Shopping for The Essentials (and I don´t mean Neal Diamond records)

Fact: Apartments in Colombia generally come two ways – fully furnished or completely empty. By completely empty I mean there is no refrigerator, stove, or even hot water heater (people don’t seem to use hot water for much beyond showering here). As the furnished apartments cost about double that of the bare apartments, we went with the latter. We were lucky enough to find a place that did have an electric hot water heater in the shower and a gas double-burner in the kitchen. And so, we have been on the streets buying the first appliances of our lives, as well as the necessary furniture. It has been a daunting process. Given our limited Spanish, the conversations have gone something like this (from our perspective, of course):


Salesperson:
Blah blah blah blah?

Us:
…We need a refrigerator.

Salesperson:
[gesturing at a much too large fridge] Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah?

us:
[looking at each other]… did you get that? Me neither…

Salesperson:
Entiende? (Do you understand?)

us:
…No…

Salesperson:
OK. [gesturing at the much too large fridge] BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAAAH. BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAH.. BLAAAH. Blah blah blah blah?

us:
[with uncomfortable smiles]… ummmh… Mas pequeño por favor…

And so on, until we are sitting at a desk and they are writing a sales slip for the items we looked at. No, we are not buying said items. Salespeople here insist on writing you a sales slip so that you can bring it back if you decide to buy it (or maybe they just wanted to avoid doing this all over again next time). Given my comparison-shopping, I must have collected 20 of those slips.

You may be surprised to hear that we were able to procure all of the essentials in this manner.