Today was a dumb day. I basically used my wiles (yeeees) to not leave the apartment all day except twice. The first time I left, I only walked to another apartment in the same complex so I'm not sure that really counts. When it started to rain, I decided the apartment was in need of a deep-clean, so I busted out the Avett Brothers and went at it.
There is nothing like spending a few hours on your hands and knees scrubbing grout to really make you long for a trip to the Exito! (Seriously, what is happening to me?) Anyway, I was pretty sketched out by the way Celina had told me to get places, but I ignored my suspicions and walked to la Ochenta and then tried to find the Exito de Colombia, assuming it would magically appear on 80 and Colombia. I was wrong, and some lady at a drug store told me to walk to the one in Robledo, which was "close, maybe five blocks". I knew she was wrong because she pointed in the direction I had come in and I had walked at least 6 blocks, but I figured "Hey, maybe it's seven blocks in that direction!" So, on I went!
And this is how I walked to Robledo. Robledo, by the way, is not worth walking to. I realized I was backtracking in a weird way, because I crossed this weird creek behind my apartment (actually, now that I mapped that, it's even funnier what I did because I was walking in exactly the wrong direction). So, finally, I got to Robledo. A neat thing about getting to know Medellín this way, on foot, is that I get to see how ridiculous the Paisa knack for exaggerating distances is. To the untrained ear, "I live allllll the way up in Robledo" implies that it is far. However, now I know that it is not far at all, or even inconveniently situated. At all. With my newfound confidence, I'm definitely gonna start taking my camera on these dumb jaunts.
Anyway, after I did my grocery shopping (no canned black beans, but they had canned goulash!), I decided a chicken nugget snack was in order (Hi! I am five years old!). Since every Exito has a Frisby, I found the one here and went to buy chicken nuggets. The lady was really mean and acted like I was an idiot because I didn't understand when she greeted me by brashly grunting that all she had was a medio pollo. I asked, "no french fries?" To which she replied, "Oh, yeah." So finally she actually came out to the counter (this exchange was happening with her standing way back in the kitchen area and exchanging snide glances with the only other person working there) and said, "so you want half a chicken?"
"What? No. I want french fries."
"You don't want half a chicken?" she asked again, serving up some chicken nuggets for a waiting customer who must've ordered before me.
"Don't you have any more of those?" I asked, pointing at the nuggets, looking into her eyes searchingly, pleadingly.
"Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. I have half a chicken." I couldn't understand how that meant she had nuggets. Did 'half a chicken' mean 'half a chicken's worth of chicken parts'?
"Okay, I'll take it. With the french fries. And a soda. To go."
"Fine. But I don't have a lid for the soda. And it's gonna be a few minutes."
I sat and waited. Sitting and waiting gave me time to reflect on something that always trips me up. Half a chicken. Because chickens are living beings, I am always confused by that type of terminology. After all, it's hard for me to think of someone referring to my thigh separately from my drumstick, so often I forget that those are two different pieces. What I'm saying is, as I was sitting, I realized that half a chicken is not one or two pieces, but more like four pieces of chicken. Furthermore, upon inspection at home, I realized that the chicken I was working with must've been a really interesting specimen because it had three breasts and a wing (no nuggets--gypped all the way around). So now I'm stuck with a bunch of crappy chicken. This is gonna take days to deal with.
Life is hard.
Also, there were good articles on the internet today. This one was particularly moving. Seriously, read the comments. Some of the things resonated with me really deeply. I think there were other things I thought about that were interesting today. Oh! This song! Ha! I am owning my loner-ness?
Now that I am reading back through this whole thing, it seems weird and sad to me, but it was a satisfying day! I guess there are always things that are hard to express, and things that can be gratifying in ways that are surprising. Maybe tomorrow will be a more obviously impressive day, but I'm moving through, and I'm doing okay!
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