Everyday, Monseratte, La Candelaria, y otras cosas

Saludos a todos y todas!

We are settling in well and having fun!

Most weeks we have Spanish class 3 of the days for 4 hours (2 hours for Eric and 2 hours for Kelly). We love our teacher and her husband! You’ll see their pictures below. They include “field trips” in our classes where we get to learn how to navigate this very large city and practice conversations in Spanish. We have been to Simon Bolivar Park, a botanical garden, Maloka–a science museum, Monseratte–mountain, la septima–a walkway with street performers, and la candelaria–the ‘old’ part of the city.

(Below is Kelly doing an experiment at Maloka)

Our afternoons and days where we don’t have Spanish class are spent usually walking to a mall called Diverplaza. There is a nice path from our house to the mall that takes about 30 minutes to walk. At the mall there is a JuanValdez coffee cafe where we study and do our Spanish homework.

(Below is Eric in Spanish class.)

Other things we’ve enjoyed are bible studies at Jose y Carmenza’s house. Their family has been super friendly. Below–Jose is the man in the red jacket and his wife Carmenza is behind the couch in the white sweater. This is in their house. They have a wonderful family!

We are so grateful for the effort our church family has made to include us in their community. For the first month we were invited out to lunch after church every week–how nice for us newbies 🙂 Below is one of the lunches we went to with Edgar, Luz Miriam (in red) y Marta (right). They took us to Choachi, an originally indigenous pueblo in the mountains.

Below are pictures from the time we went up Monseratte.

Birds-eye view of Bogota!

The Cathedral on Monseratte

You can see the Virgin de Guadelupe

We rode up Monseratte with our friends Diana y Felipe

These next photos are from La Candelaria…What a FUN area to photograph. So rich with color, people, architecture…

So many birds!

Catedral de la plaza Bolivar

On our free days, we’ve also been purchasing some home-goods to personalize our apartment…we were so pumped to finally get our couch!