It's hard to think in order what happened over the past two weeks, so I'll just hit the highlights.
Some places we've visited:
Simon Bolivar Park. It's one of the largest parks in Bogota. While there we had our first taste of mango biche. No picture but it is green mango with salt, lime juice and some other unidentified substance. It was good! Sweet, salty and refreshing. The park had quite the number of playgrounds which the kids loved. All of them under the backdrop of the beautiful mountains
Zipaquira is a town about 1 hour north of Bogota. It's known for it's salt mine and the underground cathedral inside of the salt mine, Catedral de Sal. We hopped on a bus and took a scenic ride to get there. It was an amazing experience just to go down into the mines, but the artistry of the miners was pretty incredible. There are specific ways in which they mine the salt to make sure the mountain remains stable. It results in underground corridor after corridor. After the salt was mined then the miner were commissioned to carve structures into the salt. We walked through the stations of the cross and then experienced the beautiful and humongous underground cathedral. And it's all salt! We licked the walls just to check! The kids may have licked more than just the walls!
Today we went to an area of town called Usaquen. There is an artisan market there every weekend and it's just a lovely part of town. We explored the shops, played at a park and ate lunch there. We tried Colombian tamales. Yum!
On the way to Usaquen the kids and I took the bus while Dane rode his bike and enjoyed Ciclovia. Ciclovia is an event each Sunday and on holidays where the city closes off about 80 miles of city streets to vehicles and lets pedestrians and bikes take over. Dane has known about Ciclovia for quite some time and is very happy to be in Bogota and getting to experience it first hand.
Some new fruits and juices!
Guanabana (soursop). We bought a 6 1/2 pound fruit and that was a small one! We just at it straight from the fruit minus the toxic seeds, but I froze 6 cups of pulp to use in smoothies later on. We couldn't handle all of it in one day!
Borojo. This was given to us by the lady at the fruit store. We were told to make a juice with milk out of it. I didn't take a picture before I'm including a picture from the internet. You buy it when it is VERY ripe. It's wrapped up in plastic and then put in that yellow mesh. It feels pretty squishy. Then I opened it...see the 2nd picture. You can imagine what the kids thought it looked like. I mixed it up in the blender with milk and a little sugar. I was the only one who liked it. I think after seeing it the kids just mentally couldn't handle it. I wonder if they would have liked it if I just gave them the drink?
Lulo. A tart tropical fruit that I blended up with water and a little sugar to make a juice. Everyone liked it.
Guava. I made a guava ginger juice. The kids all love guava juice. They serve it frequently at school. The ginger gave it a zing. They drank it but prefer it without the ginger. Just a little boost to their health!
The transportation.
Dane should probably be writing this section! He believes that Bogota transportation is pretty amazing. They use buses, but the Transmilenio system acts in a similar way to a subway system. You enter the station through a turnstile and then wait on a raised platform for the bus to come. The bus has a dedicated lane so it doesn't get stuck in traffic. To put it in perspective the Transmilenio system typically moves about 2 million people per day. We use the Transmilenio when we're heading downtown. To get to the school we ride a regular city bus. As I'm sure if you ask Elise about our ride to school, she will tell you...it's a bumpy ride!
School Life. Spirit week was last week and one day was crazy hair day. Naomi didn't want to participate and Justus did until he actually got to school. We didn't have any hair products so I used egg whites to get his hair to stand up.
After school we often go up to to Dane's classroom which is the science lab. Justus told a group of teachers that he was going up to his Dad's classroom to explode some things the other day. No explosions happened but Dane and the kids enjoy doing experiments and looking at things under the microscope.
We did celebrate Thanksgiving. We went on a hike and enjoyed an improvised Thanksgiving meal with friends. We also got to play a game of Settlers of Catan while the kids watched a movie! I didn't pull out the camera, but a friend got some pictures of our hike.
Until next week...
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