Barking Mad

Hello All

Well here I am again, trying to be more punctual with my blogs! 

So what has happened this week? Well, the thing that has dominated the week is the ongoing saga of the noisy dog. I now have the full story, the noisy dog isn't a recently acquired stray, but a dog that the neighbours have had for 9 years and is the pup of their older dog who recently died, about the same time as the barking started! I have now met this poor pup, called princess, who is morbidly obese and stressed by the recent death of her mother. Although this means I have more sympathy with the dog it doesn't stop her barking which although stopped during the weekend meaning I was able to catch up on missing sleep, has started again this week, only 15-20mins on Sunday night but at 2am which then took me until 3.30am to get back to sleep, and last night for 2 hours between 11pm and 1am. Having been prepared I actually slept on an airbed that I now have ready in my office which being in the front of the house with the fan on and ear plugs in I cant hear the dog. But airbeds are not the most comfortable things in the world and so still didn't get to sleep until about 1.30am. Also it annoys me that I have to sleep on the floor of my office and not in my nice comfy bed just because a lazy owner wont take his dog for a walk! 

To make matters worse with the relationship with the neighbour, which until now has been very good ever since El Refugio moved in here, their daughter read my facebook wall about not being able to sleep and all of the "suggestions" of how to kill the dogs or loose them! Today Johanna and I went over to clear things up with them and I was able to explain that that is just the British sense of humour and not to be taken seriously! I hope at least that the relationship between us and them has now been restored.

In other news, I went to an "Indian fair" at an Indian restaurant with a friend from the base, Cristian is from Cali here in Colombia but spent a lot of his childhood in the states so his English is perfect and he is a lot more culturally similar to me so it is great to spend time with him. The fair was a bit of a disappointment as it amounted to 2 tables with a few bollywood films and indian skirts. Also the restaurant itself was a bit of a let down as the food wasn't very Indian with more pizzas than currys!! still I had an interesting non-alcoholic cocktail and a loong chat with one of the stall holders who is from Medellin and used to be a Christian but now is more into the eastern religions as they apparently hold more answers for him than Christianity. Talking to him it seems that he has had a lot of bad experiences with Christians who have told him that if he is asking questions about the "eternal element of the human spirit" then he has a devil in him!!! not helpful!! For me it was very interesting and heavy going to have such a deep theological/philosophical discussion in Spanish! since most people I know here are Christians or uneducated it is the first time I have faced such a challenge! It was kind of fun though :)

This Thursday Cristian has invited me to co-host a "stars in their eyes" type disco special he is doing with his English class at university!! should be interesting, and will also mean I get to meet one of his Uni friends who he has told me a lot about. A guy called Norbet (poor thing) who has recently told Cristian that he is gay, a big deal as Colombia is a very homophobic country. Cristian, being culturally american, is more ok with it than most Colombians (esp Christians) would be, but it is still rather new for him! he knows I have a lot of gay friends in the UK so wants us to meet :D my pleasure. I will tell you more about Norbet and the 70s special next week.

so thats about all, just to leave you with some pics as promised of last weeks youth treasure hunt. Last week it was a competition to see who could name the most books of the bible with the girls coming out on top, but the boys won on attendance so they are now neck and neck going into this weeks "who wants to be a millionaire" bible special!!