I want to start this off by saying how much of a life-changing experience Colombia was for me, and all the things I will be able to take back with me. I have been home now for about a little over 2 weeks and I do miss Colombia, but I am really happy to be surrounded by my family and friends. I have a new nephew, so I couldn’t wait to see how much he has grown! Being back in America now has just shown me, and I believe the peers that went on the trip with me, how fortunate we are in our everyday life. There are so many negative stereotypes about Colombia or South America as a whole and I will say I wasn’t a part of the negative stereotypes, but I was cautious about being in another country and being somewhere where English wasn’t the native language. Turns out I had nothing to worry about, in my opinion more people there aren’t very materialistic, and I love that quality in people. All of the students and faculty that we met at Universidad del Norte, will forever have a place in my heart. They loved the fact that we could communicate with them, and vice versa because they themselves are taking entry-level English courses, so there was a time when we were able to help them with their English. I love that through this fully immersed program, my Spanish has skyrocketed, and by the end of the trip, I had little to no errors with my speech. I was never afraid to speak Spanish, but I knew some of my words wouldn’t be conjugated correctly, or I didn’t say them in the correct way, but I made sure to take every mistake or mishap that I was corrected about, and studied on how to not have the same errors for the future. There aren’t to many students that I know of, besides the group I went on this trip, with that speak Spanish, but I am so happy at the friends I made on the trip. To this day we are still speaking in Spanish, not at all times, but we love speaking in public, it is our secret code! I feel that before this trip, I was meant to travel and explore the rest of the world! I can say I marked Colombia off that list, I don’t want to say all of South America because there are so many more countries to explore! Having Spanish under my belt has and will continue to open so many more doors that I will walk through in the future, and I know this is just the beginning of a great future ahead!
