Cokeheads are Bad at Soccer, I´m Bad at Buying Sox

Last night was my first night in the Hostel in downtown Bogotá, right off the Plazuela de Simón Bolivar. About half the people there are foreigners, Swiss, Swedes, Argentines, a South African, some Brazillians, lots of Venezuelans, a contengent of Israelis, and one other American--the others are colombians. The spoken language is a definate Spanglish. They all went to a club, I went to a coffee shop with a colombian friend where I had mediocre coffee and really good chocolate (Colombian coffee in Colombia = not very good). I came back to the hostel and talked to people until about 4 AM while they ALL did line after line of Cocaine. I "just said no."

A few observations about cocaine abuse: I was surprised by how unaffected most people were (though there was the swiss guy who was really quite affected). The Israelis said they had come to Colombia for the Coke. The American girl who was there was very much someone who had not done coke before coming to Colombia. Small quantities are legal in the city, which is interesting because large quantities are so violently illegal. It's basically an export product that few colombians use. Many visitors do. When I am around foreigners or speaking english I am often offered Cocaine. It was novel and funny at first, now I'm just used to it.

In the US people are very afraid of drug dealers and many of my friends think are or would be mildly traumatized if offered Cocaine in Chicago or New York. That's becasue in the US the law is so strictly enforced and the penalty so large. Drug dealers have good reason to be violent people. Because it's easy to aviod the law, cocaine is cheap. And because it is cheap it's not worth fighting over. In Colombia, certainly many of them have violent friends, but 'would you like some cocaine?' is asked with the same intonation as 'Chicle! Chicle! ¿Quien quieres chicle?'. In Colombia, cocaine costs about 1/20th of the price here as in the States, according to the Venezuelans. It is, I am told, very cheap and very pure.

It has been a long time since I've watched people do coke, but my thoughts today are that most Americans would be surprised by how functional its users are. Some of these people were pretty heavy users (they came to Colombia for it) but looked better than some drunks. Addiction is another thing.

I went to bed and woke up. Some of them were still awake others were waking up. I got everyone in the hostel to go play fútbol after breafast. The people who were still high on cocaine were the worst soccer players I've ever seen. Even the Latin American ones. Our team won, mostly thaks to a couple of sober brazilians and a colombian. I am comparatively bad at soccer here and definately benefited from the cocaine handicap the other team endured. I scored two goals.

Afterward I went to some museums, for a long walk, and I talked to a family of indians for a long time. They were neat. They showed me pictures and taught me words in Quecha.

I need to buy more socks. I tried to today but it didn't work. I know where to buy fake watches, pirated DVDs, Cocaine, good Mexican food, green tea (really hard to find), and Native American art but I can't figure out sox.

I have school tomorrow. I´m going to go to the library.