Primer día en Colombia

26 de julio 2016
Floridablanca, Colombia

I made it!  Now the real fun can start.

Flags for Colegio Panamericano, USA, Colombia, and Santander

I'll do a little video tour of my apartment once we finish unpacking and it looks presentable, but I'll give the Reader's Digest version here.  I've got a roommate, Colleen, and we live in a fourth floor walk-up.  Last night the two men from the chartered bus, the director of the school, and the HR director helped us carry up all our luggage and made sure we were settled before they left us to explore our new home.

Highlights:

• We have a doorman.  He'll get our mail and packages (FYI, my principal got a Christmas card in February, so USPS is SUPER SLOW.  FedEx is the way to go.) and call us taxis and is the first line of defense in case of robbers or zombies.  He seems nice; we asked him a few questions today.
• We have a three-bed two-bath.  My room has a personal bathroom and the other bathroom is in the hall.  The hall bathroom has an electric shower...we do not have gas-heated water in our apartment.
• We have a stove but no oven.  I guess Colombians don't bake much.
• We've got a tiny washer (no dryer).  Might fit like 3 days worth of clothes.  Haven't tried it out yet.
• The previous tenant left us two giant fans (THANK YOU!) plus some other various stuff.
• The school bought us some basic groceries:
• Bread
• Ham
• Cheese
• Nutella
• Coffee (Decaf)
• Milk
• Water
• Orange Juice
• Salt
• Sugar
• Household Stuff

I finished unpacking but haven't hung up any stuff on the walls yet.  I'll try and do that tomorrow after we go to Home Center (like Home Depot meets Bed Bath & Beyond meets Ikea).

Once I do all that I'll show you my apartment, but until then, you'll have to make do with the view (taken from the comfort of my couch).

Daytime, just before sunset. 

Nighttime, just after sunset.

Today we had our first day of orientation - introduction, paperwork, notary, Visa pictures, and cell phones.  I got a pre-paid SIM for three months with some data, domestic minutes and texts, and UNLIMITED WhatsApp and Facebook (So get WhatsApp if you want to talk to me!)

This city is GORGEOUS.  No wonder it's called La Cita Bonita!

 I'm going to have to cross this bridge every day on my way to and from work.

We also had a tour of the school today, so I'll share some photos with you:

The school

 View from the school.  There's like five parks in the school.

 Some of the classrooms

My classroom! 

The school's "houses" are the Avatar element symbols!

Well I've got an early morning tomorrow (7:30 am call time) and seeing as it's 1 am, it's past my bedtime.  I've got to stop these late-night blog posts.