Jobseeker

I´ve got a job. I start on Monday as an English teacher. The interview was really a formality - the only qualification needed here is a native tongue. I think they were quite surprised to have somebody wander in with a degree in English, a TEFL course, a year´s experience and a background as a print journalist. I´ll be paid about five pounds an hour, which may not sound much, but it´s enough for two nights accommodation or a evening out in Bogota. I should be able to cover my living expenses on about twelve hours a week. Any more I can save for later in my journey.

I went on the date with the Colombian English teacher yesterday, it was quite an odd evening really. I didn´t think she was going to turn up. I´d missed a call from her earlier in the week and as the appointed hour appproached the skies opened and hailstones the size of peas began battering the city.

She did arrive, eventually, and we headed out into the town. The first stop was a little square, called El Chorro, I think, which is the historical heart of the city. We had a drink on the balcony of an ancient Spanish Colonial building that looked out over the skyscrapers of Bogota´s downtown. I left her to choose how we amused ourselves for the evening, so we ended up going to a bowling alley. She was very competitive, and obviously played often, so I was happy to lose in spectacular fashion. The most enjoyable part of the game for me was the fact that it wasn´t a machine that put the skittles back up, but a spotty teenager. He would peer through little eyeholes in the back of the alley, I suppose to avoid being hit by the bowls. What lent a surreal touch was the fact that the peepholes were cut into the eyes of a crudely painted dancing skittle. It was like one of the portraits in old horror films that the baddy would spy through, giving it eyes that really followed you around the room.

After the skittles was a game of pool (again, her idea, not mine). I suppose I won this - or at least I´d potted a single ball when we were thrown out at closing time.

She lived near the hostel and I walked her home. She had a tiny room in a shared flat, which was filled to the ceiling with clothes, books and layer upon layer of clutter. On her wall she had postcards of London, Sydney, New York and (strangely) Hastings. There was also a dog-eared London Tourist Board advert torn from a magazine taped above her dressing table. I wondered how often she had gazed at it and imagined watching the "colourful spectacle" of Trooping the Colour or pictured herself walking across the "gothic splendour" of Tower Bridge. It made me realise just how much educated young Colombians want to get out of their country. They´re very proud of the place, but with half of the countryside out of bounds because of the guerillas and militias, and much of the rest mired in (seemingly) irredemable poverty, they feel trapped in their home cities. In a way, that´s perhaps why I like Bogota. There´s something like a seige mentality here. People very rarely venture beyond the suburbs, so it´s inevitable that there´s always lots of things going on to keep people occupied. But at the same time that so many people want to escape, they know full well that their passports are next to useless. I know that when I´ve met Colombians in London in the past I´ve arched an eyebrow and wondered what they were up to.

Soon after we arrived back at the flat, and I had begun to feel slightly melancholy surrounded by such evidence of unfulfilled dreams, her phone went and she went into a flap because she´d forgotten to deliver a book, or something, to somebody. So the evening ended with me walking her up the road and back and then saying goodnight at the door. Just as well, I had to be up early today for the interview.

There´s been a few robberies near the hostel recently, carried out by homeless people who pull knives on lone walkers late at night. John, the Australian who´s working at the same school as me, escaped from an attack on Wednesday night. We´d been at a nightclub (Wednesday is a big night here for some reason) when he suddenly left by himself. John is travelling with his girlfriend, Nicole (who has also got a job at the same school) but is in fits of agony about the gorgeous girls who won´t leave him alone. He´s a good-looking chap with an open, honest face and is constantly being offered phone numbers and dates. The last time I saw him at the nightclub he was flanked by two stunners, and, with a hunted look on his face, he said: "I can´t cope with this, I´ve got to get out of here. This is too much." He fled, literally, from the club, back to Nicole, who was having an early night back at the hostel. His departure reminded me somewhat of Kenneth Williams running away from Matron. It seems so unfair that in trying to do the right thing by his girl he ended up with a knife in his face. He said he had a surge of adrenaline and pushed the robbers away before running back to the hostel. Last night Aviv, the Israeli umbrella smuggler, was held up right outside the hostel. Luckily he only had about a pound on him, and nobody has been hurt.

It´s nice to know that I´ve got work on Monday because it means that the weekend will be all the sweeter. Tonight I´m off to listen to an Argentinian DJ, who, I´m told, is the biggest thing to come out of her country since the Belgrano.