Personal update:

2 ½ weeks ago I landed in the Capital of Colombia –Bogota. For the past weeks I’ve been enjoying my free time a lot. Here a small bulletpoint summary:

- First thing that surprised me again when I arrived was the incredible friendliness here in Colombia as well as the formal way of speaking. It took me some days to get used to both but slowly I’m getting the hang of it.

- Celebrating one year with my partner in crime, my better half, my colombian love forever. That night I thought we would just go to eat some Sushi to have some quality time. But after some fast stop at the supermarket we arrived at the restaurant and I bursted in tears as his mother ans sister secretly decorated our table with the cutes decoration ever. There couldn't have been a better way to celebrate one very special year with you my love. 

I can't thank you enough for all you do. Te amo <3

Ajiaco - traditional colombian soup

- On a lovely and first rainy tuesday I was invited to eat lunch at my lovely friend, Lina's place. Later we were going for a coffee in the center of Bogota and at the same moment receiving some crucial Bogota survival tips. We went to a very special coffee place - a Barista school. Therefore we could even choose the figures for our lattes.

Lina chose the elephant, I chose a swan

- Enjoying a weekend in the “tierra caliente” with Jorge’s family to enjoy the “Ferias y Fiestas” of San Antonio

à Three days of concerts in the small village at night including a wonderful firework, while resting the next day in the hammock and playing different typical Colombian games, like Tejo or Guayavita

every time we are here it feel like we're in a coffee advertisement...

Yes, it's real wild orchids

- When coming from the farm we are almost always able to take some self-grown fruits with us like Bananas, Mango or Papaya. This time we took a Papaya that was not completely ripe yet. After some days it was ripe to eat and I had a wonderful surprise that day – it didn’t have any seeds and was the best Papaya I’ve eaten so far

All Bogota is preparing for the visit of Pope Fransiscus

- Being happy about the really nice weather here in Bogota

- Still getting used to the shortage of oxygen due to the height of 2600m above sea level

-Trying to not “give too much Papaya” – which is a saying here of not showing what you own to prevent theft. Sadly here I really peak out of the group due to my physical appearance. People here are rather dark haired and have a very nice tanned (“caramel”) skin. With my blond hair, “clear” eyes and light skin I can be identified as “Gringa” from far. 

à “Gringo” Is actually a name for people from the US, anyways many use it for all kind of foreign looking individuals. This title makes one a seemingly easy target.

-Practicing my “angry face” to prevent any robbery due to my appearance

-Practicing my way to work in crazy Bogota traffic

-Checking out the bogotanian public transport system “transmilenio” and SiTP on my own as well as in company of my love

à  Sadly it wasn’t possible yet to install an underground Metro in Bogota. Therefore also the “Transmilenio” is a bus system functioning on different streets which makes it a lot faster than normal traffic in rush hour “Hora pico”

- Next to these two forms of public transport there is a rather “unofficial” way of transport which is simply called “bus”

- Celebrating two birthdays – Jorge’s nephew and mom had their birthday last weekend

Let me introduce a colombian beauty: Camila

- Going to a Comedy night where I barely understood the jokes, but anyways I saw my lovely friend Camila who I got to know during my exchange in Chile and in the breaks they played some “Reaggeton” which made us spending the breaks dancing

Post hairdresser face :)

- Enjoyed a pedicure as well as a Manicure

- On my second day here I went to the hairdresser and got a well-deserved new haircut as well as new colour as I hadn’t cut my hair since Chile

- Day by day I enjoy typical Colombian food at home as well as in the streets of Bogota. Especially the amazing fruits conquered my heart. Did I already tell you that Colombia has an incredible variety of fruits to offer? Many are rather consumed in juices than in raw from. There are still a lot of fruits I haven’t tried but probably I’ll make one whole post about Colombian food as it would exceed this one

...and yes egg is part of each breakfast here 

Yes, soup is a normal breakfast here...

Guayava (pink), Granadilla (orange) and a coffee are a perfect snack. Coffee here is always with milk.

- This Friday I will start my internship and therefore finally also get to know the work atmosphere as well as working culture

Let me know if there are special things you would like to see on this blog as well as if you have suggestions how to improve it.

Muchos Besos,

Leonie

Colombia - Where is that actually? Do they have seasons there?

There are have been some confusions about the country I am living in now. Are there seasons in Colombia? Why isn't it warm in Bogotá? Do they sell liquid milk there? Isn’t it super dangerous living in Colombia?

So to clear up at least some questions for now I'd like to give you a brief overview over the wonderful country I can call home for the next few months.

The Colombian flag

One first thing – many people tend to confuse the country ColOmbia with the state in the US that is called ColUmbia. Hereby you could offend Colombians so you’re welcome ;)

Key facts

Population:

48.278 mio (in 2015)

Size:

2.129.748 m2  - numbers are often hard to imagine therefore a map of how big Colombia is in comparison to Central Europe.

Location:

Colombia is located in the northern east of South America. Colombia has shared boarders with Ecuador, Peru, Brazil Venezuela and Panama. Here I have to mention that the border to Panama is actually not crossable due to the rain forest. The border to Venezuela currently is a place not to be close to, due to complications in Venezuela. In the South of Colombia there is a huge part dominated by the rainforest. Besides Land borders Colombia is also gifted with two big coasts. One being the Pacific Ocean where the sea is rather rough and cold. And on the other hand the Caribbean Sea with nice warm climate and water as I could already experience during our trip to Cartagena. 

As Colombia is located very close to the Equator, the climate as well as the day and night times do not change a lot throughout the year. These facts make it a very special climate for someone like me, coming from Central Europe.

Capital:

Bogotá (also my current home), with currently 8,081mio inhabitants, which makes it about 2.6 times bigger as Berlin

Climate:

Therefore we can dig right into Colombian climate. For all of you who love heat and humidity Colombia is the paradise (like for me). As mentioned Colombia is dominated by equatorial climate. So to mean that over the year there is not such defined seasons as we are used to in Central Europe.

Anyhow different climates can be found through out Colombia. 

To understand this a better I found two nice graphs in Wikipedia:

(by clicking on the pic. you can enlarge it)

In the right figure you can see that almost all of Colombia is dominated by rainforest- and tropical climate (blue). Only in the Mountain area (also to be found in the physical map above) has rather "cold climate".

Bogotá

lies on around 2600m above sea level and is therefore situated in one of the green parts in both graphs. Here we are situated in a so called “Cold climate altitudinal zone”. For now the weather varied pretty much between 10°-20°. Twenty degrees can easily feel like 25° due to the strength of the sun. On other days (or hours) when it rains, the 16° degrees can feel rather like 8°.

The first rule in Bogotá is to dress in layers (alias the onion look – “Zwiebellook”), wear sunscreen (UV waves here in South Amerika are a lot stronger than my European skin is used to) and always have an umbrella in your pocket. And yes it is really like that - The one day I didn’t carry my umbrella with me of course it rained.

For Bogotanos (how they call themselves) it is very common to go to the “tierra caliente” (hot lands) for long weekends or holidays. Just around one hour from Bogotá you can find nice places to stay in more tropical areas with for example 1400m above sea level and steady 25 degrees during the day and high humidity.  (Last weekend we did such a trip – more about that in my next post)

Time zone 

Colombia is situated in the UTC -5 time zone. Therefore for all my friends in Central Europe I’m 7 hours behind you. Therefore when you get up it’s the middle of the night for me and when I get up you already lived half of your day.

Language
The official language is Spanish, though there are more than 80 other languages and dialects recognized in the country, belonging to various indigenous peoples. In the San Andrés and Providence Islands, English is also an official language. Anyhow when coming here I'd strongly advise to speak at least basic Spanish as most people do not speak English. This can come in handy for all who want to come here to learn Spanish. Here they say "o aprendes o aprendes" - either you learn or your learn :D

Further Colombian Spanish is considered one of the best in the world due to their "singing" tonation as well as (more or less) clear pronounciation. From my own experiece I can tell that Colombians are a lot easier to understand than Chileans but still Spanish has such a variety of synonimes that there is still a lot to learn for me.

Currency

At the moment the Euro is a bit stronger than it was in January and therefore at the moment 1€ is worth ~3400 Colombian Pesos (COP; symbol Col$). Notes are in denominations of Col$50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,000 and 1,000 – therefore the highest bill (50,000COP) here in Colombia is worth around 14€.

Life here in Colombia is especially cheap when it comes to (local) food like vegetables, fruits, bread, rice etc. Also most of the services (beauty treatments, tailoring etc.) have a a lot lower in price than in central Europe. On the other hand drugstore items are only available from the big brands which makes these goods a lot more expensive. 

Electricity

Mostly 110 volts AC, 60Hz and American-style two-pin plugs are used here in Colombia, which makes it rather difficult to charge my computer fast or to make my blender go fast. I know there are plugs that do not only convert the plug form but also convert the voltage upwards, but until now I haven’t found one yet. Anyways, switching to lower volts is not as bad as the other way around. Luckily, I bought a hair dryer in Germany that is especially for travel usage and therefore has a nice small switch to work as well with lower and higher voltages.

For those of you who would like to know even a bit more about Colombia here is a very nice video that explains the country in a fast but fun manner: 
https://www.facebook.com/aboutcolombia/videos/1666239953643733/

Muchos Besos,

Leonie

Lovely people and an extra security check

After a week of goodbyes or better to say see you soon’s the day of my trip across the ocean arrived. Luckily my flight departure was during mid day, which made it more relaxed to get to the airport on time.  

When trying to check in my luggage I had some small troubles, with which a wonderful lady from Lufthansa helped me out and in the end my bag was safely checked in and already made its way to the plane. As a small goodbye I enjoyed one last Latte Macchiato and one more delicious French chocolate bread in company of my aunt and uncle. And on time, we all went to the security check-in so I could be at my gate on time.  That's what we thought .... 

 By planning with more than half an hour to come to the gate - which now looking back was surely not enough - to arrived there relaxed. As I had decided earlier, I had packed most of the electronics into my hand luggage just to be sure it would arrive safe with me in Colombia. What I didn’t know was that all the electronics (including a motor for a mixer, hair dryer, charging cables, laptop etc.) makes you look pretty suspicious to security people. Therefore a bomb test was made with my bags and all electronics, just to be sure I wouldn’t transport any explosives to the plane.
While on one hand being happy that they will check apparently really in detail but on the other hand time was running and as I had to get out all the things I had carefully packed the night before.
Slowly but steady the little stress Leonie was striking in an alarm. Anyhow my time traveling, as well as my time in Chile and also thanks to my Latino love I tried to keep calm and just hurry once I got all that stuff to be packed again. With just having another 10 minutes to make it to gate 25 – which of course was the last one of them all – I didn’t manage to pack my backpack in the same affine manner as I had before. Therefore the picture was this: A young 24 year old hurrying to her gate with just another 5 minutes to make it to the boarding - carrying various single bags because somehow all the things didn’t fit in anywhere anymore. Luckily, in the end, I made it to the gate 3 minutes later than my ticket said but in this case - I was no first or business class traveler - it was fine as therefore anyways I was one of the last to get on the plane. 
When I finally made it into the plane I got slightly disappointed by my middle seat in the row in the middle as I thought I had saved a window seat for myself. But as god wanted I got asked to change seats so a mother could sit together with her son. Which meant for me sitting in the row right behind the business class including a lot of leg space (not that I need that haha) and some fancy way of in seat entertainment that is stored in the armchairs. 



Best Airplane food I've ever had

All in all I was helped my overall lovely people (even though German border security was obviously a bit less lovely) and I am surviving the flight at hour 6 of 12 better than expected. Let’s see what the next 6 hours have for me. After two movies, this blogpost and a very good chicken with spinach and potatoes I will try to sleep just a bit in the hope that they wake me for some kind of small snack before we arrive (otherwise I'll probably arrive to Bogotá starving xD).  


Thanks to the lovely ladies behind me it was sadly not possible to really sleep but rather rest as in the two hours when I tried to sleep they decided to go to the bathroom like every half an hour. Anyhow like that I didn’t miss the next snack time including tea and coffee. When I started another movie (this time beauty and the beast) an unexpected other meal (this time dinner) was brought to us - Yayyyy fooooodddd :) At this point I really have to make a shoutout to Lufthansa and Frankfurt airport as both meals were extremely delicious. 

After another one and a half hour we finally arrived in Bogotá. After landing the migration worked out faster than expected (more or less 30 minutes) as well as the girl checking my passport was really nice. Then I arrived in the hall to pick up my bag which arrived instantly when I found the right place to pick it up. In the airport of Bogotá there is a huge glass wall when you pick up your luggage so Jorge’s mother was already waving to me in excitement.  


When the last check up of my bag was done I could finally hug my love again as well as his lovely family. They even made a sign in my favourite colour saying “Bienvenido” and “Willkommen in Kolumbien mein Schatz”  

Couldn't be happier than by your side <3

Gracias también a la familia de Jorge que esta recibiendome tan cariñoso y con tanto corazón. Los quiero muchisimo <3

All in all I still have to process many things that are different also in a good way. More in detail about that the next time. For now I’m alive, happy and looking forward to start my internship soon. 

At this point one big shoutout to my family and friends supporting me on this. Thank you so much for everything. I’m infinitely grateful for all your support.  

Muchos besos, 

Leonie