Category: misc.

In our last post, we told you the first two things about our ‘never-forget’ moments. If we’re really honest, I guess we cheated a bit because we snuck in a few runners-up because it was so hard to choose! For part 2 of this post, we’ll try to limit ourselves to 3 specific moments.

3. Fishing with bamboo canes!

By Brae:

In the Amazon, it’s not really surprising that people do a lot of fishing. During our stay there, we ate a lot of different kinds of fish, including pirarucu. Pirarucu is a the world’s largest freshwater fish and it can reach 9m long! It’s also carnivorous and eats other fish and birds. We didn’t try to catch a pirarucu but during our time in the Amazon we did go fishing three times.

One day when we were in Peru, we all went fishing on the canoe, but instead of rods we had bamboo canes and pieces of string. It was very relaxing but nobody caught a single fish. Perhaps you can tell from this picture, we weren’t exactly trying our hardest! 

One of the things we were fishing for was piranha. I bet we wouldn’t have looked this relaxed if we’d actually caught a piranha!

Later the same day, we went out again but this time we were looking for baby caymans. We weren’t going to eat them…just catch them and then set them free again. We waited until it got completely dark and headed out in the canoes. The sounds on the water were so crazy. It was hard to know what was making the noises…insects, frogs, birds, monkeys or bats! Whatever made the sounds, they were completely magical.

Yet again, we didn’t actually end up catching anything, but after seeing a gigantic cayman in the lake earlier that day I wasn’t completely sure that catching babies was a good idea anyway. I didn’t want to make the parents angry! I definitely didn’t need to catch anything to make our night time fishing expedition worthwhile. I’ll never forget the sounds of the Amazon at night.

Even though the first 2 fishing trips were really good, we still hadn’t caught a fish so the next day all the kids wanted to try again. This time, we decided to fish from the dock just outside where we were staying and at last we had some success (apart from Oren). I’ll try to show you how the fishing trip worked out.

Oren                                    😞

Hector                                 this long

Petra                                    this loooong  

Brae                                      this loooooooooooong                  (not actual size)

I’m not sure if Oren would have chosen the fishing trip as one of his top five Amazon moments but for me it was pretty awesome! After our failure the day before out on the lake I wasn’t expecting much but suddenly my fishing rod jerked and even though I didn’t really know what I was doing I managed to keep hold of it and bring it to shore!

Number 4: Swampball

By Brae:

When we were in Puerto Nariño, me, Oren and Hector joined in a football game with the local kids. We saw them playing on a football pitch right on the banks of the Amazon river and we asked if we could join in. I called it swampball because it had rained earlier that day which caused the river to rise and the whole pitch had flooded. I don’t mean that it was a bit wet and muddy – I mean that in some places on the pitch you ended up ankle deep in water. And no matter where you went on the entire pitch, a load of Amazon river water came splashing up on you whenever you took a step! We were also playing in bare feet so as not to demolish our shoes.

We started to play (me and Hector on one team and Oren on the other) along with a load more kids. It was very hard to shoot because of how much water there was and you ended up just missing the ball and covering everyone near you in muddy water. The more we played though the easier it got because we were starting to get used to it.

We played for about 20 minutes and still nobody had scored so we stopped the game and started a penalty shoot out. By this time it was starting to get dark and the jungle was coming alive around us with the screaming of cicadas. We had the penalty shootout and after the first five (with me scoring mine) it was 3-3 so it went to sudden death. Both teams scored their first ones so it went on. Somebody on Oren’s team missed and then I scored my second one so we won which I was quite pleased about. We then went back to the place where we were staying to wash off all the mud.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m football crazy, but when I think back to that game it makes me love football even more. Both times we went to Colombia, football helped us to have new experiences, meet people and make friends. Joining in with the local kids in Puerto Narino, and getting to feel like we were really part of things, might not have happened without that game. The swampball was one of my favourite parts of our whole trip.

5. Swimming in the Amazon river!

By Brae:

Ever since I knew I was going to Amazonas I wanted to swim in the Amazon river but I knew it was really dangerous and I probably wouldn’t get to do it. Then, you might remember that I told you that we swam in a small tributary of the Amazon when we went to Alfonso’s Annaneko (that’s where we had to heave a wooden canoe up from the bottom of the river). After that I felt like I could ‘almost’ tell people that I swam in the Amazon, but not quite. Then, almost at the end of our trip, our guide told us that he was going to let us swim in the Amazon for real, and so when I found out I would be doing it I was really happy. 

On the day when we finally got to swim in the Amazon river I was a little bit nervous because our guide said that the 9 metre caimans and 9 metre anacondas usually only hunt at night. The other thing he told us was that if the water was a tiny bit lower then he might have decided it was too dangerous for us to swim as all the deadly creatures would be crowded together in a smaller space competing for food. He said that because the water wasn’t as low as usual for this time of year, he didn’t need to drive the motor boat around us in circles at top speed to keep the caiman away from us! I guess that was meant to be reassuring but my Mum tells me that she wasn’t completely comforted by this! 

Because of all this, as I stood on the side of our boat and looked down into the dark waters, I felt a bit nervous but of course I couldn’t let this opportunity disappear so I jumped! Once we were in the water we relaxed and it was actually really refreshing. We swam under the boat and came up the other side and that was really fun. And I just kept thinking to myself ‘I’m swimming in the Amazon river!!’.

So, that’s it – our top 5 never-forget moments. And that is the end of our blogs about our Amazon adventure, and the end of our blogs about our second family trip to Colombia! It already feels like a long time since we were there, and of course we are often talking about when we will go back. 

It’s funny that the older we get, the more Brae and I realise how special these adventures have been. I think the first time we were in Colombia we didn’t really know how crazy and exciting it was. Now when I think back to all the things I did when I was 10 years old, and Brae was only 8, I can’t quite believe it. Thank you for reading our blog. We absolutely love coming back and re-reading our posts and all your comments. We hope that it’s not too long before we’re writing about our third trip to this amazing country that we love.

From Oren and Brae.

If you’re reading this, it could mean you’re subscribed to our blog, and maybe you’re thinking that we’re back in Colombia again! I wish that was true but actually we’re still in the UK and right now, during the pandemic, it’s hard to imagine when we’ll get to go back. We know that it has been nearly 3 years since our visit to the Amazon but we’ve realised that there are 3 blog posts that we started but never actually finished! The thing is that Brae and I wrote this page when we got back but then we needed Mum to find the photos and videos. Some of you may know that my mum started her teacher training just when we got back from Colombia and she had to work REALLY hard all year. Because she was working every night and every weekend she didn’t have time to sort out the photos so the blog got forgotten for all this time. While we’re self-isolating this week, we thought it would be a good thing to do to finish off the blog finally so that all of our Amazon experiences are captured.

Another reason why we really want to finish it is that Brae and I have both been reading the blog from our first Colombia trip recently. We were only 8 and 10 years old when we went there and I don’t think we really realised how unusual and special an experience we were having at the time. When we read the blog now I remember all the amazing things that we did that have slipped to the back of my mind. It has been great to refresh my memory about all these astonishing things I did. I would really love to remember these two trips for the rest of my life and this blog is a great way to record the things I have done and also share it with other people.

So, to remind you where we’d got to…

So far we’ve told you about amazing animals and creepy crawlies in the Amazon, and I suppose we were expecting both these things. But our Amazon trip also brought us a few surprises, which we want to tell you about too. Here are the top 5 bonus things that we weren’t expecting.

Number 1. Brazil and Peru.

By Oren:

At the bottom of the map of Colombia (Colombia is the orange part in the top picture below), you can see an extra strip of land that sticks out, heading even further south. At the southernmost point of this bit is the Amazon, and two other countries border the river here, very close together. They are Brazil and Peru.

The town of Leticia in Colombia, where we first saw the Amazon, merges into another town called Tabitanga, which is actually in Brazil.  You might expect there to be border control where the two countries meet,  but no – instead there is a small white pillar with Colombia written on one side of it and Brazil on the other. We even stood with one foot in each country! It was so strange because you could have passed the pillar without noticing it, but pretty soon you’d become aware that all of the signs are in Portuguese and all the prices are in Brazilian currency! We couldn’t read them (except my mum because she had learnt a lot of Portuguese).

We were really keen to have lunch in Brazil and we went to a kind of serve-yourself buffet of traditional food. It was a really nice lunch – a good taste of Brazilian food. It was fairly similar to Colombian food; LOTS of meat and river fish! After that we went shopping for Brazilian football tops and flip flops. The dock on the bank of the river was pretty too because all of the jetties and boat houses were on logs so they could float when the river rose. People were arriving in boats to bring things to sell in the market. You can see all the bunches of bananas in the picture. All in all, it was a good day in Brazil. I really hope we can go back to Brazil some time, and really get a chance to explore, because I think it must be an amazing country. Also, my auntie and my cousins are half Brazilian so maybe we will go there with them one day.

The other country that connects to Colombia is Peru. Nearly 100 years ago, Peru and Colombia were fighting over the land north of the Amazon river, to see if it would belong to Peru or Colombia. In a peace treaty in 1922, it was agreed that Colombia could have a thin strip of land leading down to Leticia (the town where we stayed) so Colombian people could get to the Amazon, but Peru got most of the other land. When you are in Leticia, Peru is just the other side of the Amazon river from Colombia. I say just across the river, but this is actually quite a long way because the Amazon is so wide. They call the Amazon the River Sea because in the wet season it is so wide that when you look across the river it is like looking out to sea! In some places in Brazil it is 10 miles wide or even wider!

When we were in the Amazon we wanted to stay a night in Peru.  We travelled by boat to the place where we were going to stay and when we went into Peru, again there was no border control. We walked along a little jetty and onto Peruvian soil. The people just said ‘hola’ but they didn’t ask to see our passports. You can just see the Peruvian flag at the top of the slope. I found it quite weird seeing so many countries so close together because the UK is an island so it’s not like that. One of the other surprising things was when I realised that we were in the southern hemisphere. We weren’t far south of the equator – only just – but it was my first time and I hadn’t realised that we’d be going there so it felt like a unique experience. One of so many unique experiences that I was lucky enough to be having!

Number 2. Tom, Justine, Petra, Hector and Monopoly deal.

By Oren:

As you might know, when we went to the Amazon we went with another family: Justine, Tom, Petra and Hector. Justine used to work with my mum in London. Since then her family has moved to France so it is difficult to meet up with them. Even when they are in the UK it is tricky to meet up as they usually go to London and Cambridge, not Norfolk. If you think about that then it is a bit crazy that we can meet up in the Amazon rainforest but not near where we live! It was really good to have people we knew to explore with, especially people we got along so well with.

When they were in Heathrow airport on their way to Colombia, they bought a last minute purchase of the game Monopoly Deal. They bought it as a game to play when it was raining or in the evenings. It is basically a travel version of Monopoly and it turned out to be one of the best purchases of the trip! We played it after every mealtime and it was very addictive – once you had played it you couldn’t stop. It got very tense at the end and I wonder if you can tell from the photos who usually won!

   

We bought the game for ourselves when we got back to the UK and over the last few years, every time we play it I think about being in the Amazon.

Number 3: Making bags.

By Brae:

While we were hiking in the jungle we made water bottle bags using palm leaves and the inside of palm trunks. The leaves were very easy to get but the trunk was harder because you had to use a machete to cut off the outer layer of the trunk and then cut off long thick strips of the inside. The strips were so tough that me and Oren working together couldn’t break them. We carried the materials with us until we got to the place where we were stopping for lunch and then, with the help of our guide Alberto, Oren, Hector and I made some water bottle bags.

Alberto showed us how to weave the palm leaves in and out of each other while carefully holding the leaves we had already done so they didn’t get tangled up. Once we had woven one side of the palm leaf we tied it up and started on the other side. The hard bit came after that – plaiting the two sides of the leaf together. Once we had done that we used the strips of trunk. First we tied it to one end of the plait and then the other to make a shoulder strap.

   

Once we had done all those things our bags were ready and I was especially surprised about how strong they were. Two days later at the monkey reserve even the monkeys couldn’t break them when they tried hard to investigate what was inside and if the bags tasted nice! For the rest of our time in the Amazon, we always had our bags with us. Because it was so hot, and because you can’t drink water from the tap, they were very useful. Alberto told us that one way to make them last longer was to dip them in the Amazon river every few days, so we made sure we did this.

As we’re only finishing this blog post nearly three years later, I can tell you that the bags are still just as strong as ever, even though it’s tricky to dip them in the Amazon regularly now!

Not surprisingly, the local people use materials from the jungle to make lots of things. On one of our hikes, we passed a man making panels for his roof. You can see how quick and skilled he was (we did not make it look this easy when we made our bags!!).

Most of the places we stayed had roof panels similar to the one that this man was making. In this video you see an example, although the panels have changed from green to brown as they dried. Even when it poured with rain, the roofs were completely waterproof!

Number 4. Indigenous communities and Colombian laws.

By Oren:

As you may know the Amazon is mainly inhabited by lots of indigenous tribes. While we were there we visited several different styles of indigenous settlement. For example Alfonso’s Annaneko (which means ‘house’ in his indigenous language) was one huge hut where lots of families lived together (and he was the chief). The last video where you can see the roof panels made of leaves is in Alfonso’s Annaneko. The hut symbolised the body of a god.

This was completely different from the Mocagua community that we saw near the Maikuchiga monkey sanctuary. Their village felt quite a lot more modern, with separate houses for each family, all arranged on the bank of the Amazon. All of the houses there were painted with designs about the jungle and the myths and legends that they told. The other main difference between them was how organised they were. Mocagua was very organised – we saw a notice board in the middle of the village which told you the dates each month when everyone in the village would work together to tidy the whole settlement to make sure there was no rubbish, and plant flowers and fix things. Their whole village was so pretty, whereas life in the Annaneko seemed quite strange to me.

Another community that we saw was at the edge of Puerto Nariño, which is one of the biggest towns in the region. We visited the school there and it looked really nice. I wouldn’t mind going to that school.

As Puerto Nariño is quite big it actually has a few different tribes and was a lot more modern. It is an eco friendly town and we really loved it and were told that it had progressed a lot in the last few years. There were no cars in the whole town so you just arrived by boat and then went on foot. This was fine most of the time but we saw some people trying to move really huge heavy things off boat to their houses at the top of steep hills and this was tricky without a car! A lot of the settlements we visited felt like you might imagine a jungle community to be – completely different from anything we’d ever seen – but Puerto Nariño wasn’t so dissimilar to other places we’d been in Colombia. It had electricity and shops and cafes. We loved just walking around and watching daily life and I’d like to go back there one day.

In this clip you can see a bit of the town and the classrooms are in the hexagonal huts. At the end you can see their view of the Amazon from the cool tower at the top of the hill.

We found out that the Colombian government has agreed that all the indigenous communities can make their own laws and deal with law breakers in their own ways, instead of following the normal Colombian laws. The tribes are really different from each other and make different laws for their communities. Often their laws and punishments are quite normal, but we did find out about one punishment that surprised us. It was putting an angry bullet ant down a man’s pants while he was tied to a tree. The bullet ant gets its name because its bite feels like you have been shot. Funnily enough he didn’t do the crime again. I wonder why!

I think that indigenous communities are very interesting and that it is great that the government lets them rule themselves. It is very good that they are still thriving well in the jungle.

Number 5: Brazil Nuts

By Brae:

In our family we eat a lot of Brazil nuts and it seems strange that we never even wondered how they grew. So another cool thing that happened when we visited Alfonso’s Annaneko is that we found out where Brazil nuts really come from. They basically grow inside a shell that looks a bit like a coconut. Surprisingly, all the nuts fit perfectly together in the inside, without even a single air pocket.

Justine really wanted to buy one like this because she thought they would make good presents, but we were told that we wouldn’t be able to find one like it to buy, because when they are shipped off to other countries no-one wants to pay for the extra weight so they take them out of the shell before they go anywhere. I guess not everyone has a giant machete lying around to open them either! All through our time in Colombia we saw fruits and nuts growing around us in ways that we never expected. It’s like the time we saw pineapples growing in little bushes and also when we realised that the coconut grew inside a huge green case. You can read about these things in some of our earliest blog posts. (Pineapple,  Coconut).

There were so many beautiful, magical and wonderful things in the Amazon, but we wouldn’t be giving you a true impression if we only told you about these things. The Amazon is also filled with creepy, scary and disgusting things too! Here are the top 5 moments that definitely made us feel out of our comfort zone.

Number 1:Night walking

By Oren:

One of the most memorable parts of our trip, for wonderful as well as weird and worrying reasons, was our night walk. On our first night in the Amazon, we were in our room listening to the jungle chorus starting up as darkness fell, and our guide came to escort us to dinner. This might sound a bit over the top, but the only way to get to where we were going to eat was to trek through the wilderness. Ahhhh! This offered us the unique opportunity of walking through the Amazon jungle, at night!

From the very first step, we were surprised about how much night time activity there was, but apparently 70% of animals in the rainforest are nocturnal. Our guide set out in the front and as we walked behind him, adrenaline was rushing through us, our hearts beating at what felt like 1000 beats per minute. Soon, he pointed out several stunning frogs and giant stick insects (like the ones our friend Harvey has as pets). It was a great start to our walk, but it was only going to get better. Later on, we saw lots of small spiders and one thing called the scorpion-spider. With a name like that you would never want to meet it in a dark jungle, but it turned out that it was harmless! Suddenly the guide stopped and pointed to a spider a lot bigger than my hand. It looked like something out of a horror film, and to make things worse it was poisonous! It was pretty scary watching my Mum lean in so close to take photos of deadly creatures. We steered clear of that one!

 

Spotting insects that you had only ever seen in books and on TV was nerve wracking because you had no idea what was likely to kill you. Or perhaps we’d see something we recognised, but it would be 20 times as big as at the version we knew at home! We also wondered if at any moment, we’d meet the night wasps again.

During the day, we’d seen them arranged in incredible formation in their nest, with one look out perched on top while the other slept. We had been relieved that they had been sleeping, but suddenly I remembered that night was their time. The sense of nervous anticipation will definitely stick in my mind.

Later on Brae spotted a snake too. It was small and cute, and it was perched on top of a leaf so it looked like it was posing for a photo, but apparently it was poisonous too. Literally everything is dangerous here! The scariest part of the snake encounter was that the guide had walked past it. We all had torches and as Brae scanned the undergrowth, his torchlight fell on the snake, so he pointed it out to the guide. He told us that it was in attack position and advised us to walk right off the path in order to go round it. Basically, if Brae hadn’t spotted it I bet that one of us would have walked into the leaf it was sitting on (which was right by the path) and it would have bitten us!

Suddenly we came to a stop and we were told to turn off our torches. It was like being in a pool full of ink, you couldn’t see your hand even if it was pressed up against your face. I felt very sorry for the French people we had heard about who recently got lost in the jungle for 2 nights! Being there in the total darkness was pretty scary for us at first but in that stillness we could really appreciate the sounds of the jungle. We heard booming echoes and screeching. We thought it was monkeys until the guide said casually, ‘oh that’s a frog’. We weren’t expecting that! We did hear monkeys too, and countless insects, but perhaps the strangest noise of all was the spooky sound of the witch frog cackling in the dark! With each moment we were realising how far away we were from everything that we considered normal and how lucky we were to be having these experiences. Then, our guide held up something glowing to me. It was a leaf, and there was a fungus on the leaf that glowed in the dark! It was magical seeing all those tiny lights appear around us on the forest floor as our eyes finally adjusted to the dark.

On the way back we split into two groups and our group spotted tarantulas -and not one, but five! They were lurking behind a rotting log, in the nooks and crannies. They were really impressive and I was thrilled to have seen them. I have seen so many pictures of tarantulas that it was insane seeing them for myself.

So after all that, was dinner worth it? Well, I certainly enjoyed my half a piranha! All in all the night walk was an incredibly unique and wonderful experience and it was one of my Dad’s top 3 moments of our whole trip.

 

Number 2: Canopy

By Oren:

During our Amazon trip, we had the opportunity to journey through the jungle canopy. Before deciding to take on this challenge, we had thought it over quite a bit, because my Dad is scared of heights, so it was definitely out of his comfort zone. To get this completely different perspective on the jungle, we first had to haul ourselves 38m up a rope to the top of a tree. We had harnesses and braces that held us in place and stopped us sliding back down when we were climbing, but it was incredibly hard work on your arms. We were absolutely exhausted when we reached the top so we were pleased to rest and admire the view from a platform before starting our journey from treetop to treetop, by zip wire!

To tackle the first zip wire, which carried you through the air, high above the jungle floor, we first had to swing our legs off the platform while the guide strapped us in. Then you had to stand on a thin branch and jump off! It was extra scary because whenever someone went on the wire, the whole tree shook (including the platform).  The next wire was much longer and it took you down 21m to the next tree, and it was over 100m long. It was so fun but also frightening going down that one because you felt like you were going to hit a tree at any moment. We got into a chat with one of the helpers before waking along a wobbly, rickety bridge that was held together with bike tyres! That was the worst bit in my opinion because the bridge sagged and swayed under your weight. We then proceeded to slide/fall down a rope to the ground. Brae and I went first and, as you went one at a time, we weren’t exactly sure how our Dad was getting on behind us. We thought he would find it a lot scarier than us and he did. He found it especially scary when we were hanging our legs off the side of the platform and standing on that log. In the end, we felt very impressed that he completed the whole course, until he said that the guide had told him that once you started there was absolutely no way back!

Number 3: Jungle houses

By Brae:

When we were in the Amazon we slept in places that were very different to what we’re used to at home. For example, on just our second night, our guide announced that we would hike through the jungle for a whole day, then travel by river, then hike some more and eventually arrive at a large indigenous hut in the middle of the jungle and that is where we would sleep. Well, first I should tell you that the night hike we did was in something that the guide called secondary jungle. This means that at some point in the past, the jungle in that area had been cut down and what we could see now had regrown. It still looked like wild, huge jungle, but apparently the trees weren’t as old and it was full of fast-growing plants and trees. The place we were going to stay on our second night was going to be in primary jungle – jungle that has never ever been disturbed – so it felt even more like the real thing. Primary jungle is generally where the jaguars are.

After an amazing day of hiking, we reached our ‘maloka’ house, in the middle of nowhere with no other huts to be seen. Our guide had built the house himself and it was really beautiful. We arrived just as it was getting dark and so soon we were surrounded by candle light. There weren’t enough beds for us all so me, Oren and our friend Hector slept in hammocks surrounded by a mosquito net. At first I wasn’t sure about sleeping in the hammock because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get to sleep, but actually I had a wonderful night’s sleep. The hammocks were hung in the middle of the room and to get inside you had to undo the zip at the bottom and climb inside the net, and then get round into the hammock before reaching down to do up the zip at the bottom.

The beds weren’t the only different thing about this stay. Also on this night our shower and loo was outside the ‘maloka’ on a pentagonal platform. It had no walls so there was no hiding if a indigenous person or monkey came wandering in the other direction! This felt quite strange as I stood there in the shower but it was actually really cool too. It was the best view I’ve ever had from a shower!

Another odd sleeping place was on our first night when we slept in a tree house. This was not what might come to mind when I say ‘tree house’ as it really was a house in a tree. It had four beds, a bathroom and a balcony. Our first impression was: wow! It was a very nice place to stay as you could look out of the window and see the jungle below you! The balcony was home to a small colony of bats who slept in the roof. As I got in bed to go to sleep that night I said to my dad “I have Oren on my right and bats on my left!”. You may think that the bats were about 10 metres away but they were actually under a foot from my face. I could hear them squeaking to each other as I went to sleep.

As well as the bats we had been warned that there was a small mouse living in the treehouse too, but that we shouldn’t worry about it. That night my Mum went to the toilet and suddenly a loud scream echoed through the cabin. We all called her name to see what was up but she still didn’t answer straight away. Eventually she came back into the room looking a bit white and said that our treehouse guest wasn’t a small mouse, it was a huge rat, or some other jungle rodent! I told her off for not answering when we were saying her name – anything could have happened to her – not just a rat-sighting. Later on we had visits from a massive cricket and a lizard . It was cool seeing them flitting about. It was a wild cabin!

You have probably guessed that even though these sleeping experiences were definitely out of our comfort zone, we thought they were pretty awesome in the end. The thing that I found most amazing about sleeping in the jungle was having the sounds of the jungle around me as I dropped off. However it was a little bit worrying because there was not much stopping a tarantula or a venomous snake getting into our huts!

Number4: Grub!

By Oren:

While we were staying in Puerto Nariño we were just having breakfast when our guide came in holding a writhing humungous maggot. It was absolutely revolting and when he said ‘this is lunch!’, I almost threw up. It was even worse when he said, I know someone who will eat it, follow me. Outside we met an indigenous man who proceeded to eat this creature alive! It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen, or at least the top five! I can hardly write this without feeling sick. What he did was rip its head off and then suck its gooey yellow insides from inside it. I had to walk off quietly and take some deep breaths after that. To make it worse, Justine offered 50 pounds to anyone who tried it and so did my dad! Hector was considering a teeny taste but I said it was worth all the money in the world and more! As you can imagine no-one felt hungry after that!

Even though we didn’t try the grub we did try to think about how different cultures have different traditional dishes and people from other countries might find them disgusting. People from Puerto Nariño might find some of our traditional dishes horrid too. Even though I try to keep an open mind about tasting new things it was on a whole new level of gross for me. I’m not a complete disgrace though, in Bogotá they sold fried big bottomed ants and I tried a bit of that. I just hated the fact that the maggot was alive. To be honest it was quite a disgusting experience in total.

Number 5: Indigenous chief

By Brae:

In the Amazon region, most people are indigenous and they call the places they live communities, instead of town and cities. Each community has their own way of life and traditions and, as Oren mentioned in the last post, they can decide their own rules and laws. We have been lucky enough to travel so much around Colombia, and we think that some of the Amazon communities we visited were among the nicest places we saw anywhere in the country. We especially loved Mocagua (where the monkey sanctuary was) and the communities in Puerto Nariño (we will tell you more about that in the next blog). They seemed to have a lovely way of life and you felt like if you lived there you would probably be very happy. But, we did spend time in one indigenous community that made us feel a bit out of our comfort zone and this wasn’t a place that we thought we’d want to live. I am going to tell you about this one.

On our second day in the Amazon we went on a long walk through the jungle and stopped for a rest when we reached an indigenous house. We were going to have lunch there and we were about to walk in when we were told we had to go round the other side and enter through another door. It was explained to us that these indigenous people believe that the house is like a body and so you must enter through the mouth and then go out through the rear!

The hut was a large oval shape with just mud for a floor. There was a wooden table and benches, some hammocks and an open fire. So it was quite basic but it was very pretty and surprisingly cool considering how hot the jungle was outside. In the corner there was a big pot which we thought might be our lunch. We looked in and there was a sloth’s head being cooked in it! It still had all its hair still on, it was absolutely disgusting. This was a real shock as we had spent all morning hoping to see a sloth sleeping on a branch of a tree. We definitely didn’t want to see one in a pot! Thankfully our guide told us that it was not for us, and he said that the chief did not hunt sloths to eat but this sloth had died accidentally when a tree was cut down so they were cooking it so that it wasn’t wasted. I was happy to learn that they didn’t hunt sloths but I was still quite upset about the head in the pot!

To escape this cooking we quickly got into our swimming costumes and headed down to a small tributary of the Amazon river. Because it is so humid in the Amazon, going in the water felt like being brought back to life because of how refreshing it was. However, it was a bit worrying because even though caiman, anaconda and piranha usually don’t go in that area there was nothing to stop them doing so! After we had had a swim, the chief asked us to help move a canoe, and we were quite surprised when we found the boat about four foot under water!

Lifting it was actually fun but it was really tiring work because the canoe was VERY heavy and we were up to our chests in water and there was a very powerful current! In the end, one person stood in shallow water so they could be really stable and then we joined hands to make a chain, with each person getting deeper and deeper and nearer the canoe, and then we all heaved, pulling against each other so that we didn’t fall over. We nearly gave up a few times but finally we succeeded  in getting it near the surface and then we bailed all the water out. Then me, Oren and our friends Hector, Petra and Tom all got in the boat and went across the river to test it. It was extremely wobbly and kept letting water in the sides so in the end we all jumped out into the deep river.

When we got back to the hut we had lunch and we were served catfish and piranha, not sloth. This tasted fantastic, and instead of a table cloth and plates we had a colossal banana leaf covering the table to eat our food off.

After lunch, the chief wanted to show us one of his community’s traditions and he asked us to help him make a powder from the coca leaf. I know that the coca leaf is used to make something that Colombia is very famous for but this is not the same. The indigenous people use coca to keep them alert and active, a bit like coffee. Coca leaves are also used across the country and in other countries like Peru to make tea to help with altitude sickness and for general health, and the indigenous people used it like this for a long time before the other way of using it was invented.

So, we helped the chief. First you pick the mature leaves, leaving the youngest ones on the plant. Once you have picked the leaves you roast them over an open fire being careful not to burn them. You grind the roasted leaves into dust by using a large stick. Then you add ash from a special tree and mix the two together.To take the mixture, you place some of the powder under your tongue. Some of our group tried it and the chief had loads. Apparently it is like putting a load of ash in your mouth and it made speaking very difficult.

It was then time for one of the scariest parts of our trip! It was time to make the next part of our journey, by boat. The chief led us to the river and told us to get in a boat. He said he’d got a new canoe for us but the one he pointed to looked very familiar! Yes, the one we had raised from the bottom of the river! Yes, the one that we had tested that let in loads of water! But we didn’t know what other choice we had so 10 of us clambered into the small and extremely unstable canoe. Once we were all in it, the rim of the boat was barely above the water line. The next half an hour felt like ten hours as the boat continually let bucket loads of water over the side and, if that wasn’t bad enough, there were holes in the boat that let even more water in.

I think the chief picked up on our nervousness, so he sang us a song to cheer us up. This was a nice idea, but his swaying in time to the song just made more water enter, and so the trip was even more terrifying! Three of us were constantly bailing water out and my mum was petrified that we were going to lose her camera to the water with all our photos of the trip. We somehow managed not to sink and arrived at our destination only slightly soaked. We then said goodbye to the chief. As I watched everyone else receiving a very sweaty hug from the half naked chief I slunk off and hid behind Oren. Thanks to my Dad who pointed me out, and made sure I wasn’t forgotten and got my special squish!

 

 

By Brae:

We would recommend Colombia to anyone, because they would have an  amazing time there and have incredible experiences. But what makes Colombia extra special for us is that we have a Colombian friend called Diana. And what makes that even more special is that all of her family are really, really welcoming and kind. They all live in Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, which is why we used this as a base for our trips and spent quite a lot of time there.

When we first arrived in Bogotá and rang the bell of their flat, Diana, her husband Ernesto and her brother Luis Fernando were all there to welcome us and we really felt like this was our Colombian family. Diana’s flat had the most amazing view in the world out of the window and we saw humming birds in her garden!

Diana’s family also took us to stay the weekend at her mum’s old house and it had a pool right next door and we swam in the pool all the days that we were there. The first time we went into the pool I was surprised that I way out of my depth because all the other pools I had been in in Colombia haven’t even been up to my neck. Later on, everyone was in the pool hitting the ball to each other in the air, and I could still do it but it was harder for me because I was treading water the whole time when everyone else could just stand up   .

  

In the evening, we played poker and suddenly Diana pointed under the table and the look of horror on Luis Fernando’s face as he jumped up and grabbed a flip flop made me sure that it was something bad. I looked and I saw a scorpion under the table! Then SPLAT – Luis Fernando crushed it under his shoe.

One of the best things about seeing Diana is that we just do normal family fun like playing games and cooking. Diana always teaches us a new recipe and this time we made a Spanish dish called paella. It’s basically a lot of rice with vegetables, sea food and meat. In fact, food is always a big part of the time we spend together and the whole family makes sure we get to try the best Colombian food. On our way back from Diana’s mums house we had lunch at a ribs place that Diana’s other brother Ivan wanted us to try and he was right because it was the best ribs I’ve ever had!!!

In Colombia, breakfasts are very different because in England you might have cereal, toast or pancakes but in Colombia you eat a big meal. It could be arepas, cheese, eggs, sweet rolls, envueltos, tamales, meat, left over dinner from the night before (we had paella and pizza for breakfast in Bogotá!), patacones, empanadas etc. It’s going to be hard getting used to a small bowl of sugar-free cereal again!

Another example of their kindness is that Diana’s husband Ernesto saw me and Oren watching football on TV one day and the next night he took us to see Santa Fe (their local team) play a game at the stadium nearby. I’ve only ever seen Norwich City play before so this was so exciting and it was one of my favourite things we did. Even though the stadium wasn’t even half full, it was probably a lot louder than most games in England because the fans were so supportive, shouting and blowing horns and there were two huge bands playing instruments. It was especially cool because Santa Fe won 1-0!

    

On our last day in Colombia we went on a bike tour around Bogotá. We rode bikes around the city for 5 hours seeing things that Colombia is famous for. For example, we went to a chocolate shop and a place they roasted coffee. We also tried these things called fat bottomed ants and they tasted a bit like salty popcorn but they have a really grim aftertaste. Best of all was the Paloquemao fruit market where we tried loads of fruit, like zapote, mango, lulo, tomate del arbol, maracuyá, dragon fruit, guanabana, mangostinos and feijoa etc. I have eaten so much unusual fruit while I’ve been in Colombia. I think you could try a new fruit every day for a month or more! I’m going to miss all the fruit juices and fruit ice cream flavours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also parked our bikes for a while to play Colombia’s national sport ‘tejo’, which is where you throw metal disks at explosives! We played it last time but this time we played it in a bigger place and the disks were a lot heavier, plus the explosions were much, much louder because it was inside and there was a lot more gunpowder.

Last of all, we got to see some of Bogotá’s graffiti. Diana is a lawyer and it was so cool to find out that she had been involved in making the law that stopped graffiti being illegal. Some of it is really amazing.

I really liked the bike tour and afterwards Diana took us to a restaurant that she really liked and the food was one of the best meals I’ve had on the trip so it was a great way to end a brilliant day. We are really going to miss everyone.

 

 

 

 

By Brae

To get to Paso del mango, you can not go all the way by car, so we got there by motorbike. We took a taxi to a police station at the foot of a mountain, then we ordered four motorbikes and set off up the mountain.

We had no helmets and our huge backpacks were balanced precariously on the front of the bike as we set off up the road for the half hour long journey. When I say road it was actually a dirty track and it was extremely bumpy and rocky like a cliff. I was just getting used to all the bumps when my driver took our his phone and started playing candy crush!!! I know someone driving up a steep dirt track one handed with a mobile phone in one hand sounds crazy but he really did play it! I think my mum and dad were pleased that they didn’t know about this until I got there safely. On the way back my driver’s phone rung and he answered it, stuck it in his helmet and started talking to the person on the phone, Oren’s driver was listening to music inside his helmet on the way there as well occasionally getting it out to switch songs. I found out that it was not unusual for motorbike drivers to go on their phones while they were driving, in fact they did it most of the time!  They must have great skill, although as my driver made the sign of a cross after we arrived maybe my driver was also relieved we made it!

In Colombia motorbike taxi drivers don’t drive on the left, they drive on the right, apart from when some of them drive on the left of course, or in the middle sometimes!!! Pretty much whenever they feel like driving on the left or in the middle they drive there.

We were very surprised by this driving but we also noticed the skill of the drivers: weaving in and out of the rocks at speed up hills and down them! It’s not only on motorbikes that you get driving like that. Some taxi drivers on the coast are nearly as reckless as the motorbike drivers. They go fast and change lanes into the smallest gap. Another thing that we noticed is the amount of beeping that goes on. You have to listen carefully to distinguish between the get out of my way beep, the hurry up the light is about to go green beep, the beep for do you want a taxi and a general beep for the fun of it. There are so many horns going off you can’t even tell whether it is your taxi driver beeping or being beeped at! In a traffic jam it is the worst though.

The other thing that we’d forgotten about was the ‘how many people can you get in a car’ game. When there is a big group of people and you are wondering how many cars or taxis you will need to get to your destination, I can tell you that no matter how many of you there are, the answer will always be one! It is strange how much of a surprise these things can be when you are used to things being a certain way.

By Brae:

This holiday, we are only spending one week in Santa Marta (instead of over two months like last time). That means that we tried to spend as much time as possible with the charity over these days, but sadly, the time has already come to say goodbye. This will be the second and last post about La Lucha.

As well as the ‘sede’ that Oren told you about, one of the major improvements in La Lucha is that they now have their own ‘cancha’. A cancha is a kind of football pitch that can be used for other sports as well, like basketball. Next to the one in La Lucha they have some playground equipment for little ones too. A few years ago the kids used to go to a ‘cancha’ in another neighbourhood nearby for their lessons, but they kept getting into really bad fights with the local kids about who should play there. So, to avoid injuries they decided to do their training in the street in their own neighbourhood and that is where we always used to play with them. You might remember the videos of our sports lessons on the dirt road. Occasionally, a car or a motorbike would drive right through the lesson and we’d have to get out of the way, which was sometimes annoying if we were in the middle of an activity or game of football. Last year, La Lucha finally got their own cancha which was a huge boost for the whole neighbourhood. One thing you should know is that La Lucha is on the edge of a huge motorway and the ‘cancha’ is right by the road. If the ball goes over the tall bars in the wrong direction it could end up in front of a speeding car or motorbike!

It also means that when you’re playing there, it is really loud and you have to shout for people to hear you. The buses and lorries make lots of clouds of dust as well as noise. But still, for the people who live there, they don’t care and they think it’s amazing and they are really proud. Everyone goes there in the evening and sits around and they call it ‘el parque’ (the park).

On Friday, we were invited to try out a sports lesson for all the kids aged 8-12. Even though the tour was really good, it was really nice for me just to be playing with the kids again and feel like part of the group. During the training, I was made captain of my group and the ‘monitores’ told me all the rules of the game, and then I had to explain all the rules to my teammates – in Spanish of course! All of my group had loads of detailed questions about the game so I kept having to go back and ask for more explanations of what to do in different situations. We played different games for 2 hours and meanwhile it got really dark. Whenever we weren’t in the middle of a game, the kids were asking me and Oren questions about England and especially about football teams. The time went so quickly I was disappointed when it finished.

While we are here, we wanted to get some stuff for the foundation. First, we brought them lots of sports clothes from home – all the things that Oren and I have grown out of, and we also asked all our cousins for any football kits and ended up with a whole suitcase full of clothes. When we took the clothes to the sede lots of kids started rummaging through the bag searching for their favourite teams’ kit. Most of them seemed to prefer Barcelona and Real Madrid, and luckily we had lots of Barcelona kits because our cousin Luke supports Barcelona. As well as this, we wanted to find out when we got here what they really needed. We realised that a lot of their sports equipment had been broken so Anja told us that it would be great if we could buy them some hula hoops and skipping ropes that could be used in training. These were really popular, especially the skipping ropes as I don’t think they had these before.

Although I never forgot about La Lucha when we were back in England, it didn’t seem quite as real when we were so far away. But going back there has really reminded me how much they have to go through every day. All the kids are really happy about the sede and la cancha and I’m really happy that they have them because it really helps them in their very difficult environment.

Seeing everyone again made me really proud of the fundraising we have done at Colby school over the last 2 and a half years. On the day of the England vs Colombia football match we made arepas and sold Colombian food at break time for a fundraiser, and everyone who bought something should feel like their money went to a good cause. And In October-November last year we did a 30-Day No Sugar challenge (including halloween!) and lots of our friends and family sponsored us and we gave all the money to the Colombian charity and we raised over 1,000 pounds. Thank you to everyone who has helped us. And we’re definitely going to keep fundraising!

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/EverettsinColombia

By Oren:

When we were last in Colombia you might know that we spent a lot of time with a charity called Tiempo de Juego. This charity helps children who live in a really poor neighbourhood called La Lucha. They go to school in the mornings but there is no school in the afternoon so they have nowhere to go. This has led to some children wandering around the streets alone, vulnerable to dangers in their neighbourhood. Without role models to teach them how to get along with each other (because the adults are at work), the children sometimes get into fights and other kinds of trouble. When we were in Colombia before, the charity had set up a football club after school on Wednesday for children to go to, and we went along every week too to spend time with them. During the fun football session, the teachers also talked to the children about how to get along and how to behave and they helped them to learn life skills. At the end of our stay we tried to help out by giving the children shoes.  The person who was running the foundation in La Lucha always told us that her dream for the charity was to have their own building where children could go to every day, not just once a week, to do homework on the computers she hoped to install there, and to have a safe place with adults who can teach them and care for them.

My mum had kept in touch with the leaders and a year ago they told us that they had finally managed to get a building – they were so happy! Then a few months later they told us they had moved to a new building because the first one was too near to the busy road and dust was getting in; it was very noisy and smelled of petrol from the cars. They told us the building they had moved into was so much better – it had computers for doing homework and research and they were running sport, music and dance classes for children.  They called it ‘El Sede’: the headquarters. We were all very proud that such a small charity had managed to achieve their dreams of helping the children in La Lucha.

Maybe because of the word ‘headquarters’, my mum had imagined quite a fancy place and we were all so excited to go there. As we made plans to visit, the new manager there sent us a picture of the building to help us find it. This is what she sent us:

It wasn’t really what we were expecting, but after we visited and had spent some time learning about what they do there, we soon agreed that it was a headquarters to be proud of. When we went through the rusty metal door there was a courtyard with plants at the front and a room at the back with computers, a fridge for keeping food and drinks fresh, a cupboard with musical instruments and sport equipment and a filing cabinet to keep information about the charity and the children. In the courtyard there were some stairs that led up to a room upstairs which was where they had their dance and music classes. There was also a tiny room for counselling as some of the children had had very bad experiences. It was a bit basic in many ways but it had just what they needed.

At the ‘sede’ we met one of the charity’s managers, Anja, and two of the older children in the foundation who were ‘monitores’. These are the children who have shown themselves to be role models during classes and so they are promoted and asked to help the teachers to run activities. The monitores were going to give us a tour of the neighbourhood. Anja told us that she had asked four monitores to do the tour with us but that only two turned up on time. She said that she always had to book more monitores than she needed because she knew that some wouldn’t come. Although the monitores are some of the best kids in the neighbourhood, some of them are still learning about respecting their responsibilities and being on time! The two that came were called Mateo and Onehis and they were great. Mateo is at university and we knew Onehis from when we lived here before so it was great to see him again and know that he is doing so well! They took us out into the neighbourhood of La Lucha. Some younger kids from Tiempo de Juego decided to come along too as they were really excited to see English visitors to their neighbourhood.

As we walked, one of the first things I noticed was pipes all across the dirt floor of the streets. Anja said that they were pipes bringing water to the houses. La Lucha is set on  the side of a mountain and the people have just built houses there out of things they have found on the street. There are no pipes underground or proper bathrooms or kitchens, so they need pipes to get the water to the houses. Mateo and Onehis then explained that the neighbourhood only gets water two or three times every month so the people living there have to make the most of the water when it comes. Everyone was washing their clothes that day and it made me think what things would be like if you could only wash clothes or wash yourself properly a few times a month!

We started to climb a hill with the younger children running off ahead. 
They were very small but they had a lot of confidence and we were told that they were especially keen to come because they weren’t usually allowed up the hill on their own as it was quite dangerous.  One of the funniest thing was when they found out that Brae could floss and they spent a long time flossing with him, trying to see who was the fastest!

One of the houses at the top of the hill was made out of only tyres and other recycled materials. We asked who lived there and Onehis said that people from Venezuela had recently built it -there were 15 people all living there. He then explained that because of the hyper inflation and other problems in Venezuela, many people had left the country because they can’t afford to feed themselves. More than one million Venezuelans had arrived in Colombia in the last year and many were sleeping on the streets of Santa Marta. Some people did not welcome them, but people from La Lucha had seen them there and said ‘Why don’t you come and build a house in our neighbourhood instead of living on the street? We have room on the hill.’ So lots of Venezuelans have come to La Lucha since we were last there. I think the people of La Lucha had probably welcomed them like this because they knew what it was like to be without anything.

From the top of hill we had an amazing view of the sea in one direction and ‘La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta’ mountains in the other.            

Where we were standing, the mountains and the sea were closer together than any other point along the coast of Colombia so it was a special view and you could tell that Mateo and Onehis were really proud and thought it was very beautiful. On the way back down the mountain we encountered a dog which was straying away from its owner and when we got close it growled and bared its teeth at us! Luckily Onehis knew what to do and he scared it off with some rocks and bark.

The tour was fascinating. We are very thankful to Mateo, Onehis and Anja for helping us to better understand the neighbourhood that the kids we have seen progress so much grew up in. Selling tickets for the tour was such a great way for the children themselves to earn money for the foundation and it was also great experience for the monitores to have the responsibility to teach people about la Lucha.

It was amazing to see how much the charity had progressed and expanded since we gave out shoes to the children last time, and it was incredible to see something we care about growing so much.

By Brae:

On Thursday, we went to the most spectacular beach we’ve ever been to. The water was so clear and every shade of blue that I’ve ever even imagined.

When we got up that day, we thought we were going to go to a beach called Playa Cristal. This is an amazing beach inside the Tayrona National Park that we had never been to. Our friend Alexander (who took us to see the howler monkeys the last time we were in Colombia) said he would help us to get there, because you can only get there by boat. Alexander, his wife Monica and their three children – Pacho, Maria and Samuel – piled into the 4×4 with us and we set off (9 people in 6 seats!). On the way there, Alexander told us he had an idea about changing our plans. He said that he knew someone who would take us to a different beach, that was not open to the public. He told us that it was a very special beach – the prettiest in Colombia – and he’d only ever taken 2 other people there before. Even his own family very rarely go there so it was going to be a treat for all of us. My mum thought that maybe he was telling us this to make us feel special and maybe it wouldn’t be so unique when we got there. We went into the national park and drove along a really bumpy road until we arrived at a deserted beach. Alexander walked down the beach to talk to his friend and soon we all hopped into his boat and sped off. To get to our destination, we went out round a peninsula into open sea with quite rough waves and I thought we were going to capsize but our awesomely-skilled ‘lanchero’ (boat driver) got us back into the next cove in one piece.

As the boat pulled into the beach I looked around and there was absolutely nobody for miles around. The water was unbelievably clear, full of fish and really warm. The first thing we did was run into the sea for a swim before we went free diving. When we swam out to the reef we saw red, orange, white, green and yellow coral and so many fish including a puffer fish, a metre long fish and fish of all colours. We stayed at the beach all day and never saw another person. We had an adventure walking to a salt lake that the local tribe use – they swap salt for food with other tribes. This is one reason why Alexander doesn’t bring people here as it is a very special place for the local tribe. We made sure we took care of the beach well and we collected some plastic that had been washed up there from the sea and took it home with us.

Oren and I played with my ball that bounces on water with Alexander’s oldest son Pacho. He is the same age as Oren but the same height as me. Everywhere we go people can’t believe that Oren is 12 when they see how tall he is! They think that England is a land of giants!

It was really nice to share this amazing day with a Colombian family. They were all so kind and at the end of the day Pacho asked if we could come into his house to play but we were too tired because of the jet lag (on our body clock it was 1am). They also asked if we could go camping with them and maybe this weekend we will go round to their house for dinner and to play.

Welcome back to the Everetts In Colombia blog! We have returned to this amazing country, over 2 years after our original family adventure.

By Brae and Oren:

After a long day of travelling we finally arrived at our old apartment in Rodadero, near Santa Marta, Colombia. As we walked into the building we were greeted  warmly by the ‘portero’, as if we were long lost friends. We were so happy to see him too and it felt so great to be back.  Just then, it started raining. We were pretty surprised because we don’t think we saw a single drop of rain during the several months that we lived here, two years ago. We thought it would stop quickly but we were very wrong.

We already had plans for our first day, so before long we set out to visit our Colombian charity friends. We took a taxi into Santa Marta (our local city) and the rain just kept falling. As the water flowed in rivers down from the hillsides, and swirled around the taxi, with thunder and lightening crashing around us, we were starting to get a bit worried. Dad spotted a teenage boy, taking a shower in the street, using the water that was streaming off one of the roofs, overflowing out of the end of a gutter. Lots of people don’t have showers in their homes so he was smart to take advantage of the opportunity. Then the taxi driver said that he couldn’t take us any further because the water was just too deep and his taxi would flood.

When we got out, we still hadn’t got to the place where we were meeting our friends, so we bravely tried to continue our journey on foot.

Sometimes we had to turn back and try a different route when the water got too deep, but we didn’t give up easily and eventually we got to a place where we could almost see the cafe we were heading to. But disaster! – the water on these final few streets was waist deep and fast flowing and it was just too dangerous to go any further. Also, at this moment, Oren suddenly noticed bugs crawling along the walls on the other side of the road. We looked closer and discovered that loads of ‘cucarachas’ (cockroaches) had scrambled up the side of someone’s house. They had fled there in search of dry land as their usual hiding places were under water. It was disgusting!

I should mention that even though it was raining and we were drenched from head to toe, it was very, very, very, hot. We reluctantly decided to head back home to Rodadero, and give up on our mission for that day.

To cheer ourselves up, on the way we had our favourite Colombian  ice cream flavours (maracuyá and arequipe) for lunch. We didn’t mind about not having a proper lunch because we had already had some Colombian food at the airport at three o’ clock in the morning while we waited for our connecting plane: buñuelos, palitos de queso, pan de bono, arepa de queso…..yuuummmm!

We really enjoyed our first day and the apartment feels like a second home even though it’s extremely different from our Norfolk home. Today’s adventure felt like just the beginning of a long line of adventures to come over the next month.