was on the Board and she fought for me, but ultimately, I lost.
There is a great story of karma and comeuppance for the asshole new headmaster, but again, for another post. It really is a small world, and my dad plays a great role in this story.
As circumstances would have it, my maternal grandfather died at the precise moment that the final decision came down. As we were packing up to go the States for an emergency trip (the funeral), I included all of the papers of my appeal and academic records. Once again, I went to that high school I attended two years prior and begged to graduate. They welcomed me, and just like that, without so much as a kiss on the cheek, I left Bogota permanently. My parents moved a few months later to Indonesia, and I have never been back. I enrolled at the University of Texas and never, ever considered going back to Bogota.
In the many years that intervened, I realized that there was a part of me that loved Bogota. My kind of weather and topography and cuisine, and the folks couldn’t have been nicer. I started to regret how shabbily I treated this city that offered almost everything, in favor of a country (USA) I never really knew. I began to really want to return and make an apology, or, even better, a quality, adult-minded rerun.
Bogota was my starter marriage that I never gave a chance. When we divorced, I never thought about it again, until I started to, a few years ago, after I really got divorced. Maybe there is some deeper message, but this trip, for me, is about apologies and second chances.
I leave June 16th (one month after a rescheduled Memorial Day trip) for a week. I am not looking to fall in love, just reestablish a friendship with the city I never really gave a chance.
