Día 292: I'm a baby.

I love walking to work. I love the energy of everyone with his own purpose, from the businessmen eating roasted corn on the side of the street to those with more focused direction. I walk looking straight ahead, stopping but once to take a photo and find that my bag has been hanging open for much of the walk. I love walking to work.


This morning was super exciting at the office because Kate and I finalized tickets to travel to Cartagena at the end of this month -- I couldn’t be more excited that our wildest dreams worked out so perfectly, long weekend efficiently used and all!


She and I worked on our respective assignments in the conference room and were about to excuse ourselves when we found out that this morning’s meeting would be taking place in English! It was just too tempting to resist. Luckily enough for us, the subject matter of the reunion turned out to be even more exciting than the language in which it took place.


Ben Roth, who graduated from my favorite university and works for The Nature Conservancy in China, gave us a presentation on how TNC can influence China’s incorporation of environmental considerations when investing in hydropower projects affecting the Magdalena. Given my newly fostered ove for the Magdalena River and my interest in what the crazy powers of China and India are up to, this presentation was super interesting! I look forward to reading more about the topic and helping with this project however I can.

For lunch, the Colombia and China teams made their way to Sopas de Mamá y Postres de Abuela.


We enjoyed various soup dishes and delicious desserts before Rosario, Julianna, Diana, and I had to make a dash downtown for a meeting with IDEAM, the Colombian government’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies. The volume of Spanish during this particular meeting however left me entirely focused on my Colombian coffee and some doodles in my cuaderno.


We bussed ourselves back to the office afterward, but I left right away for my Spanish lesson with Mario. Today’s class was really enjoyable and left me grinning while hacking away at my homework.


Tia and I are now enjoying some ravioli prepared with far more finesse than I possess.

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