{"id":3720,"date":"2011-02-10T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T20:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/?p=3720"},"modified":"2011-02-28T14:27:28","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T20:27:28","slug":"my-arrival-to-medellin-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/my-arrival-to-medellin-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"My Arrival To Medellin, Colombia."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/columbian_guns.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3750\" title=\"columbian_guns\" src=\"http:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/columbian_guns.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"470\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/columbian_guns.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/columbian_guns-300x216.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;\"> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">These pictures were taken the final day of my stay  in Colombia after meeting the guard <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">of<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> the  family that I was staying with. <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">That<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> is why he looks  a little more happy than the first night I met him. Now, without further adieu,  here is my story&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">You know that jittery feeling you <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">got<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> when you were five years old descending the stairs on  Christmas morning? Not the uncontrollable excitement when you realized Santa  made it rain on your stocking, but rather that feeling of anxiety from the  uncertainty of what <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">the<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> stocking held. When I  was dropped into Medellin, I instantly experienced the <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">familiar feeling of anxiety<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> \u2013 only this time it wasn\u2019t  the stocking, it was an address. Here I was, late at night, a lone White Ranger  on the streets of Colombia, standing with my backpack (which contained my Mac  Laptop) and bag, and all I had was the address of my Colombian step mom\u2019s  brother\u2019s girlfriend&#8217;s friend \u2013 a lady whose name I didn&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Flagging down the first taxi driver I saw, I piled  in all my shit and handed him the address. Now, I\u2019d like to say that <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">when you get<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> into a cab with a native driver who is  sure to know how to take you to your destination<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">,<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">you can normally<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> relax  and let your mind imagine what that holiday stocking holds. <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">However, <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">when he asked me in Spanish if I knew how to get  there, with a look on his face like you just told a five-year-old that Santa  isn\u2019t real \u2013 <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I wasn&#8217;t quite reassured<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">. Even better,  my man had <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Tourettes<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> and kept shaking behind the  wheel in fits of epilepsy. The first time he looked over at me with a blood  curdling gnarl, I thought he was pissed, but then I realized the gnarls were  just periodic outbreaks of his <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Tourettes<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">. I sensed I  was in trouble, but somehow we got close and the driver officially said we found  it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cVeinte mil pesos.\u201d he said, as I handed him the  bill, equivalent to $10, but he instantly turned it down. We argued in Spanish  about the money\u2019s legitimacy, but he assured me that my pesos were fake. I was  like fuck, that&#8217;s the last of my cash and it&#8217;s counterfeit. After I scrounged up  small bills from every pocket that existed on me, I had close to the amount and  gave it to him. The cab driver cut his losses, took the money, and sped off. As  all this was going down, I noticed my phone screen had cracked and I couldn&#8217;t  see half of the screen. Now I was on the streets again with all my stuff, but  this time there was a building guard nearby who was holding a shotgun the size  of my leg. How do you explain to an armed man at 11pm at night, in Spanish, that  you\u2019re new here, you don\u2019t know where you are, you don\u2019t know the lady you\u2019re  supposed to be staying with, and you can&#8217;t get a hold of her because you\u2019re  phone is jacked, and oh, sir, could you please help me with all this stuff? I&#8217;m  thinking if the guard has a huge rifle with slugs exposed on his belt, that this  is probably not the part of town for a gringo with a nice laptop to be in. So I  sure hoped to <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">God<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> that this was the building.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Somehow, with some miracle, it was the building!  As frightening as the guard was with that gun, he managed to look at me like the  kindhearted Santa I was searching for all along. Finally, following our  encounter, I got to  open my stocking and it contained all the beauty and the magic of Medellin. To  see more pics of my amazing stay in Colombia, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/?page_id=3753\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Jen Chinn&#8217;s interpretation of Patrick Liberty&#8217;s  description of the night of the 25th of January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These pictures were taken the final day of my stay in Colombia after meeting the guard of the family that I was staying with. That is why he looks a little more happy than the first night I met him. Now, without further adieu, here is my story&#8230; You know that jittery feeling you got &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/my-arrival-to-medellin-colombia\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">My Arrival To Medellin, Colombia.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3720"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3909,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions\/3909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akomplice-clothing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}