release me

Medellin, once the worlds most dangerous city (thank you Detroit and Baghdad for taking that title) is now a bustling city of beautiful colonial architecture, an immaculate metro system, and an abundance of museums and galleries. The city of eternal spring has shed its drug nightmare and is a wonderful place to be. I didnt want to leave. I arrived with the intention of leaving after a couple days and ended up staying 8 days. like i have somewhere else to be. i spent the first couple days reliving a chicago tradition. that is riding the metro at all hours of the night all over the city. familiarize myself. its the best way. by far my favorite city in colombia thus far. for some reason it just feels like i belong here. Medellin is filled with gregarious, resiliant citizens eager to shed the darkness of their past and not yet completely acquainted with the gringo tourist traveling just for the hell of it. I was given a couple "what the hell are you doing here" looks while out and about. granted that may have been because i was in neighborhood i clearly didnt belong in. it would be like walking down cass corridor in detroit with a suit and tie and a briefcase.

The hostal i stayed at felt like family. Claudia, the owner, would convince us all to make a big dinner and eat like family as opposed to going out to eat. and then she would always bust out a gallon bucket of ice cream for everyone to enjoy. like being given a treat by your mom after getting a star/smiley face after your first spelling test.

The people there were great. I met a japanese guy named Azou who was traveling solo and didnt speak much spanish or english. the talent and memory this man possessed blew my mind. He didnt own a camera. So at the end of every night he would sit down with his stencils and drawing book and re-create the image of the most memorable thing from that day. There were drawings of the mountains, churches, people he met, buildings and even meals he ate. I asked him what was so memorable about that meal and he replied in a bruce lee accent "i was just glad to eat". he was extremely skilled. They were more portraits then simple drawings.

On one of the days i decided to roam around the Universidad de Antioquia. Like most universities in colombia, it is a private school and hence very expensive. tuition is almost on par with that of STATE U per semester. so typically only the wealthy can afford an education. The campus is a very politicaly outspoken campus though. While meandering through the halls i came across a spray painting on the lockers: LESS REPRESSION, MORE EDUCATION.




There was beautifully painted murals on the wall that would make the best graffitti artist in NY feel small. On the politcal science building there was a giant mural of Che Guevara.

These kinds of political statements would be washed over in a matter of minutes in the states. i think im going to start this trend back home. My first piece of work will be "LONG LIVE SADDAM". Yeah, i think thatll work.

As i was walking by a lectur hall, a professor came and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the class like an eagle scooping a fish out of the water. Before i can object, i was in the middle of a "bi-lingual engineering day" lecture. He saw that i was a foreigner and assumed i knew spanish. NOPE. there was about 30 students in the class, and each student was asked to come up front and say to the class in a language other then english and spanish why they chose engineering. no problem i thought. ill dazzle them with chaldean. A success. after the class i was in a conversation with a bunch of colombians about iraqi politics.



The renaissance is most noticeable in Santo Domingo. A once impenetrable slum of tin-roofed shanties on a hillside in northern Medellín, that once took over an hour on a rickety bus ride now takes 10 minutes on the new metro cable cars that run up the mountain. There is also the newly built Parque Biblioteca España. An opal shaped library perched on the edge of the hill. took the cable car to the top and hiked the rest of the way to the actual top of the hill where there were no homes or anything, just a vacant field. time for a break. I lay down on my back and play a game with the sky above. I close my eyes and open them every few minutes to a new set of clouds and try to guess what they resemble. With "realease me" by PJ on repeat (for reasons known why), i lay comfortable with my face turned up toward the face of the sun, and i let the world around me rush on unnoticed.