Today you have to be happy!

On Sundays and public holidays some of Medellín big avenues are closed to traffic and cyclists, joggers and walkers enjoy the space. And dogs:

Sale of ice creams for dogs

Sausage

Bacon

Chicken

Turkey

Biscuit

So I was having a coffee in a café around midday on Saturday when the waitress, who was sweeping the floor, said, “Oh, I want this afternoon to go past really quickly!”.

“Oh,” I said. “Is something special happening tonight? A date?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to meet the love of my life.”

And then she spoiled this wonderfully dramatic statement by adding, “Just kidding.” (Literally “I’m lying”).

This cat appeared in our office yesterday and after exploring…

…he settled down for a long nap on my colleague’s chair:

Me (on Monday): Oh, I am so excited about our election on Thursday. It’s so hard to predict what’s going to happen.

My colleague: Really? Here we usually know beforehand what the result will be.

Me: You see, we are voting for all the MPs, so there are the results of hundreds of consituencies to be announced. The polls close at 10pm and then there is a race to see which constituency declares first, and then they are coming thick and fast, they cut away from one declaration to bring news of another one, it’s very exciting.

My colleague: Wow, it sounds like a reality show!

This is Rudolph Gordon Britton May Livingston, seminary student.

He is from San Andrés, an island in the Caribbean which now is part of Colombia but which was colonized by the British in the 17th century.

I was very tickled to meet someone with such British surnames until I remembered how he got them.

Recently I visited a friend who had been one of the first children’s club leaders ever trained by the Vive Kids project.

Over lunch, the lodger in the house quizzed me about the Vive Kids Clubs.

As I tried to explain what we are about, my friend chipped in, “To be a Vive Kids club leader is to become a child again. It’s to get down to the level of the children and play with them as if you were a child yourself.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Almost £8!

I think I’ll stick with arequipe

Here’s a news story that illustrates something, I’m not sure quite what.

The Colombian Constitutional Court has ordered the police to remove a “demerit mark” (a disciplinary sanction) imposed on a policeman who refused to read a “Catholic message” at a Mass on Palm Sunday. The policeman, who is a Seventh Day Adventist, had first refused to do the reading and then avoided attendance at the mass by producing a doctor’s certificate that to show that he was unwell.

The Court reminded the police that Colombia is a secular state and that the sanction against the policeman was illegitimate as it infringed his freedom of religion.