Working For The Weekend: Living and Working in Bogotá

If you read Against All Odds, you may think that I didn’t enjoy my time in Bogotá. But that is not true. Like most things in life, it’s not that black and white - it’s complicated.

My month in Bogotá was filled with many emotions. I was surprised to find how writing about Bogotá made me feel in spite of its obstacles. I usually start my batch of city posts by writing my “Miss List.”It helps to jog my memory and usually informs which topics I will expound on for full length posts. I was surprised to find just how long my list was for Bogotá and just how much of it was positive.

Quite possibly the most positive thing about month 11 was my roommate. After almost a year of filing out the monthly housing survey and putting KG’s name in the “who I would like to live with” box - we finally got paired! KG, or Katelyn as no one calls her, is someone I gravitated to early on. Whether it was bonding over some John Mayer lyrics month one in Cape Town, or getting to know each other better while waiting in a long line at the Dubai airport en route to Marrakech, I knew I had found a kindred, kind, spirit.

In KG I also had met my musical match: someone who appreciates and listens to music with the same ear and heart (see Breathe Again: Bonding Over Sara Bareilles on a Park Bench). I was excited to live with KG and equally as excited for the listening parties that would ensue. And after a couple months of multiple roommates, downsizing sounded like a nice change of pace.

I already knew KG would be easy to live with, for I knew she shared my affinity for Clorox wipes. I had scored on the roommate front yet again. Although, let’s be real, I never had a bad one. Yet on the apartment front this month, we got one of the shorter sticks. I knew my number had to come up eventually as I was coming off two palatial pads in Lima (See This Must Be The Place) and Medellín (See Nothing But Blue Skies). They can’t all be private elevator pied-á-terres.

There was nothing wrong with good ol’ Santa Rita. Our Santa Rita apartment was a parallel to the city itself: reliable but maybe not the most exciting option. Our space was a smaller unit with everything we needed, including our own bathrooms. I’ve said it in previous posts and I’ll say it again: you can live with anyone as long as you have your own bathroom. Not to mention KG graciously gave me the master suite even though I arrived after her. Lucky for me, first dibs is not a game she plays.

The only thing I can critique about our digs is the cold. Heat is not a thing in Bogotá as I mentioned in Against All Odds so it made for cold nights. And towards the end of the month the cold extended through the morning as we couldn’t get hot water. However our space did have the crown jewel of any piece of real estate: location!

Santa Rita was located close to my daily needs. The apartment was a two block walk to the local grocery store. Carulla’s was a pleasantly awesome surprise: it was like walking into a grocery store at home, in that it was big and filled with variety. The only difference being the price. Whole paycheck this was not. This was quality at affordable prices.

Another block past the grocery was the local Smart Fit gym. Smart Fit is a chain across Latin America that has all the equipment and classes you could want. And this particular one had an unbeatable location. It’s a hell of a lot harder to say no to your cardio routine when the gym is a five minute walk from home. Its proximity allowed me to get my workouts in after sunrise and before work.

Work, or rather the workspace was the furthest thing from home. Bogotá brought us to the lcoal WeWork for the Monday - Friday grind. It was a 20/25 minute walk due north up Carerra 15. It was the longest commute I’d had in months. And this was both a good and bad thing. Some days the walk was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was usually just what I needed.

Work wise, January was a busy, frustrating, and tension filled month. The slightly longer walk gave me the mental space I needed to gear up for the day in the morning, and process the days events on the way home. Bogotá was an extension of my Medellín work hours: 9-10 hour days at the workspace and then sometimes bringing it home. We were still finalizing our scope for the 2019 fiscal year and the tension of me working remotely was not dissipating after my in-office visit over the holidays.

January was also the month when I decided to go for broke, and ask for what I really wanted: a month off work. Remote Year was winding down and I knew I wanted to get the most out of my final month. I was in the thick of a once in a lifetime experience and I wanted to savor it. I knew I would regret not asking for the time. Similar to asking my employer to approve Remote Year, I figured the worst they could say is no.

So I worked with my mentor on the best way to position my request and put it on the proverbial table. I knew my request was atypical. I also knew I was asking for a lot of time at once. But I was asking for time I had allotted. I wasn’t asking for time above and beyond what my benefits afforded me: so I asked and I waited.

Bogotá was one of those cities where I couldn’t wait for the weekend! I was living Loverboy’s “Working For The Weekend:" waiting and holding out for that natural break that Friday night brings to the work week. I also looked forward to our Friday night staple in Bogotá, tejo.

I ubered to the tejo hall by myself for our first game. The Uber took me outside the city center and dropped me at a nondescript outpost. I double checked the address and got out. Artificial light was spilling into the street where a couple people stood outside smoking. I walked inside and similar to a bowling alley, there’s a desk where you put in your request to play and pay. I facilitated the entire transaction in Spanish and then sat down in the loosely defined lounge area and ordered an Aguila. Cold beer in hand, Friday night had officially arrived!

I knew from the moment the Uber pulled up that I was somewhere local. It was a feeling that was confirmed upon entry. I walked in and I immediately felt eyes on me. There were a group of grandpa age men sitting at a table in the lounge who were not hiding their evaluation of my presence (i.e. what is this gringa doing here?). I felt foreign, like I didn’t belong, but I liked that feeling. That feeling let me know I was in the right place.

Soon enough my friends arrived and we proceeded to throw stones and set off explosives for the next couple hours. (For more on what tejo is and how it’s played, see Strangers When We Meet.) We had some locals on our teams and it was a low key and fun way to interact with them. I am someone who usually is all about a Friday night frozen pizza and some Netflix. This couch potato was surprised by how much I looked forward to Friday night tejo.

I liked getting out: contrary to my usual magnetic pull to the sofa. I liked the activity of playing a game - versus simply sitting on a barstool all night at the local bar. You could drink if you wanted to, you could not drink if you wanted to: beer was the optional icing on the cake that is tejo. This weekly ritual is something I miss the most about Bogotá.

I am surprised to find that I miss Bogotá - all these months later as I sit and write this on a rainy Sunday afternoon in May. It may not have been the city I connected to the most, or felt the deepest affinity with, but it is a city that was easy to feel at home in.

Of all the cities we visited, it was the one that felt the closest to home. It beared the closest similarities to my life in Chicago. I was working very similar work hours (Bogotá is only an hour ahead of CST), getting in early morning workouts, and getting my weekly manicure on (an increase in cadence thanks to the affordability of the COP). The key difference being I wasn’t in Chicago, but in the capital of Columbia, high up in the Andes Mountains.

And that right there is the beauty and wonder of doing Remote Year. You are doing your day-to-day life in different places, different spaces, thousands of miles from a place you used to call home and realizing how little location has to do with the feeling of home.