The two best things about working with flowers (or at least taking photos of them) are that here in the Andes, they last forever, and you can give arms-wide bunches to people, and still have enough for the stairs and the kitchen and the bathrooms.  The natural beauty of the simplest asters, the humble margarita and the peony far outstrips the multicoloured dyed daisies so loved by the Japanese who buy shiploads of flowers from Colombia.  Nan and I are making a CD catalogue of flowers for the Japanese market, for one export company here. We have animated some hummingbirds to fly around the flowers as each one comes up since the hummingbird is the company logo. Its been a pleasure to work at the plantations with film crews and the workers who seem permanently cheerful and friendly either from working with flowers or from some pesticide overload.

Moving from that world of living breathing beauties to making 3D animations of apartments for architects is a stiff one.  Thankfully Hernan can make 3D elevations for buildings that the architects cant even do.  Like architects the world over, they have ideas and thats about it. Hernan has years of construction experience which gives him enormous insight into renders.  Going to construction sites to take photos of various outlooks for our 3D work has been an experience. I learn a lot and we happen upon so many engineers who used to work for Hernan years ago on sites here in Bogota and in Cartagena.  They have a lot of funny stories to reminisce over, and in this class-conscious world, its nice to watch him swing from snobby architect to ordinary jobsite blokes and women who are often construction managers.

On Tuesdays I take a mob of senior kids at Annies school for English language extension work.  I suggested last week that they bring this week some CDs and lyrics of songs in English.  What a laugh.  One kid wrote the lyrics of Kylie Minogues Come into my world onto the board, and after they practiced reading it once in English and then translating it into Spanish so I could check they understood its general drift, off they went singing along to the song, serious and innocent as only kids here can be.  I couldnt see 16 year olds in Australia doing the same.  When we got to Eminem and mother fucking something, it was such a shock for them in translation that a few of them told me they didnt like Eminem after all. Good thing too. I had warned them he was racist, sexist and a dropkick anyway.  One kid, Jose, who has collected 500 songs in English from the web, then told me it was my turn to learn some more Colombian words. I thought, oh no, here come the swear words. But no, he taught me words for types of bags, bags for rice, bags for potatoes, and of course, food.  That is Colombia. They are so proud of their culture, their food, their history.  In the morning on the kids radio, there is a quiz where callers have to answer rapid-fire history questions.  This morning I got stumped by the very first question.  What was the name of Bolivars horse?  Hernan said, Paloma of course. Of course, I said and we both laughed.

So here I am late at night, after a day of running around for architects, taking photos of flowers and two restaurants, chatting with Julio, Guill and Julio Senior about how best to cut the pine logs into pieces and admiring the newly fixed handle on the axe, It's been a day and a half.  We picked up Annie down the road from her school bus, and then the Mora Lady, a spritely 70 year old lady who walks the paddocks here collecting raspberries to sell.  She had asked Annie to accompany her on her walks as she likes her company.  Annie said she had homework to do.an assignment on peace ..1000 cranes of Hiroshima.  Now I am watching Gran Hermano, or Big Brother. Yes its here too and the copy of the Australian one.  Except its far more serious and innocent like Colombians are.  I love it. When they bitch about each other to Big Brother, Annie and I wonder Is that all you can say?  They need to take nasty lessons.

The cold is fierce and there is no sign of global warming here so high up.  Some mornings after rain, as we head down the mountain to Bogota city, we are lucky enough to see far ahead to the Sierra Nevada and the snow capped Tolima and Cocuy, and we count our luck. Mars has set regrettably but it was wonderful while it lasted.  The stars are sharp with the icy winds at night, and the kite we gave Hernan for his birthday soars so rapidly and high from the cliff face we think it could stay up permanently without our assistance.