Vacations....

Now it´s june and I´m already done with my studies for this semester. I have delivered my bachelor assignment and I am now close to finish my bachelor degree in latinamerican studies at the University of Oslo. The days are passing by with visits to small villages near to Medellín, biking, swimming and all of these previous activities with the girlfriend. It´s been a great semester where I have had the chance to improve my spanish skills and getting to now a lot of friendly students. Next week I will receive visit from Norway, two siblings are coming to stay here for a little more than three weeks, something that I´m very excited about. We haven´t made all the plans yet, but we are going to Leticia, the border jungle with Brasil and Peru, we´re going to the caribean coast, Medellín and the coffe area. My girlfriend is joining parts of the trip as well, which is very exciting. There has been some issues regarding my living situation here, so now I´m going to move to another house for a week, and then I´ll be staying at a friends house the last weeks of my stay in Colombia. In july I´ll leave to the Netherlands for one week and then I´m going back to Norway to see family & friends again. To all of you paisa students who read this: thanks a lot for making my stay so conmemorable. I´ll apreciate all the time I´ve spent with you guys. I´ll never forget the guaro. I´ll definetely come back to Colombia, probably coming to visit with New Year.

March update

Hey guys. I´m a lazy person, always postponing my plans for updating my blog. I´m very busy with my studies. As mentioned earlier I´m working on my bachelor assignment, which is about colombian history in the second part of the twentieth century. Besides that I´m continuing with salsa and swim classes. I´m still exploring the city by bike as you can see from the pictures here, which are taken at various locations throughout the city. There hasn´t been a lot of travelling besides visiting some smaller villages nearby Medellín, but I have some plans for june & july when I hopefully get visitors from Norway, my brother and sister. I have to mention that I´m starting to confuse english and spanish a bit, as these languages have many words in common, just with slightly differences in their spelling, for example: Contribution - contribución or Información - information, as you can see it´s easy to mix up these words. Well, enough grammar lessons for today. As today is sunday, I´ve had the pleasure of having my first bike ride with my lovely girlfriend - I finally tricked her into joining me to go to "ciclovía" which basically means that they close down several roads & highways for the runners, skaters and bikers to enjoy - I love this system. Here are some pictures of this day as well. I hope everyone is doing great and I would love to hear from all you about what has been going on in your lives. And for those of you who haven´t visited me yet - don´t hesitate - Colombia is an amazing country with an even more amazing people.

New year - new semester

And now we are in the month of februari in the year 2011. It´s been a while since my last update. In the end of november last year my semester ended, after that I had some weeks free before I was going back to Norway for Xmas. In december I decided to travel a little bit, so i took the bus to the coffee area, whith it´s main cities Manizales, Pereira and Armenia. In this time the country was severely affected by what the locals call "winther", which means a lot of rain, which caused many landslides and fluddings in almost all parts of Colombia. I stayed some days in Manizales, where I took a daytrip to the the National Park "Los nevados " where a bus took me up to 4800m to a refugee located on the mountain "Nevado de Ruiz". Here are some pictures of this trip.














After Manizales I went to visit some friends in Cali, after Bogotá and Medellín the third biggest city of the country. I had´nt seen my friends since I got to know them in june in 2010 in Medellín, it was nice to see them again.















After Cali I went back to Medellín, spending some more days with my girlfriend and doing the xmas-shopping before I flew back to Norway to spend xmas with my family. But before I arrived Oslo I spent 7 hours in Amsterdam where I had a lovely visit at my cousin´s. In Norway there were -15 degrees and a lot of snow waiting for me, which could only be truly enjoyed with some skeeing with the boys up in the mountains.















I had a great weekend with friends at a cabin in Valdres, at around 800 meters above seal level. I also spent time with family and friends from the University of Oslo - where I normally study. Since the end of januari I have been back in Medellín for another semester. This spring I will focus on writing my bachelor assignment and hopefully graduate this year with a bachelor in Latin-American studies!!! At last a picture of my friends in the National University of Colombia, where my girlfriend is the second one from the right.