Day 5: When We Realized Living Real Life is Better Than Touring

Today was a much better model for a day:

• Cereal at home in PJs followed by a calm schooling session 1:1 with each kid.

• Uber’ed to Parque 93 for playground time and soccer kicking in the sunshine.

• Lunch outside at a very chill pizza place called La Diva.

• Uber’ed to a second hilltop playground slash dog park by our apartment where the kids spent an hour on a spinny carousel thing with other kids. Insanely good dog-watching. Seriously why are dogs outside the US so much more hilarious?

• Quiet time at home, a walk to the grocery store so James would nap in the stroller. A nice lady who worked at the grocery store (Carulla) asked James in Spanish what his name was and he held up four fingers, which melted her.

• Tonight we went to a Shabbat dinner at HBS friends Ari and Camilla’s lovely apartment in the La Cabrera neighborhood. Their 3 kids are 9, 7 and 3 and speak flawless American English bc they go to the American school in town.

• The kids had a raucous time playing together while the grownups had a great dinner (along with another couple – architects whose own two kids also go to the American school – the dad was an American Teddy too!).

Random thoughts/observations/learnings:

• We have never had Shabbat dinner after living in NYC for almost 20 years. First time was in Bogota freaking Colombia.
• Jewish population is very small. Ari’s grandparents fled to Colombia during the 30s from Poland simply because it was the place that gave them a visa. He and the kids have Austrian passports as part of Holocaust reparations.
• Consensus among Colombians is that any “Narcos”-type Escobar glorification is too soon. He ruined the country and no one is amused by the recent international interest in him.
• Most important: We now know that this year needs to be about living real life in a new city — playgrounds, grocery stores, dinner parties with friends — NOT touring cities with a guide to see obscure historic statues, churches and tourist traps. Our kids were just straight up miserable doing touristy stuff yesterday, and I really hate touring parts of any city that locals we’d be friends with would avoid (eg, Times Square, etc.). Maybe a double decker bus in a new city to zip around for the lay of the land — but that’s it.