jewelry, a homemade stove and a serenade

This is my friend and roomate Rubier, and his jewelry, plus my bracelets. He is from Meta, which is in the plains/savanna part of Colombia. He knows my dad and Chelsea from Taganga (a little fishing village up the coast).





















This is me on the street, taking a break from walking around selling jewelry. I prefer to walk around to the restaurants rather than just sit on the street, but sometimes you have to take a break! This is also an official Karmi fashion statement.





Step 1, attempting to make a stove out of soda cans (you can only eat so much fried fish until the need for vegetables kicks in). Step one is to drink two cans of soda, or find a friend. Or, find a friend and drink two beers. Regardless, you need two cans.











This is me in my room, with Gustavo, my cello and the picture frame that has random people in it. They gave it to me with my camera but I have no picture to put in it and probably won`t take it with me, so I just left the model family in it and there you go. Anyways, step two involves making a bunch of holes around the bottom edge of one can and a big hole in the middle. Then cut both of the cans about an inch and a half up from the bottom and put the can with holes over the can bottom without holes. You can put some cotton in the bottom if you want. I don´t know what good the cotton does, but my brother`s stove has cotton in it, so it must be for something.



Final step: Put some alcohol in it and set it on fire. I could only find rubbing alcohol because it was a Sunday, today comes the real trial with denatured alcohol. The final final step involves making something to set the pan on. I still haven´t gotten that far. One thing at a time!







This has been a busy week. On Wednesday I went to see a band with a bunch of students. It was a blues and dixieland band... kind of mediocre, but they were trying. Afterwards I went out with four girls from the school to have a few drinks.



Thursday I went back to Pozon to help Dina, my student. I went only to her afternoon classes and played a little music for them, coached them a little bit on the songs they are working on and then played a little more and let them ask me questions. The kids there are great, and all came running up to me giving me hugs (they remembered me from the week before at their concert).



Last night I was out selling jewelry and met a guy who was walking around with a guitar. He asked if I would do him the favor of accompanying him in a serenade that he was going to give a friend. We found a percussionist, practiced (if you want to call it that) in a park, where a mariachi player also joined us, and then took a taxi to the girls house. We played outside her house, leaning up against a taxi. The whole thing was pretty comical... just the random kind of thing that can only happen in South America.