Coffee Meet-ups in Armenia, Colombia. 5 Dec 2024

[Music] foreign go [Music] about a year ago I started a weekly coffee Meetup for expats in Armenia Columbia I had no time for it and as soon as I could I handed it off Ron took over and since it's become a juggernaut people are coming from all over Colombia I decided to do a short video about it and talk to a few of the people when you get time shoot me off your thoughts on this maybe the problem is I can drink coffee too much acidy for some reason he's so bad for my stomach your name is rioo R goo Avalar and um you've been in Columbia for 6 or seven 8 years you come back and forth but you're here now permanently correct originally came here in January of 200 oh what was it what is this 24 so I think 19 approximately uh came here cuz went to bot went to mein and I thought before doing that I'd moved to Los Angeles which was right down so anyway went home looked up Google tried to find some I like the basics of Colombia but definitely did not want to live in a big city um and came back looked up some when came into town uh came to look at a house down by maawa not what I expected or wanted so then we found this place by and spent the next 6 years trying to make it home yeah it's very nice so tell me um this this little video is going to be about the coffee meetings MH how did you find out about them from your show coffee time coffee time I was just flipping through you know look uh go on YouTube and just look up stuff for Columbia to give me some background on it because I really knew not much about it and I happened to cross your show and after the first time I watched it I became a not addicted but it it was I found it interesting the stuff I learned yeah I'm proud of uh a lot of good information a lot yeah and me knowing nothing about it very careful about not putting up bogus crap yeah no and and it to factual was one thing but the rest of it all the little side information I just found it like wow I didn't know that and little by little I was just like okay Sunday Come Around get the TV ready and then I kept hearing about the coffee meetings so when I came I think I wrote to you and I says hey I'm coming into town I think I came in uh June for this last time before we met and uh went to the first coffee meeting and I thought it was just fantastic so I came I was here for a month that time came to all four meetings then packed it up went home and said okay that's it uh what what made you want to go to the coffee meetings coffee time live really seriously I just thought okay first I wanted to meet you because like you said before we even pres met in person I you know developed some kind of a Vibe and I thought well I want to go meet him and then I want to see what this is really all about and at the end of the first meeting I met so many other people that I thought okay now I know I know some somebody that's from Texas now I met somebody that's from Holland and it it was interesting that they have different experiences to share about living here exactly give your heads up on something that you might step in next month you get into a different perspective of how different people see it and how they feel about it and I just thought that was just great and i' since I've been in Columbia I've haven't missed a meeting hey my name is Ron Clark and I I retired about a year and a half ago and moved here in March but my wife is from here we'd been here like five times for about 4 to six weeks each time for Christmas and New Year so I was very familiar so how did you uh come to know about the coffee meetings uh well watching your YouTube channel and it was mentioned and then of course it was mentioned on Grand Columbia and I would like to say that you know a lot of us owe you a deep uh amount of appreciation of I've been watching you for years and you give out good advice even though we have a solid family structure here I I I appreciate everything you're doing well thank you blush blush so what did you think of the Cofe meetings when you first started going it was a great place to get advice because a lot of the people there had been there for years and you and uh if you needed something like where do I get car insurance or how do I do this about my Visa or anything like that somebody almost always H has an answer and it's gotten even bigger since then so the resources and plus you just make a lot of friends there and end up hanging out with them and going uh going to little festivals and dinner you're social speaking of which um originally I was doing these coffee meetings and I'm not social and I hated doing it particularly because I'm when I'm not sick I'm always busy as hell you stepped up and said I'll do it and now I was volun told I I mean I was kiss the ground you you you walked on because well you took it on yeah and since you've taken it on the thing has grown exponentially where we on any given week there's 20 to 30 people there and there's always people new people coming and going they're visiting stopping in or they haven't been or they drive him from P or something like that um how how do you do that I'm uh well I was an educator I was a nursing instructor and uh a key part of that job is communication either with the higher ups or the students or anything like that so I just started networking over WhatsApp and uh Facebook I'm on about six or seven xat pages and we've had people come in from monzales and Pera and all over the place there's uh regulars that come in from fandia every every week I think it's because you personally you're a social freak well yeah sort of and you you know you you're like the flame and they're the I'm like a butterfly you know they're drawn to the flame yeah that's it yeah well yeah uh when people ask something I try to be really helpful and steer them in the right direction you're expanding it I know you Halloween party at your house you had Thanksgiving dinner at the the Brazilian steakhouse thing some people there and now you got a Christmas dinner coming up on the 19th yeah and then we'll that thing booked up the first day right yeah we had we reserved 20 people and now we the reservations are up to 30 and we might even expand that depending but then uh we'll have uh some events for July 4th maybe Memorial Day some some of the American holidays coming up just to and what else is great about the coffee meat is I would say at least half the people are Colombian you know and about 75% of the people there speak Spanish I mean they're if they it's a it's about a 50/50 mix of women and men yeah yeah that's also women feel comfortable coming uh well cuz there's other women and uh yeah well the first picture I always put up on Facebook is the picture of the pretty girls and that way girl women see it and they they say oh oh okay it must be a safe space for uh for for women cuz there's there's lots of women you put it up for us yeah to brag how good of a job I'm doing all right um is there anything new coming up outside of the Christmas dinner that uh uh the Christmas dinner and then I'm working on maybe once a month having a like a Saturday night dinner somewhere at a at a regular spot maybe a regular spot we'll boun I like to bounce around and try a new placees and celebrate uh that month's birthday so if you're born in May we'll have a cake for anybody happy birthday in May and and if uh there's no birthdays then we just have cake anyway hi I'm Denine troop we tro and I understand you have a podcast I do have a podcast SL yoube Channel yes I do um it is called it's just my name Denine TB t as in truth b as in business so it's about uh of having faith and business together is it anything to do with Colombia actually it is not but you know what I'm at the place where we very recently removed back here and I'm thinking about what could I do that would be both in English and Spanish since I do speak both of those languages oh nice I'm jealous my Spanish is like a threee old I mean I can get by but okay so just a few basic a question okay how did you learn about these coffee meetings okay so when I first came here I needed to do paperwork for making sure my Visa and everything was okay I'm married to a Colombian so it was maybe a little easier for me so I started looking on Facebook for groups and the problem was this coffee meet group I kept missing when the meetings were but I kept seeing how much fun everybody was having so because I had asked in there oh I need a lawyer for this or that that's I just started looking on Facebook and that's how I found you all okay um now that you've been what do you think about it are are you getting anything out of it or what do you well one of the things that is important for me is the fact that I need some friends and not that I don't love Latinos and my family my husband's family which are here in Armenia but I just feel like I need a connection with maybe some English speakers every once a while my husband and I do speak Spang English but and I speak English with my daughters if they're in the home or or or on the phone but the rest of the time I speak Spanish and so I'm finding it vals on you doesn't it I mean it wears on me well I do speak it okay and I do but I just somebody with the same background somebody that gets it somebody that when you say something they they understand it because they've lived through it been there done that kind of of thing and so um I'm you know I know there's a lot of men here that are are married to Latino women that's totally fine but and so I'm I'm like the opposite I have the Latino husband so so hopefully we can find some other um American or English-speaking women that would be awesome too now that you have been is it something that you would recommend is it something that you look forward to going to is it something maybe hit it once in a while I mean what's your I think um I'm enjoying it I'm enjoying having this almost like an appointment at least for the Wednesday coffee like every week to know that I'm going to take a break because I am still working and I do online work and so to know that oh this is kind of my networking time or this is my time to make friends and have a social life that's why I think it's important so for me we're going to try and have every week to meet wherever they're meeting and the other thing is we've already signed up and said yes for our the Christmas thing so I just think it's really nice that that we can find a group of people that we can really like dig down into having relationship and friendship with hi guys my name is David I'm from the UK I've been in Columbia 13 years uh 10 years in Bogota 3 years here in the uh the paradise uh k um so here I I teach English um I work on some other projects and um I like to do lots of exercise on the bike there's lots of opportunity to get out and about in the throa in the mountains beautiful countryside and yeah it really is a lovely lovely Place lovely part of the world to live that's a question I get quite a bit is there a bike culture in in Colombia um absolutely yes it's huge yeah yeah if you go to medin or um Bogota even Bogota on especially on a Sunday you see a lot of cyclists leaving the city um going down the CA and coming back um I remember constantly closing roads for it that's it's a downside that is the downside you have to check yeah especially if you've got a trip planned you need to you know to connect with linia or something and then you realize that there's a big bike event from 5: in the morning till 3:00 in the afternoon yeah it can be a problem so doing a little video on the coffee meetings so I'm going to ask you a couple questions first how did you find out about them yeah good question um so I found out through Facebook so um on my news feed and I saw the post come up pretty much every day and I thought I really really need he's a fanatic yeah that's right he's a fanatic so I thought I really really need to make the effort to attend and I wasn't sure what to expect um but in the end um it turned out to be a really nice group of people nice mix yeah new people that's right new people all the time uh what was your um what was your motivation to go to begin with and then once you went um what did you walk away thinking about it that's a good question I think my motivation was really to to meet new people um I think being a foreigner here um I think my story is that I spend a lot of years living sort of within the Colombian Community mainly having Colombian friends Colombian contacts and I sort of felt as as a foreigner uh that I wanted to meet more like-minded people or people that I could connect with from my culture so that's really my main main uh motivation you know I used to think England and the United States vast difference language everything else but after you live here for a while those differences kind of vanish you're right they do and for some reason we we have a basic grounding that's right that's familiar a familiar grounding absolutely yeah like you may not know that a truck is a truck you might call it a Lori or something but absolutely and we have the same kind of experience in the in the culture that we live in fascinating we can connect with each yeah absolutely and so you went to your first one and you found that it was actually kind of comfortable it was very comfortable yes really nice people a nice group of people uh mixture of people um so it was just nice to be able to listen to other people's stories and experiences of living here or why they decided to live here why they decided to come back um and and you know to gauge some of the experiences that other people have and to be able to share mine as well well those are Pros um I don't really want to ask you for the cons because that's kind of negative but is there anything that uh you could see that would make it a better experience a better experience um like uh for example they've been doing once a month different places yes uh there's you know arguments on both sides of that is yeah does that work how even if it's just structurally is there anything that you you might want to try differently I think they always say don't mend anything that's not broken and I think at the moment it kind of works I suppose there's always going to be people that are not happy with the with the structure or the format um so I think you know for me it works perfectly at the moment you know trying it you know Ron's quite focused on finding a good place that can accommodate us all that has you know a good menu um so I think he does a good job of really identifying you know a new place the number one thing is a menu the absolutely so I think you know sometimes these things tend to evolve naturally they're quite organic um but I think the the format at the moment is is good and it's well publicized so new people can see can see the uh you know the location and the fact that it's yes yes [Music] oh