Hi! I’ve decided to rescue my little study abroad blog with an update from my current travels in Colombia! 
For those who don’t know, I am currently working as a reporter at an English language newsite called Colombia Reports, located in Medellin, Colombia. If you’re interested in what I’ve been writing so far, I’ll try to link up some of my articles soon! 
Why is this trip pretty significant? Most of my friends know that I was actually born in Colombia, in the city of Cali, and I was adopted after just a few months of living in a local orphanage. I’ve always wanted to go back, but the timing never seemed right, or I was interested in traveling to other countries for school or vacation. So when I was searching online and came across a journalism internship in one of the most infamous cities in Colombia, I couldn’t pass it up. I graduated from college, and three days later I found myself boarding a plane to Colombia.
Me holding that thing I got after four years in the library, along with the fam.
Medellin:
I arrived in the city at night, alone and confused. The airport had exploded with flights that had been delayed, and so navigating customs, currency exchange, and wrestling myself and my bags into a taxi was no easy feat. Thanks to a young woman that I met in line when her suitcase fell and smashed my foot, I was in a taxi with my first friend in my phone and a rough approximation of the direction in which I needed to go to make it to my apartment.
Medellin wasn’t what I expected it to be. I struggled at first with being alone in a country that I regrettably knew very little about, even though I was born there. I underpaid for groceries because I didn’t hear the cashier correctly. I got lost three blocks from my apartment (Friends, you’re probably not surprised by this). I took the subway the wrong direction and had an old lady help me figure out how to get back (she later took down my email address and told me she would cook me dinner one day at her house, so I guess that ended up ok). I balked at the security officers who randomly pulled out guns in the street. And I almost quit my job after working for one day.
But just as it always happens, things started to turn around.
I felt reassured when I looked at my roommates, a middle-aged Australian couple who had come to learn Spanish and had fell in love with the city. I’d sit outside on our terrace and they’d tell me about the time they lived in a tent for three months in a jungle, or the five years they’d spent in Jakarta, Indonesia with their infant son, either a beer or cigarette clutched in their hands as they sat around in worn, colorful clothing and perused over their spanish homework littering the plastic table.
Or my German roommate from downstairs who told me he had been mugged four times in the city – once violently – but was still teaching German and trying to extend his stay in the city.
Or the young Colombian I met who, even after I unsuccessfully tried to set him up with a museum security worker in an art museum we visited, still invited me to come stay with him in Cali when he went back to visit his family in July.
And my job? It turned out to be pretty cool. I’m working 8-5 everyday and writing three stories a day. My office includes journalists from Colombia, the UK, Denmark, the US, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and more. There’s a nice old man down the street who sells me awesome, cheap pastries and can’t quite remember that I’m not from India. One of my favorite travel bloggers, Flora the Explorer, actually worked here right before I did. I’m glad I stuck around.
Oh, and at least a few times a week the city has been looking like this (World Cup fever). Find me filming at the bar: 
Stay tuned for more updates! (I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time when not at work relaxing in the sun with my books and/or binge-watching Orange is The New Black, not the best blog material. Yesterday I did find a giant cockroach in my room (my roommate killed it…. obviously I wasn’t going to deal with that), and in the middle of the night a torrential downpour soaked all my laundry I had hung to dry, including my towel (no showering today, I’m afraid….). Also the cockroach attracted some ant friends, so I accidentally stepped on that happy congregation outside of my room this morning… Maybe I’ll write about that.)
❤ Duggy
Eye Spy 