Final Project Reflection

My predominant memories from my six weeks in Colombia are impressions. I feel warmth, of the air that hit me in a wall of fragrant moisture every time I went outside; of a dark room with red lights and boisterous reggaeton; of easy embraces, besos in greeting, late night conversations. I remember light, of a mountainside lit up, the vertical cityscape extending the night sky into a steeply descending valley, and leaving the bus carrying me and my peers from the airport for the first time suspended in an unending, magical sea of stars. I used a ridiculous number of cliches in that last sentence, but sometimes in the face of a view like our first impression of Medellín, we lose sight of creativity and fall back on those old axioms, because they communicate the images so well. 

The magic continued through my tenure in Medellín, connecting first with my new colleagues at Casa Mosaiko in the heart of Laureles, a verdant and unpretentious community. Little shops and bars tempted a pedestrian on every corner, with birds-of-paradise and other tropical flora reaching cheerily from street side gardens to brush our legs. Coffee shops were ubiquitous, and were the backdrop of my working life; open late and boasting fast wifi, many of us stayed up well after dark, still sweating lightly in the humid, cloying air characteristic of the city of eternal spring. 

August in Medellín is a sight to behold: beyond even the normal abundance of greenery found in the tropics, the Fería de Flores is a two week long celebration of those most beautiful of plants, and the city rises to the occasion with all the passion of a maracuyá. Street lights and window sills found themselves adorned with garb that turn a rainbow green with envy, and every surface capable of holding a flower did. Concerts popped up on unsuspecting streets, blocking the flow of traffic, people flooding from the bars, workplaces, and universities to bathe in song and aguardiente. Laureles and El Poblado were the hubs of this festival, and you could scarcely walk two steps during those two weeks without stumbling over some event or other. 

The people I met over the weeks spent in a frenzy of discovery, drowning in lilting paisa accents and thrills of everything sparkling new, are some truly special souls. Sharing experiences like this in your youth with people in the same stage of life forms bonds distinct from any I’ve experienced before. These people know me in a different context than my friends and family from Canada: they saw and knew me in the throes of uncertainty and deep unfamiliarity. As confident as a person can be in environments they know well, that bravado often falls by the wayside to some extent in the face of new experiences.  I will cherish every connection I made and every conversation I had, because I truly feel as though I learned something from every person I met this past summer. These people know me stripped of the shell of routine and faced with the only option being discovery, and I know them in the same way. These are relationships that exist in the time and space of those six weeks, and are unduplicatable.