A Weekend at the Finca

So today, we are going to the finca. A finca is a country home, and in Colombia almost everyone with money has a finca and an apartment in the city. It's totally normal. I'm definitely guessing here, but I think that this comes from the fact that during the violent periods in Colombia, it was too dangerous to live on a farm. Farm owners here do have money, especially compared to the poor, and the FARC or paramilitaries would kidnap the land-owners for money to support their causes. The farmers were told it wasn't safe for them, so many of them abandoned their farms and moved to the cities. Now, their lives take place in the city--this is where their children grew up, this is where the best schools are, and this is where their friends are. Of course, as any good Midwestern girl knows, you can move a farmer to the city, but you can't stop them from thinking and talking about the farm. (If you doubt this, please talk to my Uncle Jerry, who only spent his summers on a farm but wants to be a farmer when he grows up. He is almost 50.) So now that it is safe, people are either going back to their farms or buying homes in the country. I don't blame them--the countryside in the Eje de Cafetera (Coffee Zone) is beautiful.

We are going to Stella's finca. We've been there before, briefly, and it is beautiful. I'm looking forward to grilling, relaxing in the jacuzzi, and drinking Stella's famous coconut limonade (lime-ade). It's made with coconut cream (she gets hers from Thailand because it is creamier than the coconut cream from Colombia), rum, lime juice, and ice. Let's just say it's the most delicious beverage I've ever had.

Monday is a holiday, and we are going to El Parque del Cafe, which is sort of like an amusement park dedicated to coffee.

This is our last weekend in Pereira. A week from now, we should be in Cartagena, and we'll be home on July 1. It's strange because I feel like we've just started to get settled in Colombia. I'm learning the roads, and my Spanish has drastically improved. I think we've also become better teachers.

When I got sick a few weeks ago, I became homesick. I stayed homesick until we returned from Bogota, where I was definitely more homesick than I've ever been. It's funny--the only time I ever got homesick when I studied abroad was when I spent a week in Prague, another city I didn't enjoy. Coming back to Pereira was wonderful, and now I'm not ready to leave. I love summers in the United States, and I'm excited we'll be back for the 4th of July, but I've really learned to love Colombia and all the people here, and it will be hard to leave them.

I hope everyone is well. I know I owe a lot of people emails--I haven't forgotten any of you! Despite what sounds like luxurious weekends, we really do work hard here, and during the week it is hard to find time to do anything but sleep. (Okay, fine, I also watch Family Guy with subtitles. The selection of television shows here is a little depressing, but sometimes I just need to do something mindless.) I'll do my best to email you before we leave, but if I don't manage it I promise you'll hear from me the first week we are back in the States!