Class and Parque de Simon Bolivar

Class and Parque de Simon Bolivar

Bogota, Colombia, South America

We had a pretty decent day in class today, and I picked up on a few more things. I still don’t feel very confident speaking, but I feel like I can understand a lot more of what I hear and read, so I guess that’s something. We finished up in class and I went out to lunch with Magda, Ash, and another teacher named Jose. We went to Aqui en Santa Fe, and the teachers ordered lunch for all of us, which was spaghetti bolognese. It was pretty good, it just seemed like a strange choice to have at a Colombian restaurant.

We had to hurry through our lunch because it took a while to get a table, and then we had a tour to get to that started at 2pm. We were about 15 minutes late to take the tour, but luckily they all waited for us.

It was about ten of us in total who went on the tour. It was all students from different classes at the school, and Magda was the only teacher who came. We had a Colombian tour guide who doesn’t speak any English, so it was meant to make us practice our Spanish. This would have worked out really well if he had talked to us a bit more. We walked around Parque de Simon Bolivar for about three hours, and be probably talked to us for a total of about ten minutes. Some of us tried to practice our Spanish along the way, but it mostly just turned into a bunch of different conversations going on in English. It was a nice day anyway, and a beautiful park to walk around in. The one interesting fact that I picked up was that this park is actually bigger than Central Park in NYC. I didn’t think that was possible because I know how big Central Park is, but it was confirmed by someone on the googles, so it must be true.

The tour finished around 5pm at the massive library that is right next to the park. The guide explained something about the architecture of the buildings and about the pools and gardens that were built. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying then, but it was nice to look at anyway. We shared a couple of taxis back into the city and I walked back to the hotel from near the school. I find it funny how I’m more than willing to walk ten or twenty blocks with no problem, but every Colombian I meet tells me to take a taxi. They keep saying it’s not safe to walk, even during the day, but I’ve been walking all over this city and haven’t seen a problem yet. I hope that not heeding their advice doesn’t come back to bite me someday.

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