Everyone's having a blast

The first few nights here it took me awhile to fall asleep. I lay awake listening to the booms and cracks and thumps that are part of Medellin's night sounds. Were these, like, gang wars? But I never heard anyone yelling or screaming? Tamar said it was "motorcycles backfiring" but that's an awful lot of motorcycles. 

Turns out the people here just really love their explosives. Someone's setting off lots of fireworks, firecrackers, whatever you want to call them, literally every night. We got used to it soon enough. One night, though, there was a cavalcade of nonstop explosions all around us, it honestly sounded like a war zone. I cowered in bed Googling in Spanish, and learned about the Alborada, a very special holiday commemorating Pablo Escobar (either his death or his birthday, I'm not quite clear on this). All of the kids managed to sleep soundly through armageddon, though I didn't fall asleep til about 2 when people finally put away their lighters. The next day's newspaper was mostly about kids being hospitalized with fireworks burns.

Medellin's soundscape is very different to any I've heard before; it's a combination of very noisy and quite festive. Music blares until midnight, but it's really good South American party music. Fruit vendors push their wheelbarrows and holler 'Maracuuuuya! Banaaaana! Maaaango" in major thirds. Last weekend a live band set up directly outside our apartment in Laureles and didn't stop til almost midnight, while someone barbecued in the street and people milled around drinking beer. Street performers hop in front of traffic during red lights, sometimes with saxophones or trumpets. On weekends, you'll see random people just walking around with a speaker and microphone, doing karaoke while they stroll.

This city has its own personality, with equal parts grit and charm. The pharmacies and convenience stores operate through steel bars; the climbing gym is locked even when it's open - yet people are very friendly and much more open to conversations than most places I've been. The studio owner where the girls do art touches up their paintings if she's not satisfied with their work (but then Tova paints over it again, and then the woman goes 'Oyoyoyoy' and shakes her head), and when I come to pick them up, she blithely ignores the fact that we have to go, for 20 minutes, so the girls can finish their art. A random dad at camp invited us over for a playdate, fed me every imaginable traditional Medellin sweet, and I left with a very long list of places to visit. Sergio, the manager of the climbing gym, a pleasant spider of a man, is usually climbing around himself, and gives Aurora occasional tips and coaching.

I tend not to like big cities when we travel. I sort of hated Manila, got irritable in Istanbul, got stressed in Trieste. But I really like Medellin, and am not sick of it at all after three weeks. It's chaotic and loud and charming and green, and taught me something new about myself.

The ... heart of Medellin? What even is this?

This slide commemorates a cute little boy who was caught in crossfire

El Muro, our climbing hangout