Vivir Mi Vida

I promised myself I'd allow a little time to write a blog post after I'd finished my chemistry homework (it's good incentive considering I only remembered yesterday (while procrastinating) that I had a blogspot. So here I am, my dear dear readers. Can't promise regular maintenance of this but other bloggers give me motivation so we will see. Anyway, enough banter, I want to write about an awesome trip I took over the summer.

I'm only 3 months late but before my spring semester ended, I spontaneously decided to go on a volunteering trip (with IVHQ) to Colombia literally a month before my flight was scheduled to take off. I mean, the decision wasn't so spontaneous, quite frankly, because I'd been wanting to go for a while. But the couple seconds of courage I had to muster in order to process my ticket purchase was faster than the speed of light (which is 3.0 x 10^8 m/s ladies and gents (I just had my second chem exam sorry)). I was extremely scared to endeavor on this trip because it was my very first flight alone. I'm not even ashamed to admit I shed a couple of tears too at the JFK airport terminal.

Once I got there though, I was beyond excited. I'd somehow managed to get through Colombian airport customs (hello, no habla espanol) and someone from my volunteering house had come to pick me up (at like 3 in the morning, I felt so bad). That entire first night seemed so surreal. I remember the ride to the El Polo Club neighborhood was such an eye-opener because I somehow imagined the country to be lonesome and desitute. I'd expected poverty to slap me in the face at every corner I turned. It wasn't like that. I saw mountains looming into the dawn, the Transmilenio (bus system) terminals, empty roads. I talked to the girl who picked me up and she spoke to me a lot about the people she works with and the essence of the program.

I spent exactly 2 weeks in Colombia. Volunteering with Emerging Voices opened my eyes to many, many things. Breathing in the sights of Bogota was refreshing. Being able to understand some of the spanish everyone spoke was relieving. I won't lie, not all of it was flowers and rainbows. I actually spent a lot of time there missing home and I wanted to come back as soon as possible. In retrospect, I probably didn't make the most out of my trip there. But the amount that I did see was awesome and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Here are some photos:

Guatavita

Soacha - Florida

Soacha - Florida

El Polo Club

I forgot what this place was called