I had a great day yesterday, I went to the Couch Surfing meeting in Felipe's house. He lives in the south part of the city, near Unicentro. On the way to the bus station Dilia phoned me and she asked if I was coming. While I was talking with her in Spanish and focusing a lot to understand what we were talking about, a lady stopped by me and she was saying something and gesticulating for about two minutes. As my little brain was not able to understand two people speaking Spanish at the same time, I completely ignored the lady. She left, I finished my conversation with Dilia and then I miraculously got what the lady was saying. She persistently tried to warn me not to use the mobile phone in that place because it was very dangerous. How nice of her and how rude of me....
There were many people in Felipe's house, really lovely people (some of them in the picture). There was a swimming pool but I didn't have a swimming costium. Javier lent me his shorts and I jumped into the water. There was a lot of salsa dancing involved (of course!! - we are in Cali) and a lot of delicious food, made by Felipe, his cousin and some helpers.
We also talked about the "hugs and kisses" subject I mentioned in my previous post. I was told that it had been worse before, in the Couch Surfing group. Then somebody put a message on the CS website asking people to decrease the amount of physical contact because foreigners were put off by this kind of behaviour. And this is apparently normal, hugging and kissing (well, don't take me wrong, we are not talking here about kissing kissing) with people you just met, not to mention people you know for some time. I knew about this before but nothing was able to prepare me for the reality. 
On my way back, when I got off the bus, I saw scared people in the streets again (I was one of them). People scared of other people, exactly as it was in Brazil. Frightened people giving short nervous looks around while walking, wondering who is the one with the gun in the street....