I am writing this from my new bedroom. It's a tiny, light filled room, on the ground floor, facing the rest of the compound where the family live. It's a nice little room, with its own bathroom and enough cupboard space for all my party dresses and Russian literature, so that's good. I picked some jasmine yesterday and have plopped them in a jar by the bed, so it smells like coffee and a Lush bath-bomb. I feel quite at home.
The house itself is beautiful-in a 'Homes and Gardens' way. Very chic; everything is visually balanced and stylish, which isn't surprising as Claudia (the mum) is an artist. It's all very modern and functional too. It's always a initial thrill for me to stay in a house with functioning, top of the range cooking implements, power showers and wipeable counter tops. Actually though, I never appreciate the tumbledown loveliness of my own old house more than when I'm in ones like this, however nice they are to visit. The family I'm au pairing for are really lovely and they have made me feel very welcome. I'm not sure about the legal implications of writing online about your employers, but I'm pretty sure it's morally dodge, particularly when it's involving a child. Therefore, I will try to recount my last few weeks without mentioning them too much. This should make for some pretty lean anecdotes, but never mind.
Their house is situated in a compound in a town called Chia. It's a town outside Bogota and I wouldn't really recommend it. It's just a nondescript little suburby-town. Saying that, it does have lovely surrounding hills, and it's popular with tourists because of a restaurant called Reyes, which is about two minutes walk away from the house. It's a famous meat restaurant, and it's AMAZING. I say this from my Tiny Tim/Little Matchstick Girl position on the wrong side of the window, as I haven't actually eaten there. It's extortionate and I have also been on a rigorous detox (more on that later you lucky, lucky souls), to which my old chum meat is now a delicious, succulent, salty no-no. It has a brilliant reputation though, and I can tell you it's a visual treat. It's enormous and has loads of kitsch, life sized, multi coloured cow statues outside, fairy light filled trees, and glittery, gold windmills. Glitter, fairy lights, pork chops and paper mâché animals; a predictable hit with Ann G Cluness. Anyway, it's one of Colombia's most famous eateries, and I believe the reson most people visit Chia. There isn't really much else here other than a pretty town square and a nice little market that I went to yesterday. I love a market abroad. When everything looks strange and unhygienic! I like how in a single five minute amble, your olfactory nerves undergo a journey from rapture over a chocolate and candied peanut stall, to distress at a beastie laden meat counter, which besmirches every delicious pork-belly centred memory you've ever had. A place where the fruits look like GM shiny versions of the puny specimens from home, but the vegetables all look crap. Where you can munch on a chorizo empanada with one hand, and select a bunch of roses for a dollar with the other. Where everything is noisy and vivid, colourful and exotic, yet you still get a thrill of familiarity when you see a Heinz HP sauce bottle. Sorry for going a bit Lawrence Olivier there, but I really do think markets are one of my favourite things whilst away. Although, if we step away from food for a moment, the thing-y ones are rarely as good as you imagine in terms of treasures. I did however go to one in Ethiopia once, that was like something out of Ali Baba's treasure caves. It's said to be the biggest in Africa and you seemed to be able to buy literally ANYTHING. There were stalls for pottery and china, stalls for brass lamps and tin cups, fragile glassware and carved wooden boxes covered in engravings. There was a camel section, a donkey section, a pig section and a goat section, with randomly placed boxes of kittens and puppies everywhere. There was a mechanical quarter where you could buy yacht engines, car bonnets, radios and oven fans. There were huge warehouses with beautiful carpets from Persia, silks from Asia, gold threads from Iran and hundreds and hundreds of traditional African block-printed fabrics. There was a whole street of GLASS BEAD SELLERS!! where toothless old men sat with hundreds of bright baubles draped over their shoulders, and every second shop was selling the best coffee in the world; dirty little airless rooms, serving perfectly heated lattes in dainty little green glasses. The markets that I've seen here are a relative anti-climax, but they are still great for a nose about, and they have a lot of great llama wool produce (so cozy).
When not watching endless repeats of Harry Potter and Greys Anatomy, I have been doing language exchanges with Daniela, a cousin of family. Her and her boyfriend took me bowling the other day. That was nice; mainly the human contact thing. It was in their families country club and we had a good afternoon; I played a round(?) of bowling (very badly) and also a game that was like pool, but you only have three balls- you have to hit all three each time. It was extremely dull to play and thus even more so to recount, and am not sure why I just did. Perhaps because the rest of my week has been so spectacularly uneventful. The family have gone to Cartagena for two weeks and I've been home alone for 9 days now. I sometimes fondly imagine myself to be quite resourceful and independent, but given any opportunity to exhibit these traits in the face of solitude, I turn out to be quite the opposite. I am not only bored and lonely, but cross all the time too because I don't like being bored and lonely. I've finished all my books, except Turn of the Screw (which I am too scared to read) and I'm genuinely sick of TV after watching it solidly for the first 5 days. I have wandered around Chia a few times, but it's not much fun on your own. Particularly when confronted by latino lover 97 year olds shrieking at you from bus stops. I have also recently developed an irrational fear of being spoken to, and having to reply in broken Spanglish. I bought some papaya yesterday and almost fainted when I got to the counter and the woman asked me an Unfamiliar Question. I actually felt sick and abandoned plans to buy eggs, and instead scuttled home under the cover of darkness to watch Jane Eyre. This cheered me up no end until it finished and I moped around feeling Rochesterless until I went to bed. I got woken up super early today by the cleaner which has meant I have been lurking around my room all day. I hate being around when a cleaner is there. Not that it happens much at home (hah!), but sometimes it does at my dads, and it's just so bloody awkward. How can you not seem like little Lord Fauntleroy if you're lounging about the house in the middle of the day, reading the Guardian and picking your nose whilst poor Svetlanka pulls the matted clumps of hair out of your shower plug holes. I'm pretty sure that sentence is racist and elitist in some inverted way that I am too bigoted to understand, but its how I feel. It's embarrassing. It seems to be a cultural thing though, as everyone here has a maid if they can afford it, and it doesn't seem to have the same connotations as it would at home. Anyway, this lady comes a lot usually, but only twice since they have been away. She seems to be finding a great deal to do, considering I haven't left the sofa except to trot to the fridge and the bathroom. Speaking of fridge, I was going to detail my papaya based detox, but I don't have the heart, and it's a lie anyway; I've eaten almost a whole box of frosties and a jar of peanut butter. All surreptitiously of course, though who I'm hiding from in an empty house is unclear. Maybe I think if its eaten furtively without utensils, it doesn't count. I was so bored earlier I tried on all my clothes and then started to customise a top. Scissors and boredom are always a mistake, and I am now confronted with a destroyed vest and a pile of sequins glinting at me from a dejected heap on the floor. I didn't think sequins could be dejected but these ones are brown and the shine effect has come off. All feels a bit symbolic.
And on that note, I'm going to go and try to do some Spanish. I haven't done any since they left and I am beginning to feel sick with guilt. Hasta Luego and so on.
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