Intermediate series 1
Intermediate 39: Eventos inexplicables…
Lis Salinas
Colombiana
Rob
Inglés
Contents
Good morning and welcome to another episode of Spanish Obsessed in between, I don't know what number, what episode, but today as always, we're with Lis.
We're still in London. We've got some big changes coming up, but we're not going to tell you about that right now. We'll tell you in an episode, but not yet. In this episode, then, what did we want to talk about?
Well, uh, we're going to talk about some strange experiences that have happened to us. Well, Rob, especially. Like those things that are kind of otherworldly and you're like oh, this weird thing that's happening to me.
Supernatural. Well, I'm not, the truth is, I'm, I consider myself a very rational person, but even so some very strange things have happened to me that I don't know how to explain. Well, perhaps there are psychoanalytical explanations or something like that. Psychological and I'm sure that's what it is. But from my experience, my lived experience, I found those experiences very, very strange. So I have two, to be honest. And do you have any experiences that you can't explain?
Of one. Yes.
Well, I call that experience, well, all my weird experiences always seem to appear as, let's say, like a witch. So it's, well, I don't know how to say it, but throughout my life a woman has appeared and always and every time she appears she does something very strange and disappears. And this same woman has appeared three times in my life, at the least expected moments.
No, no, that's why I say the witch. I mean, she's not a witch like in fairy tales, but she's a woman, I'd say she's about 50 years old. She has blonde hair.
Who knows? Who knows? European, European, maybe. She's got... She wears a lot of make-up. So she has a face like... Well, not frightening but striking that I recognised... Recognisable.
A lot of eye make-up and lipstick like very...
Exactly. Basically, basically. So, as I said, she's appeared about three times in my life and always at moments when she does something to me and then disappears immediately.
Well, I'll tell you about the last time so as not to make the story too long. And that has been throughout my life, when I was about ten years old, maybe seventeen or so. And the last time was three years ago. So in my early twenties, maybe early thirties, but it wasn't that long ago I was getting off a train coming from my parents' place in Bath. So I was, I was getting off a train in Paddington, here in London, and I got off the train. When I got off I was sort of looking to the left, as if to go along the platform and I turned, I turned, I turned and I saw this girl, but sort of facing me, right in front of my face. And what did she do? She blew in my face, she blew in my face, she didn't say anything, but she blew and she went like running almost. She didn't even, like she couldn't say anything, I mean, she didn't have time. I was like. I mean, I didn't... Well, almost a shock like, did that happen to me?
It wouldn't be that you were asleep or sleepwalking. Something like that. Perhaps he was sleepwalking.
Maybe, but no, I mean, I was getting off the train and it was daylight. Then that girl, it's the third time that a very, very striking girl had appeared to me, and she blew in my face and ran away.
The same one. And she'd always done something weird like that to me before too. And she left. I mean, I was thinking, should I chase her? What should I do? But she had already disappeared because there were many, many people.
No. Well, no, not after that... I mean, I kind of looked at other people, as if someone had seen it. Like what do I do? Like is it a crime? I don't know, I think, but it's really weird.
It's a crime, so that's what it is. Well, she hasn't appeared again, and I don't know if there's any listener who can explain that, if it has any meaning, which seems to me to be more likely and here comes my rational mind. It's that I look back and I connect those occasions and I exaggerate them, I exaggerate them in my mind.
It was 10 centimetres away. So imagine the shock. You get off a train. You turn around and there's that face, like from your memories, five centimetres away, in broad daylight.
Well, I don't know if you've had any experience like that.
Well, not really. But I did want to share my sister's, which left us all very thoughtful. My sister was in Bogotá, in our neighbourhood of Carmen, and she took a taxi to visit a friend in another neighbourhood. So she took the taxi by herself. And they went the whole way fine. And the man left her in the taxi. He dropped her off at her friend's house. I'm sorry. And after she got out, the man in the taxi also... She paid him. No, normal. And she was knocking at the friend's house. And the taxi driver got out and went to her and told her that there was another person in the taxi with her who was a man.
She got out of the taxi, she walked towards the door of her friend's house. My brother, well no, he didn't realise she was following her or anything. She was about to go in when the taxi driver was right next to her and he told her, he started to tell her that he had seen a situation that he felt he had to tell her about, that on the way she was being accompanied by a person, an adult man, and he started to describe it to her, as if he was describing it to her.
Inside the taxi. And then he described a gentleman about the age of fifty-three, who had a... A shirt with the Avianca logo on it. Then my sister thought of my dad. So she was like this... What do you mean?
And my dad died in 1993, so she started to tell him that yes, he was there with her in the taxi, but she got out and he didn't get out. Something like that. So he got out of the taxi to tell her what was happening to her. So, my sister was very upset.
And she didn't know that taxi driver
She didn't know him. However, the taxi driver left her the card and told her that if she wanted, they could continue talking because he had visions like that from time to time and that it had happened with her and he left her the phone number.
No, I don't think so. But well, the thing was that my sister was shocked, and then she called him and tried to find out what... Well, what else did she hear or see? So he told her that yes, it was like a conversation telling her that she had to take care of herself. He was always looking out for her, that he was telling my sister Claudia things like that, but the taxi driver heard them but... Well, Claudia didn't, she didn't hear anything. So, afterwards the taxi driver told her that they could have a session, but then there was money and he said that.... That is to say that this had been happening to him since he was a child and with some people. Then I became suspicious and said no, Clau... Yes, exactly. And my theory is that she probably knew him from our story because he took the taxi in the neighbourhood. Well, no, she had never seen him, but he did take the taxi in the neighbourhood, so she didn't... Well, we had never seen that boy. He was a boy. But he probably knows that my dad died a long time ago for some reason. But well, it has a touch of mystery and it could also be that... But there's a lot of coincidence, no, that you take a taxi and that taxi driver knows that your father died all those years ago. Maybe it's things, it's a small neighbourhood, but it's not. We don't know. And that was the end of it and that was that. We warned my sister not to call him again because, yeah....
Well, nothing good can ever come out of that, anyway, and if it's a trick, it's a very cruel trick. It's called manipulation and that's all it can be, really.
It seems to me more likely that he... Well, these people have their ways of manipulation, of finding out these things beforehand, but what's very strange in that case is that he knew all that about her and they didn't know each other.
She had never seen him, but he had seen you, or her. For me it's the most difficult or weird thing, because he, well, he has knowledge of you and no, you don't know him. But you sisters, the Salinas are famous in the neighbourhood.
Well, yes, no, it's not an inexplicable thing, but one thing... Still on the subject, back in Colombia... What's it called with Garcia Marquez? His genre, like...
Magic realism. Well, when I was living in Santa Marta, which you may know, you may not, I lived in Colombia more than ten years ago before I met you, before I met Lis. And I had been living in Santa Marta for six months, which is a tropical city, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Well, I was dating a girl there. Let's not go into that story that Lis loves.
Yes, his ancestors were always from Colombia, beloved land.
And I was fascinated by García Márquez and all that. So, and living there, like in that environment, it's very easy to get into those... Well, not in those beliefs. But, like living in that environment, right?
Then one day it led me to how do you say those people who know how they're supposed to know how to tell one's fortune? Not a fortune teller. But in English we say fortune teller.
Well, we're going to look it up and leave it in the notes. But well, that person was supposed to be able to read or predict the future by reading, she has a very, very strange way of doing it, which is one smokes a cigarette and drops the ashes of the cigarette in one's hand. And then she, I'm going to call her the witch. Another witch, well, she used to say that she could read those ashes and depending on how those ashes fell she could read the future. So to get there or to do that, we had to go into a very humble neighbourhood, a popular neighbourhood as you say, and they lived in a very humble house too and we had to go into a room and there was a girl there, like a beautiful girl, I'd never seen a girl like that. A girl with, like, a tan from the sun. So with skin like all.
Golden, yeah, but with light eyes, grey eyes, it was a spectacular combination. And she had a penetrating, incredible gaze. So what I'm seeing here, she was about eight years old that girl.
Ambience, yes. We went more into the house and even her like a garden. We did it outside. So she, like all mystical, she was like one of the Afro descendants.
Like a bandana, a kind of colourful bandana, and she spoke in very magical terms. So, yeah, I took like a drag of the cigarette and she, like she dropped the ashes on my palm, she started to read and she... But she told it in such a way, like she was so sure of what she was saying, like all of a sudden, like she was reading, like she was reading a book. Like she already knew exactly what to say, I guess because she had done it a thousand times before and she always said more or less the same thing. But with all the atmosphere it was very convincing, how do you say?
If there was a lot of, like... It was very convincing,
Convincing, it was very convincing and I was always sceptical,
What's wrong with my Spanish today? I was always very sceptical, but I have to say I was kind of impressed. Then she started to read me, she told me that I was going to have, I don't remember what she told me, the truth is, but she started to tell me that I was going to have a big project and that I was going to return to Colombia with this big project. So I was always like.
Well, at that moment it was like my desire to go back and be there. So, in a way, in a way she was telling me what she was... She was guessing what I wanted to hear. Do you know what I mean? It seems to me that those witches or those like fortune tellers, they're very good at
That story was very interesting, I like it.
Well Lis, I'll see you in the next episode. I really liked this topic. For the listeners. Let us know if anything interesting or unexplained happened to you. You can write or leave comments just below the podcast on the page or if you have any explanation of that witch that follows me all my life. I'd like to know if it's significant, if it's most likely an invention of mine.
And finally, we have to sell our products. We have a membership called Pro Membership. So what do you get with Pro Membership, Lis? Perhaps you listeners are listening to this podcast on Spotify or iTunes or whatever, and you're thinking, I wish I could read the transcript and understand what they're saying. Maybe I need some exercises, maybe I need a translation and more explanations and notes and to be able to download. Maybe I need a lot more access to all the courses, because you can do it by going to spanishobsessed.com/go-pro, or you go to Spanish Obsessed and there's a button, Go Pro. Well, thank you very much Lis. I'll see you.
