Medellín

So far we have stayed in Medellín the longest this trip. Our idea was to learn Spanish there, so we stayed two weeks. Something threw a wrench in our plan. Not a big wrench, but it was definitely disappointing and depressing to me and my family. Now, since you’re dying to find out, I’m just going to move on to something else.

Medellín is bigger than we expected. The city is tucked into a valley of mountains. I felt like we were in a little cave inside the world. This little cave used to be dark, scary and violent. Medellín was the most dangerous city in the world. Now, Medellín is far from its past. Medellín is now filled with delicious Colombian cuisine, art, views and many friendly people.

Now, about that wrench; it was the flu. My mom just had a cold but colds spread fast in our house. I soon caught it. But, on the first day we realized that mine was not the cold. I had a bad flu. I threw up three times the first day. Each time I threw up it was terrible. I just kept asking and asking when it was going to stop. I learned that you can’t be sure how many times you’re going to throw up but you can dare to think that you will only throw up for one day. We had recently been in a malaria zone so my dad started worrying that I had malaria, which totally freaked me out. It was chaos. My mom didn’t think I had malaria and was trying to calm me down. We reached the hospital and we waited in the waiting room. I was feeling horrible. We finally went in after what seemed like forever. They gave me some medicine and I started to feel better. They also delivered the news that I did not have malaria. But, the only downside of going to the hospital is they made me drink Pedialyte, which is like Gatorade and is high in electrolytes. Electrolytes are supposedly good for you after you loose a lot of energy when you throw up. It was grape flavored and I swear if you took a big gulp of hand sanitizer with grape juice in it that’s what Pedialyte would taste like. I was really glad it wasn’t malaria but the flu wasn’t much fun. While I was sick I also developed a phobia for throwing up. Every once in a while I would think about throwing up and I would get so scared I was going to throw up I would start to gag and cry. My mom would calm me down though and I did get better.

Before and after I got sick we went to learn some Spanish; that’s the reason we came to Medellín. We hired a tutor and met her at a café every day for an hour. I enjoyed these sessions, but my brain got fried. I would be concentrating so hard that I wouldn’t blink, and then at the end I would blink and my eyes would fill with tears. It would look like I was crying. Our tutor would send us homework and then the next day before class we would study it.

Food was what I missed most while I was sick. While I was sick, I planned a big food day for when I got better. It would go like this: bagel and lox for breakfast, then pizza for lunch at a delicious pizza place we went to before I got sick, then I would try ice cream at a place our tutor recommended, and then finally for dinner we would go to a fancy vegan restaurant called KAI that we also went to before I got sick. When my big day arrived, we headed out to the Hija Mia Café to get my bagel and lox. My mouth watered. It finally arrived and I took a bite. The saltiness, sweetness and sour all mixed in; it ran down my throat. I smiled a big smile. My food day had begun. We ended up not going to the pizza place, but we did go to the ice cream place called Elixor. There was a flavor called black ice cream. It was ash flavored. I’m not joking it was disgusting, but my dad got it. I got coconut with honey drizzle, and it was delicious. We also ended up not going to KAI either. We went to a place called Modongos, which has a specialty called modongo. We actually tried to go to Modongos before but I had one of my phobia incidents on the way there, and then I just wanted to go back and sleep. Modongos was yummy. I was just glad I could have my food day.

NEXT STOP: BOGOTA