Our last post was very late, so I'll do my best to fill in the blanks of what we've been up to for the past week.

Super Bowl Sunday. We got up late, kinda just lounged around and read books. Around 1pm we got out and walked into town, about a 25 minute walk. We went to a park and sat around some more. For me, it felt as if time was broken and the Super Bowl would never arrive. The game was scheduled to start at 6:30pm here, and around 5:00pm I could feel my heart racing. I checked my pulse. Normally I have 60 to 63 resting beats per minute (thank you wilderness first responder course). I counted 88 bpm, and Kim was able to confirm. At one point in the second half, Kim counted 110 bpm. So if you've ever watched a Seahawks game with me, now you know it's not just psychological but also physiological.

As I mentioned before, we found a nice bar to watch the game. We invited some of the people from our class to join us and watch, and Kim had to try and explain American football to an Englishman and a Dutch girl. Obviously it was a great game to watch, our company thought the game had some very exciting moments, especially at the end, but as is typical of most first time viewers, they thought it was too slow.

As for the rest of the bar, it was an interesting crowd. To our right there was a guy in a Bruschi jersey, and he was explaining the rules in Spanish to some of his buddies. I asked him why he was a Patriots fan and he told me he was from Holland, studied in Boston and had family there, and now he lives in Cartagena. There were a few other people from outside Colombia, but most of the people in the bar appeared to be locals. Even the locals were astonished by the final play call. When a Cartagenero tells me in broken English in the bathroom, "Why the fuck they not give ball to runner!" you know it was a poor play call. Next year.

We came home after the game and met a new couple from Switzerland, Marc and Melanie, who are staying in the same house as us. They are also studying in the same school as us, but they are taking private classes. We've spent a good portion of our last week hanging out with them and we're sad to be leaving them. We shared some of what we had already discovered of Cartagena with them, and as a group we ventured outside of where Kim and I had already been. If Kim and I can ever figure out how to get pictures on here, we'll be sure to post some from the Castillo San Felipe - a rather impressive castle in the city built in the 1500s.

At the asado last weekend, Kim and I ate some great food and I did my best to converse with their family. It helped that their family likes to drink whisky, and a few drinks and I was able to make myself clear most of the time. During the asado, Jaime and Yaneth invited us to join them the following weekend on a day trip to Boquilla - a beach just outside of town. Their son, Jaime Enrique, also told us that if we wanted to go to the Volcan del Toltumo he would take us before going to Boquilla. We agreed to join them, and today we got to go enjoy both places.

The Volcan del Toltumo is a 30ish foot high "volcano" that has a crater filled with warm mud. I had heard about it when we started looking up information about Cartagena and I was certainly intrigued. It was a strange experience. You go in your bathing suit, climb up some steep steps to the top of the volcano and then climb down a ladder and get into a mud bath. The mud is denser than your body, so you don't have to hold on to anything, but it is still a bit disconcerting at first. There are locals who will take pictures of you while you're in the mud, some who get in the mud and give you a massage, some who look after your shoes and shirts, and then when you're done, some who will help you wash off in the lake afterwards. And of course they all want you to pay them 5,000 pesos for their help (that's about 2 dollars). I still have mud in some crevices of my body, but it was fun nonetheless.

Once we were relatively clean, we went to Boquilla with Jaime Enrique and met up with the rest of our host family. We sat with the family under a shelter that was connected to a small restaraunt. Within a few minutes of sitting down, we were prsented with a platter of dead fish so we could chose what we wanted to eat. With some help from Jaime, we maid our slection, and while lunch was being prepared, we spent some time playing in the sea with the kids. We were called in for lunch and  ate delicious fresh fish, fried plantains, and coconut rice. We then sat around on the beach some more and played dominos - a very popular game in Colombia.

While we are leaving Cartagena tomorrow, I'm so happy we started our trip here. I also know how lucky we are to have stayed with Jaime and Yaneth - the past two weeks would been  completely different if we hadn't been staying here. We are looking forward to spending a day on the beach at Playa Blanca, and after that we will be heading to Santa Marta as a jumping point for the Carnaval in Barranquillo, and then afterwards to the beach at Palomino. Hopefully in the next week or so we can make plans to stay on a farm near Medellin so that we can see the coffee growing parts of Colombia.