COLOMBIAAARRGGHHHH!!!!!

HOLA, INTERNET! I have now been in Colombia for just over three weeks, and as of this past week I officially started teaching English to high schoolers! More on this in a moment.

BUT FIRST. I'm going to get a bit sad and personal, in order to illustrate some really lovely points, so hold on.

*deep breath*

I got divorced less than three months ago and I neither expected it nor understand exactly why it happened. I was supposed to be living and working in Texas by now so, as I'm sure you can imagine, I was tremendously unbalanced by this. BUT! I've never been one to just sit on my hands so I quickly resolved to try and use all that horrendous misery to power something productive and, well, here I am in Colombia having a fantastic time. A legitimately fantastic time, not a fake 'grin and bear it' situation. And I'll illustrate why it's all so great, soon enough.

I thought I might be able to ignore this unpleasant aspect of my life, but it is the catalyst for my being here, and I've found myself having to explain to people why exactly I a) have no future plans at all and b) why I keep saying "I'm here to start a new life." Like one of my new friends said to me recently, my divorce is never going to be something I look back on and think "Wow, I'm glad that happened" but I will be able to see it as a necessary stepping stone to something wonderful. And speaking of wonderful, let me tell you how brilliant Colombia is. LET ME.

1. THE COUNTRY IS GORGEOUS. Australia is beautiful and I don't think anywhere else can quite beat it, but Colombia is pretty much Another Australia so I think a tied first place isn't unreasonable. There are mountains everywhere. There are peaks upon peaks. Coffee farms and banana plantations sprout from the hillsides everywhere you look. And there are some really pretty birds and interesting bugs all over the place. Feast your eyes:

COR, LOOK AT ALL THAT STUFF!

2. THE PEOPLE ARE SUPER FRIENDLY. True story time: myself and two of my new friends (also teachers, whom I'm currently sharing a place with) visited a picturesque mountain town called Cordoba and walked up a mountain road. On the way back down a jeep pulled over (with two blokes in it) and they offered us a ride back down. My friends are American women in their early twenties so there was some hesitation, but since we outnumbered them we decided "Why not?" 

Cue a lift back, not to the town, but our actual city (Armenia)! The driver, John Fabio, relished telling us how much he was enjoying learning English, and told me a few new words in Spanish (both my friends are fluent) and it was a thoroughly enjoyable hour's journey. My friends didn't feel unsafe at any point and, obviously, it provided us all with a really lovely experience to share.

Here's another! I visited a small cafe and had a really nice cappuccino. A chap sat nearby realised I was English and came over to talk to me. I said the coffee was very nice and he said the best way to truly savour the blend was by drinking an espresso - so he bought me one! 

And one more! My friend (a  male teacher) and I got lost on the way to our friends' apartment the other night, so my friend asked a group of young women if they knew where we needed to go. Not only did they know, but they offered to give us a lift! So there we were, crammed into a people carrier with seven women. I cannot imagine that happening anywhere else in the world. I cannot imagine any of the above situations happening anywhere else in the world.

3. THERE IS FOOD EVERYWHERE. People apparently just take it upon themselves to set up food stalls whenever and wherever they want. It's a health and safety nightmare, but it does mean you can grab a fresh fruit salad literally every fifty paces. It's BANANAS, ahh hahaha. There's a lady on my street who makes and sells arepas right next to her house everyday, for example. Food is also, generally speaking, pretty bloody cheap; you can get a decent lunch of rice, beans, egg, soup, meat and plantain for less than $5 AUD. nb. rice and beans are staples of the Colombian diet. I'm surprised I haven't farted anybody to death yet.

4. THE KIDS ARE ACE. I work with existing Colombian teachers to teach a bunch of English lessons for 9th, 10th and 11th graders and they are all super lovely. They do struggle with my accent compared to my other co-teachers (who are generally all American) because mine isn't straightforward 'British', but the upside to this is they love hearing me talk. There have been numerous occasions already where students grab me as I'm passing just so they can practice their English on me, or hang around after class to talk to me. It's nice that I can already see how my presence is making a positive difference, and from chatting to my fellow teachers they're experiencing similar situations. 

Now, I'm not so starstruck by being involved in something new that I'm not aware that I'm bound to have less than stellar experiences, whether they're at school or just out and about, but it's hard to imagine right now as things are going great guns (sort-of; I do get an awful lot bugs in my room at night, arrgghh). Frankly, after going through what was without a doubt the worst experience of my life, and still dealing with my ex-wife's unpleasant behaviour, I can't possibly suffer anything else quite as negative. I'm now constantly surrounded by positive people, I feel appreciated, and we all share the same core desire to make the most of our lives by seeing and doing as much as possible (and help teach kids English at the same time). 

I'm not going to end with some naff "life's too short" nonsense, but I am going to state how (before I was married) my personal motto was 'the future is not yet written' ie. it's a bit daft to plan for it when anything can happen. My life is a case in point. I made a ton of plans with my ex and, obviously, none of them can happen. So I'm back to taking each day as it comes and seeing where this current path I'm on leads me. 

All I'll say is, if you've ever fancied doing something different, whether it's teaching/travelling or something else, give it a go. Don't let yourself get caught up in making excuses why you can't; make actual plans and put your money where your mouth is. If you truly do want to do it (whatever it is) then you can't fail, because by actually doing it in the first place you'll already have succeeded. If you want a less rosy outlook, think of it as "even if I don't end up enjoying it, or do it for very long, at least I gave it a shot, which is more than most people do."

HASTA LUEGO! 

ps. to end, here's my personal theme tune at the moment:

EVERY DEAD THING AND OTHER HORRORS

About a year ago, maybe a bit less, I got really bored of reading the same sort of stuff - when it comes to films, I can happily watch anything, but I'm a lot less lenient with books. Why spend time chewing on a potentially boring thriller when you can devour a well-written horror? I'm making a grotesquely broad generalization there, but what it boils down to (for me) is: I like old detective thrillers, but all the modern books are like TV cop dramas. There's some grisly death and a world weary detective solves the case. Rinse and repeat. I was looking for something not dissimilar to what I like to write, which could be broadly (or narrowly, I suppose) defined as 'horror noir'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there doesn't seem to be much of a market for this, which made it all the more surprising that I stumbled across the work of JOHN CONNOLLY.

Thanks to my local library's database revealing his books as 'horror/crime' I picked up a copy of THE WHISPERERS, which turned out to be the tenth novel featuring his detective creation Charlie Parker. What sold me on giving it a go was the mention of supernatural elements worked into a crime story, which is exactly what I got. However, despite the overt reference to demons and unnatural happenings, it was Charlie Parker himself who grabbed me. A lot of the book doesn't follow his point of view, and I found those bits a little dull. They were well-written, don't get me wrong, but Parker's personality is so strong it made everything else pale in comparison. 

Parker's a haunted man, but also possessed of a strong wit and driving need to see justice done. He exudes a paradoxical menace; dangerous to know but also the sort of person you feel safe having on your side. I was so enamoured with his adventures I immediately set about trying to get hold of the rest of the Parker series. His "gimmick", if you will, is sharing a name with a famous jazz musician, so that he's often nicknamed 'Bird'. Thankfully, this conceit rapidly fades away (I don't think anyone calls him that in the last few novels at all) and the character gets to stand on his own two feet.

Thanks to someone in my area obviously following the same path, I read a few of the novels in a random order, but have since managed to read everything up to THE BLACK ANGEL (the fifth novel) and after THE UNQUIET (the sixth novel - both of these are packed and ready to read on my travels, when I leave the country at the end of this month), save the short stories that feature in some of Connolly's anthologies. THE WHISPERERS remains, I think, the weakest of the lot, though it's a clear testament to Connolly's writing that it still made me want to read more.

Throughout the series, supernatural elements come into play, though with varying degrees of success. Perhaps my favourite novel - in terms of crime plot - is THE BURNING SOUL. In this one, a young girl goes missing from a small town and an unassuming accountant with a dark past hires Parker to help figure out if someone knows about this and/or is looking to pin the crime on him. The supernatural aspects are practically non-existent but the way certain characters are shown to be less savoury than they appear more than makes up for this. 

This is followed by an exceptionally supernatural tale, THE WRATH OF ANGELS, in which previous characters and questions as to Parker's past and 'uncanny nature' come to light in a story that also explicitly features a buried, malevolent god. Great stuff. THE WOLF IN WINTER follows this with an intriguing, though ultimately squandered, tale of a town that feeds women to another, different, buried entity. 

However, events in this book lead into A SONG OF SHADOWS, which I'm currently reading. It's another one like THE WHISPERERS in that, so far, Conolly is keeping the action removed from Parker's viewpoint; effectively, making him a character in his own story. This has worked well before, (particularly in THE REAPERS, which focused on Louis and Angel - Parker's best friends and thoroughly dangerous accomplices) though here it can't help but create a kind of impatience: we know, from many of the other books, how Parker tends to come across to others, but how is his current situation affecting him directly? What is going through his mind right now, as he takes it upon himself to investigate the discovery of a corpse on the beach near his current hideaway?  

I can't wait to find out, though. From all accounts his latest, brand new, book, A TIME OF TORMENT, is an excellent jumping-on point for new readers, but I'd recommend THE LOVERS, before going back to the beginning with EVERY DEAD THING. THE LOVERS deals with Parker's childhood and the suicide of his father, which is mentioned quite a few times beforehand, though the events surrounding his dad's death feature a heavy supernatural component that gets repeated/referenced in later novels. It works as a decent standalone story but also gives that sense of intrigue that makes reading the preceding books that little bit more interesting: Parker is touched by the unnatural from the very beginning, so in what ways will it manifest going forward?

And now, to finish, how can I not link to his namesake? I CAN'T. So here you go:

UP YOURS, 2016!

Happy New Year, whoever and wherever you are! I'm off to teach English in South America! Here's to new beginnings!