bogotá, again

i made it! as, after a 24-hour delay, did meg. at the moment our project consists almost entirely of long lists of NGO contacts and phone numbers, but that promises to change within the next couple of days: we have meetings, the sort of meetings which inevitably generate more meetings, which is exactly what we want but which, in the face of a mere 16 working days left, and those days split between two cities, seem a bit intimidating.

and then there's the language barrier. everything i do in colombia teaches me the difference between first-semester classroom spanish, at which i was pretty much ok, and actual conversation, which might be vocabulary-intensive or mumbled or whispered or colloquial or just very, very fast. i like to talk; not being able to talk sucks. willingness to embarrass oneself comes in very handy in these situations, but it's not a skill that comes naturally for me. (no, propensity and willingness are not the same.)

anyway -- off to conquer the supermarket.