floundersgreatadventure

What a week huh. The stock market is in the toilet, the Trumpster in it up to his squirrelly little eyeballs. But that’s not what I ‘m here about today. You probably seen some posts where I say that Christmas isn’t a big religious holiday down here but Easter is. Well I went shopping at the mall yesterday and Home center(The Colombian equivalent of home depot) had already removed most Christmas decorations that were for sale. The same went for the Exito. Now I ‘m told that’s because all the decoration is supposed to be done by the night of Dec. 7 in preparation for the 9th which is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Now the 8th is when all the partying begins and the Christmas spirit gets stoned. It is also when teachers and other people who work with contracts are laid off until after the first of the year when in some case they must reapply for there job and hope somebody younger doesn’t want it. Now knowing that I can understand the drinking. How can you plan a future when you don’t know if you’ll have a job next year. This also explains why professionals want t o move out of the country. This is also a country where age discrimination is a well established pattern. Once a male reaches 50 it’s almost impossible for him to find a job. I believe its even worse for women. That is why you see so many homes being expanded or having businesses in the parlors, it’s a safety net or in a worse case scenario there main source of income. Like our Social Security the pension given to Colombians is not enough to survive on. So this can explain the heavy drinking during the Holiday season. Yet with all this the Colombian are a happy people, maybe its the liqueur and drugs I don’t know I just wish that stores could look like Christmas for awhile longer. This Flounder and Fats Saying CIAO from Medellin, Colombia.