Rionegro

It's been a rather hectic week, so I apologize for my recent silence, but as usual, life here has been full of exciting endeavors.

After all the strenuous excitement of last weekend's competition, Monday was welcomely mellow.  Just another day at the office until about 5pm when we had our weekly meeting.  During that session, I learned about several projects that I had not known urbam was involved with, but was very excited to hear about.  One of these discoveries involved a new urban plan for the city/suburb/municipality of Rionegro, where the international airport is located, about 40mins from downtown Medellin.  By the end of the meeting, I had been invited to accompany a class of political science students on a trip to the local government office on Wednesday, and was excited to see more of the region.  The timing was slightly inconvenient, since D would be flying in on Tuesday, and I would have to go to Rionegro to pick him up, and then return again on Weds with the class.  Luckily, it's a very pretty ride up the mountains, so I really didn't mind too much.

I spent Tuesday morning waiting around at a government office to get my tax deduction number (at least, that's what I think I got), before hightailing it across town to catch a bus to the airport.  D's flight was an hour late, but the people watching was rather phenomenal, which made the time pass quickly.  As soon as he arrived, we hopped back on the bus, enjoyed the scenic ride into the city and got settled back at our apartment.  That evening we tried out a restaurant directly across the street and were very pleased to discover they offer some fantastically delicious fare.

Wednesday morning I had to be at the university by 7:20am to catch a ride with the class, so I left D in my housemate's very capable care and raced off to 'work.'  I arrived in time and was soon seated in a minibus winding my way back up the mountain.  This time, instead of turning off towards the airport, we meandered through narrow streets lined by neighborhoods in various stages of development until we reached the town center.  The center consisted of a nice city park dominated by a beautiful church on the far end.  We stepped off the bus and made our way into a 4 story, freshly painted building, which housed the government offices.  We were all ushered upstairs to a rather small conference room, given hot coffee, newspapers and several pamphlets before the mayor came to speak with us.  We spent an hour or so listening to his methods of governing, which were emphasized as being very different from the norm.  To the best of my understanding, Rionegro has been working very hard to create an inclusive government process and to empower local communities to create change on their own.  The government is also very much aware of the potential of this particular municipality due to the existence of the international airport, and a history rich in culture and tradition.  Hence, they are very keen to ensure that as the city develops, it does so in a well planned manner.  We spent the rest of the morning in the planning office, hearing about what they've been doing and what they're hoping to achieve for the future of the city.

Once we'd had our fill of politics, we took a nice stroll through the city, and for once I had my camera with me, so I finally got a few pictures of the city streets.  Here's a small sample.

Our afternoon was incredibly enlightening, and I want to write quite a bit about it, but have to get to work, so I'll save that for another entry.  In the meantime, I'm very excited to go check out our newly refurbished hot water heater, to find out whether it actually works.