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29
Feb. 16. First thing after breakfast we went to Tia's to buy souvenir postcards. Then I went to the Institute. Don Luis is to get our "salvoconductos" this morning and I am to work with Otoya and Osorno. I sat at the dissecting microscope and they brought specimens for me to pass on. I could get the family and often the subfamily; sometimes I would know the genus. We cleaned up lots of odds and ends that had puzzled them and in general I am sure it was a help to them. At 11, Don Luis came and asked me to bring our passport when I come back in the afternoon. In the meantime, Clara had gone for the mail, finding letters from New York and the Blackwelders; then to the Banco de la República to change five pesos but they could give her nothing smaller than 50 centavos so she went on along Carrera 8a to the Royal Bank of Canada where she found some 20 centavo pieces. At the window she talked with a woman who had lived several years in New York and remembered it kindly.
   We met at Casa Gómez for lunch. I took the passport and went to the Institute. Murillo disappeared with it and was to meet us at Parque Independencia at 5.15. We, Otoya, Osorno and I continued as in the morning. While they do not have a large collection, there are, never-the-less some very nice things in it. Met Don Luis at the appointed time and he had the salvoconductos that permitted us to go anywhere in Columbia during the next seventy days. Home at 5.30 and walked downtown with Clara. We left the film pack to be developed and it will be ready at 4 tomorrow afternoon. From there we went over to Carrera 13 and saw the outside of Colegio de la Merced at Calle 15. There was a long gorgeous black car parked in the middle of the much too narrow street so that traffic was almost halted; a tired old horse, harnessed to a load of burlap bundles^[[,]] was parked head on and close to a car, not tied but patiently standing and waiting. We walked along Carrera 13, sometimes called Avenida Boyacá, to Calle 18, then to the apartment where we met the Butlers just coming away; they had called to invite us to dinner the next night.
We had Spanish with our dinner, the doctor from Antioquia talked slowly and clearly so that one of us understood quite a lot. He is learning English and is both earnest and thorough about it. Mr Brickell called after dinner, bringing our clean clothes. After he left, we played Chinese checkers with the girls until quite late and when we went to bed we found there was no water.