I’m back on the porch. Orlando left three nights ago and should return later. I’ve exhausted 3 seasons of Arrested Development, and the 8th season of Curb. I have Limitless and Inglorious Bastards on my computer, but I’ve watched both many times. I’m bored – really bored. I’m drinking water out of a lime green cup. There’s a blue candle and a red candle on the table. It’s really two tables, in fact, pushed together to make one. There’s two ripped pieces of newspaper resting table-top as well, that we use to grab the handles of the arepa (corn pancake – breakfast) skillet and the hot chocolate kettle. We make fires and cook meals on the fire. Except for lunch – some teenagers bring us lovely plates of lunch every day. There’s always rice, then either beef or chicken, and then some sort of salad or beans or potato side. In Colombia, it’s standard to eat a small breakfast (we eat arepas and hot chocolate), a big lunch, and a small dinner (we eat hard-boiled eggs with salt and soda crackers and a triangle of mozzarella cheese), and nothing more. This is sometimes tough for me, because I eat a lot. For the past 3 days, I’ve been walking up the road to the little convenience store across from the school, and buying lots of chocolate. I generally finish the chocolate before making it back to the farm. Yesterday there was a girl behind the counter who was rather warm and friendly. I think she likes me.

This is the blog post about nothing. Ironically, I’m listening to an album called More About Nothing, which is a mixtape by Wale with Seinfeld sound bytes. Like Seinfeld, it’s a mixtape about nothing. Like most of hip hop these days. It’s actually really good.

This is really the blog post about nothing. Let’s see. I’m on the porch, staring out into the valley, which is always splatted with lingering fog and a twice-daily rainstorm. The word for valley/ravine/gorge in Spanish is quebrada. I’ve written two blog posts in the last few days, and they are ready to go. There’s still no internet. If there were internet, I wouldn’t be writing the blog post about nothing – about truly nothing. I’m just writing because I don’t have anything else to do. It’s 5:46pm (on August 10th, so if and when this makes it to the blog, it’ll be at a later date), and Orlando will be bringing the eggs and cheese for tonight. Orlando is the boss of the farm – el dueño. I suppose writing for no reason is a decent exercise – just to see what comes out or to practice being descriptive. However, I think it has a bit of a creepy undertone, like Cole in the Sixth Sense writing all of those creepy things. That movie, which I saw in a hotel room at a hockey tournament in Ramapo, New Jersey when I was 12 years old playing Squirt B for the Haverford Hawks on a line with Mike Lundy and Matt Izzi, turned me off to scary movies forever. I don’t watch ‘em.

To my left, there’s an area for making fires. There’s a fireplace, an axe, firewood, and stacks of extra roof shingles. The area is covered by a tin roof. The floor (dirt floor) of the area is about 10 feet lower than the floor of the porch on which I currently sit, so to descend, you have to use the ladder that Orlando built, which is propped up against the side of the porch. We recently knocked down a few walls with a hammer and a metal pick and installed some doors, so pretty soon, we won’t have to use this ladder. There will be a “cleaner” way to access the fire-making area.

Before this sentence, there were 613 words written. That’s a bit. I’ve written some things. It’s probably too late to turn back now; this thing will probably get posted on the blog. The blog post about absolutely nothing.

The last few days have been really nice. It’s just been me at the farm. WWOOFing has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and it’s going really well. At the very least, it’s charging me right back up to travel. I’ve just been living at this farmhouse for the last 8 days. I have my own room. There’s a painting of a naked girl on the wall, and massive, bajillion-decibal speakers. I bump salsa music most of the day, and occasionally 107.7FM, which has 90’s rock hits in English. Lovefool, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Champagne Supernova – stuff like that. The family has semi-adopted me as well. On Sunday, we went to the relatives’ house, and I drank whiskey with the aunts and uncles and showed them YouTube videos of Jordan playing lacrosse. It was really nice to be with a whole extended family. I miss my own!

What else. To me right, there are two plant-holder things dangling from a tree branch. The things are suspended by metal wires. When Orlando and I finish our hard-boiled dinner eggs, we dump the shells into the things. I suppose we do this so that birds can eat them? No birds have eaten anything. I keep dumping my shells there regardless.

When you walk out the front door of the farmhouse, you stare down at Bucaramanga. You’re at cloud-level. It’s a bit trippy sometimes, gazing down at a fog-whisped cloud-drenched city, seeing how the neighborhoods are organized and which buildings are tallest. Just like staring out of the window of an airplane.

Back to my left there were, like two minutes ago, some golden lights splattered onto one of the trees. The sun is setting – that’s when the golden lights come out to smile. It looked nice, so I actually ran back through the house to see if the sunset over Bucaramanga was photo-worthy. It wasn’t, but there were a few nice purples and blues. I broke Orlando’s garden hoe two days ago, so I went to the neighbor’s house and borrowed theirs. I marched back down the path to the coffee plants (there isn’t much of a path, so it’s just mud, and you basically surf down the thing, which is both fun and frustrating), and got back to work. Maybe two two-handed Tomahawk-chops later, I broke the neighbor’s garden hoe. So then I marched back up to the house, whipped out some medical tape, and started fixing. It reminded me of taping a hockey stick. I miss hockey more than any reader would ever realize. I’ve been quoted saying that if I ever have children, well, I hope I love my children as much as I love ice hockey. It’s true. I love it with all my heart and soul. Family aside, I’ve never cared about anything as much as I cared and care about ice hockey. It’s the realness.

I studied engineering, so I didn’t have that many essays to write. But when I did have essays to write, there is no way I wrote them as quick as I write these blog posts. I’m like 20 minutes in and I’ve already written 2 pages – single-spaced. But I guess that’s because I don’t think much when I write. I think good writing is honest writing – plain and simple honest writing. You just write what and how you think – right? Maybe just when it’s your own free internet blog, though – I don’t think my grammar and sentence construction would be particularly admissible in a University classroom. But I know what mistakes I’m making, and I’m making them on purpose. Does this then mean that they aren’t mistakes at all? Cool question.

There’s two dudes whistling at the gate, but I don’t know them and I’m not getting up. Orlando has the keys, and he’ll let himself in when he arrives. One of the dudes is wearing a pinkish-reddish cutoff shirt, which I think is Ed Hardy. Brutal.

I just turned the porch light on, because it’s getting dark. The butterflies will start dancing psychotically around soon enough. Holy-shit-congratulations if you’re still reading. The blog post about nothing.

Orlando and I are going hiking tomorrow. I’m pumped, because I’ve been cleaning coffee plants by myself for the last 3 days. If I was the reader, my attention would be waning exactly now. So here’s where we end. The blog post about absolutely nothing.

Thanks for reading,

Will