Hair Woes

My hair was getting long and the highlights had grown out and so I decided to get it cut. And the cut was awful.  I don't think Colombians know how to cut thin, fine, short hair.   I showed the lady these photos:

 

It's called like a French bob or like a long shaggy pixie cut.

So literally I showed her the photos above, saying I wanted the shaggy chin length hair with short bangs. And once again this is what I got:

So I trimmed the bangs myself.  Meanwhile I went somewhere else to get it highlighted (as seen in all the photos so far) and once again I HATED it. 

Seriously it was this weird grayie brown, not at all what I normally do. And it made me look so old!!! Ugh.  Like, the photos don't really show truly how bad it was.

So I cut my hair some more. Cried.  Went and had it highlighted again.  Panicked that my hair would be fried and left sooner than the guy thought I should (he was right) and then went and bought hair dye myself.  All in Spanish of course and dyed it/fried it myself.

This may have had the portrait filter on.  But either way, it was now ghostly white.

Sebastian was scared for me. 

Better than the one I paid for at this point.

But still more cutting. 

So success.  I actually really liked it at this point.  

You can't really see it in this photo, but this was just a week later.

And again can't really see, but kind of.

Me trying on clothes I really wanted to buy, but didn't.

I probably cut my hair again before this photo because it was a couple months later.  So yeah, this time it turned out okay and the rest of the time I was in Colombia, I just cut and dyed my own hair.  BUT it went downhill from here.  Definitely not a sustainable thing!!

This is me.  In fact, I may have put this on my blog before, I'm not sure.

I feel this to my soul. 

Hiking Quebrada La Vieja Dec 28th

The day after we celebrated Christmas (late since we were waiting for Leo to be home) we went and hiked the Quebrada La Viejo.  It's a hike above Chapinero and connects from some pretty parks there to the trail going up the mountain.  

You actually have to register to do the hike in advance because it's on private property and there's guards along the trail to keep people safe and also from doing stupid stuff.  And yeah, trails in Colombia aren't really the smoothest, as you can see. 

This was a really slippery section of the trail.  

All the mist from the rain was really lovely.

Efraim kept wanting me to take photos of every mushroom he found.  There are A TON of mushrooms.

He also wanted photos of the pretty colored leaves.

This was part of an old colonial gate that you can see below too.  It had a sign but I forgot the details. 

All these pine forests are not native.  They were brought in during the colonial period to have building material. 

The eucalyptus isn't native either.  But is smells HEAVENLY.  Leo always says the smell of eucalyptus takes him back to his childhood.  They're planted all over Cundinamarca.

The hike ended here.  And without the rain and mist we've would have been able to see over Chapinero and Bogotá, but that's okay.  I thought the mist was lovely.

The first/last part of the hike you go under a bridge to get to the parks in Chapinero.  The kids loved it.

They also loved riding home on the Transmilenio.  Silly kids. 

Christmas 2023!

We tried to celebrate with Colombian traditions and Leo said never again. Mostly because instead of opening presents on Christmas morning, you open presents at midnight on Christmas Eve. Also, we all tried lechona (a stuffed pork thing) and none of us liked it, even Leo, one of those better in your memory things. And no one was a fan of natilla (flan like desert made from sugar cane), but I bought buñealos almost every other day (round fried cheesy dough deliciousness), so one of their traditional Christmas foods was awesome. We were playing a card game above.

For Christmas Eve dinner we went to Crepes and Waffles.  😍

Here's our little tree and decorations from Amazon.

Weirdies.

We had Christmas socks instead of Christmas pjs this year.  It was cold in the house with no heat so they were kind of the thick slipper socks.  

Baby Jesus, not Santa Clause delivers presents in Colombia.  So the kids were so happy he brought cereal from the States (thanks to Pricesmart.)

See the happiness!?!!!

Opening presents at midnight!

Opening presents at midnight leads to putting together Lego sets at 2 AM.  

The older kids got Grayl water purifier bottles.  

I actually had brought the Christmas presents with me to Colombia because I didn't know that Amazon delivered there.  I was pretty proud of my planning ahead even though it ended up being unnecessary.  

I love the sets they got though.  

The off road truck has suspension.

Above was our Christmas dinner that we ended up just throwing away. Eek. 

Buñealos and lechona.  Probably would have been better fresher and hotter. 

 For being a very simple Christmas (although the kids went on two vacations that next summer so it was like Christmas going both times) it ended up really good.  

And before Christmas we celebrated my birthday and I got slippers because my feet were always cold in the morning!