Daniela and I made plans the last time we'd seen each other (Thursday morning) to meet up at the Fiesta de Libros y Cultura (books & culture fair) in the botanical garden on Friday at 1:00pm. However, neither of us can use our phones for chat or calling unless we are connected to wi-fi, so our plans were doomed from the start. I spent the morning at Cafe Pergamino again, enjoying the usual latte + empenada + reading Wild combo, until it was time to leave to meet Daniela. I wondered whether she had tried to get in touch with me for last-minute changes-of-plan, but my wifi at Pergamino wasn't working for some reason. When I didn't see her outside the entrance to the book fair, I knew I had to go somewhere else to connect to wifi and check for messages (ugh), so I went to a cafe, ordered a slice of chocolate cake. Sure enough, as soon as I got connected, several messages from Daniela came in, asking if she could move our meeting time to 2:00. I responded saying that was totally fine, but it didn't look like she was receiving the messages. Later, we realized that she had come to the fair shortly after 1:00, thinking that I hadn't gotten her messages from earlier, during which time I was in the cafe telling her we could switch to 2:00, so we completely missed each other. This dependence on wifi is Oh well -- we both went to the fair anyway!
Here's a sign from the entrance, with the expected inspirational quote:
"Life is what you make of it. The journeys are the travelers. What we see is not what we see but what we are."
It would be easy to read that and go, "Yep, totes," without giving it much thought. It seems obvious in a way, but I'm going to take a second and see if I can get a fresh angle on it, or tie it in a meaningful way to my experiences so far. "The journeys are the travelers" certainly rings true. When I talked to my former supervisor, Dr. Kearney, about his experiences traveling around the world in his 20s, we discussed how it is easy to develop an expectation that you will go to these foreign, exotic places and feel like you understand them and know them just by spending some time there, but it doesn't work that way. You are still just you -- you can't know what's like to be a Colombian just because you spent a month in Colombia. You spent a month in Colombia, but you did it as an American, as a university student, as the daughter of your mother and your father, as the person who has 30+ years of a personal history and identity that developed entirely outside of Colombia. You are you, no matter where you go.
Where you go can shape who you are, surely and inevitably; however, when I think "what we see is what we are," I have to acknowledge how much my ideas of "what Colombia is/what Colombians are like" have no objective accuracy or truth. They will always be limited by who I am and how "who I am" contextualizes every single experience I have in relation to Colombia, with Colombians, and anyone else, anywhere. What I will see, the lessons I will learn, the struggles I will encounter are not a "given" in a universal human experience way; they are determined by what I'm looking for and the way I consciously (and unconsciously) frame things, the lessons I want to learn, and pre-existing baggage that I'm bringing into these new experiences. I think that's what the quote is getting at; it's kind of the reverse of the "you can never step in the same river twice" because the water flowing through it is never the same water as the moment before. But what if people are the river (stay with me on this), so even if we all have the experience of being stepped in -- even if we encounter some similar experience -- whatever may be objective and sensory about that experience is landing on and being processed by individual psyches that are infinitely unique and complex. I'm not saying that we cannot empathize with each other and that "shared experience" is impossible or something, but the shared part of it is just smaller than how it feels, maybe.
In terms of what difference this all makes with how I live my life, it reminds me that making judgments about how I compare to others in the scheme of things -- how my experiences, relationships, and contributions to the world rank among the people on my social radar -- is a use of time that yields no objective truth. All it does is shift my inner world, and as that changes, my perception of the world around me and my place in it also changes. So if what I experience and see is filtered by who I am, then I want to be someone whose "filter" is designed to observe and absorb the things I value: strength, creativity, love, beauty, honesty, etc.
I've been trying to figure out some way to articulate how traveling changes a person. I know there are several ways this can happen, but perhaps the most basic way is by becoming aware of the stories and judgments that your mind produces around all the new things you see and experiences you have, and what that tells you about who you are (and then maybe you decide you don't like those stories and you commit to shifting your perspective in some fundamental way).
So that's my take on the quote at the moment, but I'd love to hear others if you got something different from it!
But enough of my philosophical musings. The book fair was fantastic. Even though I didn't buy any books (they were all in Spanish, I have no room in my backpack, and I am only using my Kindle to read things anyhow), the botanical gardens were beautiful. There were several groups of school children there on field trips, which was equal parts adorable and annoying. After doing a loop around the garden to make sure I'd seen all there was to see, I got a beer from a 3 Cordilleras stand, and read for a while under the trees at a table behind the music stage so I could listen to the music.
I headed back to the AirBNB around 4:00. On the way, I stopped at a corner market and picked up an onion, a cucumber, an avocado, and a tiny bottle of chimichurri sauce. I know this sounds like a ridiculous combination, but I hadn't eaten any vegetables for days and I knew my body needed something nutritious, so I worked with what I could find.
After a phone chat with my mom, some Duolingo, and blog writing, I got a cab to the electronic music festival at Parque Poblado. I should have known what it would be like -- people in their teens and 20s dressed in typical music festival attire, smoking, drinking, drugging, and dancing to the "mmph, mmph, mmph" EDM beats. I had expected it to be the more ethereal, soaring, chilled-out type of electronic music, but it made more sense that it was the other kind. I stayed for roughly one minute before deciding I would rather go grab a snack and a drink somewhere in Parque Lleras, which is what I did.
Once I ordered, I realized I didn't have my Kindle with me, and my phone wasn't connected to wifi. Okay.... so I will just sit here and sip on my wine while people-watching, NBD. People probably aren't paying attention to me anyhow, and if they are, so what? A person is allowed to dine alone and not be working on some activity. I got this. And it really was fine. But once I realized I could use the napkins to write on, I opted to brainstorm various lists (e.g. life goals, things I needed to do soon, what I'm attracted to in different people, more places I want to go) rather than continue staring out into space.
So that was Friday, and my last night in Medellin.
PARQUE ARVI
My half-day trip to Parque Arvi was definitely a highlight of my time in Medellin. The park itself was more impressive in theory than what I was able to experience in my two hours there. It really deserves a full day; I am certain I missed pretty much all the cool parts of the park because I didn't have time to get guides to show me where they were. However, the cable cars on the way there and back were AMAZING -- definitely not a fun experience for anyone with a fear of heights, but otherwise, I highly recommend.
Here's a video and some photos of the views from the cable cars:
As the cable car made its way over the peak of the mountain, there were no more houses -- just nature park wilderness:
I'm not really sure what else to say about Parque Arvi itself. I went on a trail... here's a photo of that (most of it was dirt/mud, but I thought the stairs would be more photogenic):
When I returned from Parque Arvi, I showered, packed up, and caught a cab to the airport. While waiting for my flight to board, a tall, white, light-haired, blue-eyed man asked if I would watch his bag. I said, yes, of course, and when he returned he sat with me and I discovered the following: 1) His name is Hidde, 2) He is from Holland, 3) He traveled to Rio de Jainero not too long ago, and was happy to give me any advice or suggestions about that area, 4) He would be traveling to SE Asia and Japan around the same time I would be, so we exchanged number to arrange a possible meet-up somewhere over there in a few months. Bananas. What are the odds?!
On the bus from the Cali airport to the bus terminal, I sat next to a woman named Angela, and we chatted the whole ride. She lives in Medellin, but is in Cali for work. I gave her my notebook to write down suggestions in Cali for food, dancing, and site-seeing, and she filled it up with no problem. It was wonderful to make a spontaneous friendly connection with a woman for a change! I appreciate the friendliness of men, but there's always a subtext of maybe "he's gonna want something more," which, depending on the man, can be a fun mysterious tension or a source of anxiety. In any case, Angela gave me her number when we parted ways and suggested that we grab a drink or dinner together sometime while we're both here. YES - I definitely want to do that! However, she didn't include the country code and city code in her number, so now I have to do some detective work to figure out how to get a hold of her...
All right - I've spent the first 6.5 hours of my first full day in Cali blogging and catching up on computer stuff, so I need to venture out into the neighborhood and start exploring this city (and try not to think too much about the Seahawks game I'm missing...)