I have, by far, never experienced anything near my time in Colombia. It's something I simply could not ever forget and an experience I will cherish for time to come. Going off to a part of the world which I had never had the privilege to explore, in itself, was exciting enough for me – in fact a massive motivation for my application came from this – but to be able to accomplish what we did there in such a short amount of time, simply adds to the feeling of accomplishment which I got from this trip.

Initially, and quite understandably I think, I was relatively nervous and excited to begin this trip. It was quite a daunting idea that I would be going into this without much knowledge of the country, and although I felt my past experiences had prepared me to experience the urban Colombian environment, I was also aware that as much as I felt I knew about Colombia, it would not be what I expected in many ways. For one, I did not know that the Spanish was relatively different to the one I had learnt in the past – I was ready to employ my skills only to find myself repeatedly learning new idioms specific to the country (which I made sure to note down). There was also the expectation that we would find ourselves confined to exploring Medellin and its surrounding solely under the supervision of _makesense, but I was glad to discover that we were deemed responsible enough and that the city was seen as safe enough for us to be able to explore at our will – leading to multiple of the best experiences I had while there. Naturally, I did not experience these things alone, and although I was slightly anxious to have to meet a myriad of new people and scholars that may not have much in common with me, I was relieved to be pushed out of that comfort zone and meet so many great friends on this trip – all through Laidlaw, _makesense, and the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana.

Which leads me onto my next point about the working environment we were presented with. Getting there I had expected a really professional approach to the projects we were to undertake. Naturally, I am not saying that the work ethic was unserious in any sense, but the fact we were given the opportunity to work through the UPB campus along with their staff and students made everything more comfortable and familiar. We were warmly welcomed into the community, despite being there for only 6 weeks (which really speaks to the friendly and welcoming culture of Medellin), and it almost felt as though we were part of the student body for the time being. Forging relationships with the student-volunteers and getting to create our own unique routines through the institutions was quite special. It must also be said that, despite my group specifically struggling to make the best use of our volunteers (for reasons I will elaborate on later), we were still able to get to know those willing to work with us and with other groups, therefore coming out of the trip with an even greater feeling of accomplishment.

In terms of project accomplishment, I can confidently say that this is the time where I have felt the most satisfaction out of a piece of work I've participated on. The redesigned website we built for Sueños y Huellas not only looked good to us, but they themselves were absolutely relieved to have an online presence that represented the wonderful work they do in Medellin. I was specifically in charge of the translation team, which was composed of myself and other student-volunteers who had any experience speaking French or English. Given I am fluent in both and understand Spanish decently well, we were able to combine our skills in order to create a comprehensive translation of the website's content into two extra languages. They did initially have an English page, however, it did not comprise of all the same content which the main Spanish page did – with our work we can now ensure that visitors to the site will be able to get all the information they need if they are at least conversational in either Spanish, English, or French. Evidently, this was not the only aspect of our project, thanks to both Ella Buckley and Jenna Kaplan whom I worked with, we were able to create new content (both written and visual), kickstart a publicity campaign online and in Colombia, and revamp the design of the website to make it look sleeker and easier to navigate – a massive thanks goes out to them once again. However, as aforementioned, we lacked in volunteer engagement. Naturally, I am not placing blame on the volunteers themselves, but I do understand that the nature of our project made it much harder to harbour participation. The online nature of our work made it harder to communicate and coordinate our work, but it also prevented us from getting much one on one time with the volunteers, certainly inhibiting us from motivating them as much as we could have. Fortunately, we still were able to pull quite a bit of productivity from them and it would not have been possible without their help.

Evidently, my time in Colombia did not only comprise of work. We had the opportunity to explore the city, whether that be alone, with volunteers, or with the many expeditions organised by _makesense, and I was extremely happy to get that opportunity. Getting to attend the other groups' events and experience different aspects of this culturally rich city was the exact thing I was looking to get out of this trip. I can confidently say that I have come out of this LiA with a greater understanding of our world, of Colombia, of others, and of myself.