Bienvenidos a Colombia!

The moment I landed in Miami yesterday, I began operating on the sandtimer of Colombia. The plane was delayed about 3 hours due to a malfunctioning air conditioner. I highly doubt there's a Colombian alive who can even tell the difference between an air conditioned and a non-air conditioned plane ride, but I'm happy to endure any sort of delays created by the smallest mechanical malfunction. What if the necessary energy from the air conditioner were unavailable to rig up an emergency landing worthy of Apollo 13? Let's not chance it.

You definitely have to adapt to the pace of things here quickly or the idleness will make you nuts. It's as if the whole country is on a morphine drip. Two o'clock in the afternoon and I've bought shampoo, spoke to someone about starting a Spanish class on Monday, and I'm about ready for my nap. Actually, Juan's father and I are messing with computers and email - if only I were slightly more computer savvy, this would be easier.

A couple of fun tidbits from yesterday's travel. I only slightly blended in on the plane, I spoke enough Spanish that I didn't stick out horribly, I could generally answer the questions asked of me, my clothing is distinctly American - but no one looked too much different from me (mind you, I'm still in los Estados Unidos at this point). However, dire transformations took place mid-flight and upon arrival, the women were all scantily clad and the men were wearing too much duty free cologne. The drench of cologne took place the moment we landed - thankfully I only had to choke in those fumes for a couple of minutes, however, I must have slept through the announcement that it was time for females under 40 to strip down to bras and underpants and I walked off the plane more closely resembling the men on board. While we were waiting in line to go through Customs at approximately 10:45 p.m., the management apparently decided to go home and proceeded to turn off the hallway lighting, leaving us to fumble through our customs declarations by kerosene. Oh, the fun that was had.