Day 46 - Churching it and..clubbing it up

laurensame
Jul 29, 2015
7 min read

On Saturday (July 25th), upon getting up, I packed as much as I could as quickly as possible since I had to leave the house at 7:10 the following morning and since I wasn’t going to have much time to pack later in the day, and since we weren’t going to be coming back until very late. It was super hectic cause I realized that the flight company, VivaColombia, had never actually sent me my flight confirmation. I got a copy of my receipt, but that was it. Without the confirmation, I didn’t have the reservation number that I needed to check in. Also, if I didn’t check in online and print out my boarding pass, I was going to get fined $20,000 pesos. Also, I had come to the decision that I really needed to go to the Santa Marta area to scuba dive because Cartagena was just way too expensive for scuba diving. I could get a bus to Santa Marta, and more specifically, Taganga, but it would take about 5 hours and it seemed to be a better idea to try to fly into Santa Marta. So, I wanted to try to change my flight if possible. It looked like it might be slightly extra, but I thought there wasn’t going to be a fee for changing it (although I didn’t get a chance to read the email well since I was always busy, it didn’t get sent to me till late, and we left pretty quickly). I wanted to make another visit to Iglesia El Lugar de Su Presencia, which is the Hillsong church in Bogotá. SInce I wasn't going to be able to on Wednesday, we decided to go to the 5:00pm service on Saturday. We intended on leaving to have enough time to get to the line an hour ahead of time (this church has about 35,000 members - 3 services on Saturday, 5 on Sunday, and 2 I think on Wednesday; there are also two buildings: the main one (which seats like 4,000, and the overflow). To be able to get a seat, people normally start lining up starting an hour ahead of time. I think we only got there like 30 minutes ahead of time, and we had to wait a while since we had to wait for everyone who was in front of us to go in. They certainly have a system down, and they're currently making the building bigger. There was another mini play at the beginning, like there was last time. This time it was two people dersses as Roman centurians with cars. I didn't quite understand it all cause we missed the first part. But I know that the guy at one point said, "Oh we can grow closer together..." and the girl corrected him, "closer together, with God!" ..and they also looked out into the audience and were saying that it must be a theater, since people line up for theaters. The first couple of songs, once again, were more upbeat and there were people jumping around, but it definitely didn't feel as odd as it did last time. Like, it just seemed to be more of what I was used to in youh groups and what I wuld imagine revivals to be like (think the song Take it All). The rest of the songs, though not any that I knew or any that seemed to be translated, were just as good as any of the Hillsong songs in English. Sometimes Spanish churches can have really songs that are just composed in a way that's awkward to sing or sounds juvenile, but I like all of the songs. This time, the main pastor talked. The one who's completely white and is Australian, but grew up speaking Spanish and so he has a perfect Spanish accent.

This is the pastor and his wife:

He was talking about making decisions and what is necessary to know if it is from God. Like there has to be Biblical basis for it and you have to feel a peace about it. I was slightly distracted due to all that I had to do that day and it was a little harder to follow along casue it was a continuation of his last sermon, which we did not hear. Also, there was a many going through the aisle taking clsoe of pictures of random people in the congregation, which was a little distracting. I'm also almost positive that they took a picture of me since I was near the aisle and since I represent diversity for them haha. It's awkward cause you can see out of your peripherals that they're taking a picture, but they probably want you to be looking at the pastor and not at them, so you have to pretend that you don't know. I had decided that, this time, I wanted to go with the other "new people." I heard that they give you coffee and I was hoping for some momento from the church like a sticker or pin or something haha. However, I just got Cuatro (a grapefruit soda) and a cookie (which was really good), which was nice cause I was hungry and didn't end up getting to eat until about 4:45am! Oh, also I got a smiley face sticker, which is now on the backof my passport. The only thing was that they started singing the Spanish versions of Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) (Oceanes (Donde los pies pueden fallar), which is just really beautiful, and so I was a little mad that I had to miss the rest of that song! haha

This is what the inside of the church looks like. I know it looks giant, but they've fit so many seats into a comparitively small area, and it's just all so close. I really never felt like it was that big. It felt like a close, intimate church. It also helped that both times I went, our seats were fairly close to the stage.

Afterwards, we were going to head over to Lisa's (a friend of the Presbyterian church that meets in Colegio Americano, and she works for the school as someone who tries to find people to volunteer/work exchange and teach English. She's from California, I believe.) house, where we were going to meet some other people to go to a dance club. We went over there by the Transmilenio, which is a bus line that has it's own lane, so it can go pretty fast. It's just a bus and not a monorail or anything though. It's supposed to be more dangerous as far as robberies go, so I held tight onto my bag, though I didn't really have much to steal anyway. All I had with me was $40 in American money and some coins, which I used the last of to pay for the Transmilenio. Unfortunately, there were no money exchange places around that were open, and even if they were, they probably would'nt have let me exchange less than $50 and less than $100. Also, I was stupid and left my debit/ATM card at the apartment so that I wouldn't have both that and my credit card in the same place, just in case. However, of course, none of the food, transportation, or dance club places would accept credit cards. If I had had my ATM card, I coud've withdrawn money, but with a slight fee. I did have my credit card, but once when I used it to withdraw money it Atlanta, I got charged $10 (and I only withdrew $20!). The only ATM that we could find charged around $9000 pesos, which isn't much, but I was really afraid of what my credit card company might charge, especially since it's out of the country. So, even though we were both super hungry and though we found a Mexican restuarant (called Qué Onda Guey, which is pretty funny if you know anything about Mexcian Spanish), we didn't get anyrhing to eat cause I had no money and Juan Davíd only had $30,000 pesos, which we were afraid wouldn't be enough for us to both get food, entrance to the club, and a taxi back and we weren't sure if we were going to find any place where I could pay using my credit card, and we weren't sure if anyone else would have enough money to let me borrow.

We ended up going to the club with Laura, Sally, a sister and brother who were children of one of the teachers, (the brother was also dating one of the American visitors), two visitors from Laura's church in California, a teacher, and another girl who met us there, who I think was a teacher as well. The club was onlt $5,000 to get in. Juan Davíd and I had planned on going to get some food real quick, but since there was a line to get in, we worried about not being able to find the rest of the group. When we got there, around 10, there was not a lot of people, at least not where we were, which was on the third floor, and there certainly were not too many people dancing. We sat at a table for a while, and danced every so often. As the time passed, more and more people began to come and soon it was pretty crowded. A lot of the songs were reggaeton type like Sean Paul and there were many classic bachata songsSpanish songs that are currently famous, however, once in a while there were some English songs that I recognized as well as well as some that I didn't. There were several 80's type songs at one point, including songs from Grease! The name of the club was Tabú and the theme was superheroes. So at one point, there were different people dressed as superheroes dancing. At one point, a woman dressed kinda like a joker, but not The Joker walker through where we were. One of the American girls was completely not expecting that and got scared, it was pretty funny though. Several times there was also fire that shot out from a bridge that went across the second floor (that none of the guests were allowed on). Confetti also fell from the ceiling several times. The rest left fairly early, probably at like 1:45am, but Juan Davíd and I decided to stay longer because, why not? We left around 4:00am, meaning we had been there for 6 hours, and basically all of that time we had been dancing. So, Juan David and I didn't end up eating until around 4:30am, and the last time we had eaten before that was probablt around 2:00pm the day before (except for that cookie that I had at 6:45pm haha). I'm surprised that I wasn't shaking considering how long I went without eating and considering how much physical activity I did haha. (Although I did feel pretty weird, but that was probably largely due to being so tired)

I don't really know where to end this day, since it technically ended 4 hours earlier. So, I will continue on with the next day!

Here is a picture from the internet (the previous were from the internet as well) of the street that had a bunch of different discotecas lined down it, including Tabú, the one we went to. This was located in the Galerias area.