found this on facebook....pretty cute

You know you're Colombian if...

-You dunk cheese in your coffee or chocolate.
-There's at least 2 Chivas bus figurines somewhere in your house.
-Whenyou can make a party out of anything.
-Your parents bring back lots of bocadillo after a trip to Colombia.
-You can tell where a Colombian is from just by the way they talk after 2 seconds.
-There's one unopened bottle of Aguardiente in your dad's liquor cabinet reserved for a "special occasion", but it hasn't been touched in years.
-You think cumbias are the ultimate dance music.
-You get pissed if somebody calls you mexcian and promptly correct them.
-You get mad when you see "Colombia" misspelled as "Columbia".
-When your listening to salsa andyou find yourself banging on anything from your table, steering wheel, lap, etc.
-You know Colombian girls are way better looking than the girls in L.A.
-You come home at 2 in the morning to find your dad in the living room listening to Vallenatos.
-You're good looking.
-Family parties go until 5am
-Your grandma taught all your aunts and mom to cook and they all cook the same.
-When your family makes ajiaco, a given number of residents come over.
-When a relative makes ajiaco, you go over to their house.
-Not only do you have a Colombian soccer jersey, but also the jersey of the local team your family supports (Millionarios, Santa Fe, Nacional, Junior, etc)
-You have more than two last names.
-People call you a drugdealer and you are not insulted.
-There's at least three bricks of panela in the pantry at any given moment.
-You know at least one guy named "Jairo."
-Your moms has beaten you with the correa or chancleta
-Te encanta el guaro
-You know exactly where you were and what you were doing when Andres Escobar scored against his own team.
-No puedes desayunar sin arepa o chocolatico!
-Wenever theres a family get-to-gether the first on the invitation list are a couple of bottles of aguardiente.
-When you have have at least one pulsera of Colombia.
-At a family party you find your drunk uncle playing his imaginery accordian to a vallenato
-You learn to dance salsa before you learn how to walk
-You get extremely mad whenyou hear a Colombian song changed into a bachata by some dominicans
-You carry around Colombian money for goodluck
-You had sleepless nights because of la llorona
-You do la vendicion weneveryou pass a church
-Whenyou know the names of all the Colombian soccer players bu tyou have problems remember the names ofyour classmates
-Theres at least one Colombian flag around your house somehwere.
-You flip out when someone talks bad about Colombia.
-Whenyou always find yourself coloring things yellow-blue-red to make it look Colombian.
-When you have dedicated a vallenato to someone.
-The only thing your really sure about your future is your getting married to a Colombian.
-Hijueputa is your most used word

Salt city

Im going to start posting here whatever I write for my creative writing class... I should see how much I improve.

Andrea Alarcon

Writing exercise #1

09/11/2006

Inspiration: picture #4

The Salt City

The legendary Salt city; I had finally reached it after long days of exhausting trailing through the Greek-Mediterranean coast. The architectural wonder radiated in front of my eyes partly because of the halo surrounding it, partly because of the glistening of the mineral under the burning sun. In midst of my haze and I found a little soda shop where I planned on easing the intense thirst that had invaded my throat. As I waited for my drink, I curiously grazed the wall with the tip of my finger and brought it to my tongue. “The structure is old. The saline taste is barely there anymore” said a very old man who was crouched in the dusty corner. His wrinkles were accentuated by white powder, and his gaze was full of blindness. “Where are you from?” He continued to ask. The fact that I was so obviously foreign, even to a blind man, added my flustering to an already unbearable heat. “I know you are a stranger because of the acidity of your heart, and the need to alkalinize it. That’s why you are here.” I took my cola and quickly strolled out of the magazi. Tasting the walls…that was what had given me away. Not my acid heart, which I was sure not even him could see. “Lucky guess” I thought. “I am sure I am not the first to come here in search of equilibrium.”

Even if the saline taste had left the walls the smell certainly impregnated the atmosphere. I felt like I was swimming in the open sea and with a clumsy movement I had snorted a string of salt water into my nose. It was desert dry in spite of its closeness to the ocean, and the thirst would not leave me no matter how many times I gorged something along the way. The salt was everywhere: the wrinkles of old men, the sugar coating of the pastries, the spaces between my toes, the mustaches of the merchants, the outlines of footprints, the rough barks of dying dogs. I could even devise it in the atmosphere if I stared really hard into emptiness. As I walked I continued to pass my hand over walls in a very subtle manner, and bringing it to my mouth in an attempt of tasting this wonder and proving its physicality. After a while my mouth tasted so salty I stopped and realized that the lack of immediate recognition was because my other senses had leveled the saltiness to the taste one; it smelled and looked so salty that my mouth had to make an extraordinary effort to distinguish the taste.

It was only when the sun began to set that I remembered the purpose of my being there in the first place. It held true what they said, that the thirst and the sun could bury you into the walls of the city, and like many, you would never leave. Many succumbed to the stupor and caught the sickness of amnesia; forgot where they came from and where they were going. I looked at my wrist, where I had the bracelet I had braided out of bright colored threads, it read “purpose: equilibrium, and return home, Cuba” that way I was sure I would never forget.