At this point, Carmen has given me so many nicknames I can’t even keep track. It’s hard enough that I have to pay attention to both english and spanish, and respond to any of the following: Thundercat, Flash, Speedy Gonzalez (what can I say, I dig with purpose, like a pro haha), speedy cat, chica picante or spice girl (referring to the fact that I put hot sauce, salsa, peppers on everything- might be my current favorite), jeffa, and on and on....oh, and that I speak Spanish with an Italian accent, but better that than a German one ha!!
Thursday night, Carmen, Luz Marina and I went downtown for an art festival that they have in Pereira the first Thursday of every month. It was pretty interesting to see the work of local people and it’s a cool event because it’s organized by this group of artists themselves. We ran in to Carolina there where she and this other guy were selling little postcard-sized pictures of the region.
We checked out a few of the ‘galleries....’ spaces transformed for the event and then grabbed a slice at the Pizza Factory. We have been to a couple different places here that have surprisingly good eats, the pizza place being one of them. For Jen’s last night we went to this Arabic restaurant for falafel, hummus, and all that good stuff....including a tasty Argentinean malbec; the owner was this cute old man who waited on the tables himself and he was so pleased that we (Americans) had stopped in.
After pizza, we walked around some more and stopped in to some local craft shops, there were different people set up with tables selling jewelry and other things as well. I was beat since we had worked in the day and I had been up since 6, but we stuck around for the traditional Colombian music performance. This crazy violinist in leather pants and a cape went to town, dancing and just going crazy playing that thing. He was really good, though, and it was a fun, theatrical performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. We left after a couple songs, because the three of us were practically falling asleep standing up, said goodbye to Carolina, and grabbed a taxi home.
