"Well, this isn't so bad!" I thought to myself, as my eyes traced the rainbow raising over the green apartment buildings, into the rolling Andes mountains in front of me. It was my first day waking up in Bogotá, a city I had only read about beforehand. At first it felt like a dream, or maybe a nightmare? My room felt very surreal: the stiff mattress had hurt my back a bit, my desk and chair were both covered in plastic, and my luggage bags sagged in the corner, begging to be emptied. Then I looked out the window again, remembered the rainbow sailing over the mountains, and I felt warm inside. Since that day, Colombia has been feeling more and more like home!
During my first week, I had a hard time figuring out what to eat. It seemed natural to try to make food that I would usually make back in New York, so I decided why not make some pasta with tomato sauce. "What could go wrong?" I remember thinking. When I got to the grocery store, I realized there was pasta, but no tomato sauce! After examining more closely, I realized that there was a few small bags of what looked like ketchup, but was labeled tomato sauce. I snooped around a bit more. AHA!
