floundersgreatadventure

Yesterday was Halloween and Jeff, Ruby, Vanessa, John and of course the star of the show Hari went walking about town. Jeff came back and told me that he didn’t know there were that many kids in Colombia never mind Bello. He said it was difficult to walk around the square and all the little kids wanted to high five him because he was head and shoulders above everyone else. They went to haunted house waited about an hour to get in for what was supposed to be a fifteen minute scare. It turned into maybe 10 minutes of laughter; it’s hard to scare people today without special effects even down here. After the show they went to get Hari (he wasn’t allowed into show, he was sleeping anyhow) at Vanessa’s grandmother’s house. Jeff says she was a delightful person. Then came the long walk home threw some rather dark streets and along a route that left Jeff feeling completely lost. They finally made it home Ruby fed Jeff then they had ice cream and finally they remembered to feed ME.

Well it stopped raining but things are still very quiet around here the election is over and before I tell you the results let me explain a little. They have the ability if there’s no one they like running for office they can, instead of not voting at all, cast what is called a white vote. A white vote means that the voter doesn’t consider any of the candidates worth voting for and rather  than no expressing this and letting someone they don’t like win the election they cast a white vote to show their displeasure. Well here in Bello the white vote won which now means they will have a special election, but here’s the kicker it has to be with all new candidates. Yes you heard me right a new slate of candidates. I happen t think this is a good idea because I know Jeff always complained when he went to vote that the choice was usually the lesser of two evils, sometime’s he didn’t even vote. If Americans had this ability maybe they would actually be able to make some serious changes in their government. Well that’s it for tonight I’m going to watch Sunday night football in Spanish with Jeff.

Saturday and it rained all day now it’s Sunday and it’s still raining this is a first for us down here usually it will rain foe awhile then the sun will come out and it will rain again at night But these two days it’s been raining pretty steady. Yesterday Jeff and ruby went to Hader’s house to help him clean it so when his girlfriend comes home she won’t have anything to yell at him about. He only sees her a couple of days a month, I’ll explain that some other time, any how she must be pretty picky about how the house looks. When they were done they walked home in the rain fortunately it wasn’t raining that hard at that time. Saturday night John invited them to go to a vegetarian restaurant in Medellin But Jeff elected to stay home and eat steak (I don’t blame vegetarian chicken no thanks) and watch back episodes of person of interest .Sunday is election day in Colombia this one for mayors and council members .In the capital of Bogota Mayor is the second most powerful man in Colombia next to the President. There style of campaigning down here includes loud music , so you can’t here the lies there saying ,and fireworks Jeff has warned to expect a lot of fireworks from now until January .Well let me go get breakfast and take a nap and I’ll talk to you later and let you know if it stopped raining.

THAT'S MY FRIEND FLOUNDER

Well Jeff’s niece Kim read my blog and she’s right I don’t take showers at any temperature. Yesterday was the beginning of the Halloween weekend Ruby and Vanessa went the gym in costume and they won some prizes from a local spa. I would have paid good money (but being a cat I would have just snuck in) to see the two girls work out in costume. Halloween down here isn’t like Mexico’s day of the dead they celebrate it as children’s day in Colombia and the kids not only get to go trick or treating but they get gifts to, not a bad racket. I hope we don’t get to many kids coming to the door of the apartment the door bell and I don’t get along very well. Jeff, Ruby, John, and  Hari as well as some more relatives will be out trick or treating at least once this weekend. I’ll tell you how it went next time

happy halloween

Well let’s talk about the folks down here in Colombia everyone is very nice to Jeff and those that meet me are very nice to, a little to touchy for my taste but nice all the same. The only problem I see is the lack of courtesy by the men to the women .I guess it’s the machismo thing. Women will walk down the street and if you’re on the right and they’re  on the right they will never move to the other side ,if they want to get by they will simply push by and if you want to get by and say excuse me (in Spanish of course)they just turn around and look at you .The men dress in jeans for the most part the young one wear t-shirts except if they work in an office. The ones that work in gov’t offices wear slacks and shirts and ties. The women dress in uniforms when they work and when they don’t they wear jeans that Jeff swears are at least three sizes too small, eve the one who shouldn’t. Also it would appear that breast augmentation is done on every female over the age of twelve. Don’t they have any idea what they’re going to look like after 50?The men are thin and athletic at least until the beer starts to expand those flat abs. Speaking of beer it would appear that the drinking age is about 11 or until they can see above the bar same for smoking. Now back to the dress code Men wear sneakers unless there police or work in offices the women wear sandals, sneakers, or plat form high heels about 6 inches high. It’s so nice to be a cat and not have to worry about what to wear.

Well yesterday was a wash nothing exciting happened? Today Jeff and ruby went to Medellin to take money out of the US and put in their account down here. Then they went to the center of Medellin to get health insurance It will take about a month to go into effect but it cost for both of them, depending on the exchange rate 45.00 a month for everything doctors, emergency care, hospital, surgery optical and dental, pretty cool huh. While they were there they noticed some of the famed lights are already up for Christmas. The Christmas season starts mid-night on the last day of November with fireworks everywhere. Then they get serious with parties every night (sounds like I’ll be spending a lot of time in the closet) getting back to the insurance It’s so cheap you would get half ass care but no the care is excellent not only that the doctors make house calls. How come they don’t do this in the US? By the way most of the doctors are trained up there and down here there aren’t a lot of restriction on the drugs you can get and they’re a lot cheaper with or out insurance. More about this next time.

Well they didn’t go anywhere today so they thought they would pay a little attention to me .Don’t they know day time is when I catnap? Sense I’m awake I should tell you a little more about Colombia, let’s see we talked about how small the cars are down here that’s because the roads are small and gasoline is very expensive (about four dollars a gallon) but they do have about 800,000 cars to run on what I presume is natural gas or it could be propane. They originally wanted 8 million but as you can see they came up a little short. As I understand from listening to Jeff the cars run fine there is a slight gas smell at idle and they don’t climb the mountain roads very well, but the gas is like $2.00 to fill up and they get great millage. Most of the gas equipped cars are Kias and are used as taxis, which makes sense because they represent the majority of cars in the city. Did I mention some buses are equipped to run on gas too? I know they have gas equipped cars in the US But down here you find the gas at just about every gas station so you don’t have to drive over to the gas company every time you want to fill up. The gas powered vehicles are also better for the environment and you know how us animals feel about that.

OUR GRANSON HARI

Well as you can see the gang all made it over for some Chile and football both American and Colombian felt sorry for Hader is team lost again John’s lost last night. I might not be the biggest soccer fan in the world but there two teams as are the worst I ever seen. Jeff had to improvise with his Chile because he couldn’t find just plain tomato sauce but in the end everybody said it was great. He plans to make his famous corn chowder next, we know he won’t be making gumbo down here there’s no ochre or cayenne pepper and sausage is a little different to. Tomorrow they are supposed to be doing something with Olga and Nacho; thank god I need to catch up on my beauty sleep cat’s need a lot.

gangs all hereEven Hari and John are here