"Eastern" update

 Since last time, there have been a lot of things going on. Here are som words to sum up the last weeks: girlfriend, studies (including one week of strike at the uni), biking, salsa, swimming, socialising and wedding planning.

The builidings were physically blocked during the strike

Today I will talk about cycling in Medellín. A project that startet up in 2010, now attracts a group of 500 or more cyclists every wednesday night in the Carlos E. Restrepo neighbourhood, where we start on a different route throughout the city every week, were the purpose is to stimulate to the use of the bike instead of other means of transport which contaminate, suchs as cars and motorbikes. Yesterday, wednesday, it was a special night, where we reminded the cyclists who tragically had lost their life in traffic. For every place where anyone had deceased, a white angel with a bicycle was painted on the tarmac.  Unfortuantely I did´nt bring any camera. For more information on this project, visit this webpage. Here are some photos from several excursions (sorry for the poor quality).

Update: here is the article from El Colombiano from the night of the conmemoration (in Spansih): El Colombiano: Ciclistas pintaron angelitos

 

Here are som other pictures of things that I have been doing lately.

A poster on whales and hunting

The Iguana

Iguana 2

Road safety

A Finca

Santo Domingo, Medellín

Santo Domingo church

Uni excursion in Santo Domingo

The "metrocable" for public transport

Medellín seen from Santo Domingo

"Dutch" bakery in Bogotá

Unfortunately a common sight in the city

The police have their own airplanes

The uni - faculty of architecture

New year, new exchange in Medellin

Hi everyone.

Like earlier, this blog will be written in English, for obvious reasons. After my stay in Medellin between 2010 and 2011, I went back to Norway to finish my bachelor degree in arts. Since august 2012 I have been busy with my master´s degree in latin-american studies, and that´s why I´m now back in Medellin for another semester. I have now been here for three weeks, time which I have spent on working, doing paperwork, spending time with the girlfriend and looking for a place to stay. I can tell you that I´m renting a room close to the university, where there are four other men living as well, one of them has a hairdresser business here as well. Now I have my second week at uni, and I´m working on sorting out what I´m gonna study for the next months. It looks like that I´m going to take subjects within history and urban and regional studies. I have signed up for swimming classes (butterfly) and will probably start all over again with salsa classes. I have also been given back my bike which a friend of mine was so kindly to store for me since I studied here for two years ago, so things are working out. It´s usually quite sunny here, with 20-25 degrees celsius, but lately it has been raining quite a lot. When it rains, it really gets wet.... The rain is tropical and is called for "aguacero" in Spanish. The equivalent in English would be "it´s raining cats and dogs". Since last time there have been quite some changes in the city, They have extended the metro system, and there are new buildings popping up everywhere in town. This time there are also more foreigners at the uni. I think we actually are four Norwegians there this semester. At least I will have some people with whom to celebrate the Norwegian national day. Enough said. Pictures will be uploaded when they are taken.

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.

A long awaited update...

Hello everyone, as you can see from my scarce updates, it´s been over 2 months since my last update - I´m terribly sorry for this. Today, friday I´m home, have gotten sick in the last days, just as this week is filled with cultural events at the university, which means there has´nt beeen classes in the last few days. I´m now living in Robledo, another area of Medellín, just 5 minutes from uni in bicycle, which suits me quite well, especially on tuesdays, when I have lessons at 7 o´clock in the morning.

Here is a short summary of the last 2 months:
In the end of july I finished my spanish course in Poblado, and after that I went to Bogotá to sort out a visa and a identity card, and of course I also went to visit the two other norwegian students and other friends that I got to know in Medellín. The climate was quite from that of Medellín, but it was nice to see the capital again and I met a lot of good people. For the visa I went to the foreign affairs ministry, it took me surprisingly just 3,5 hours to get my visa. After around 5 days I was ready to get back to my town and the warm climate. I also had time to visit the campus of the National University in the capital, which was much bigger than the one in Medellin, whith around 25000 students, compared to the 10000 ones here. Funny enough, I got to meet a friend from my primary school in Norway, had´nt seen him in 8 years, it´s funny how you meet people again at different places.































After coming back to Medellin I had some days of to enjoy the local flowerfestival before the uni startet on the 2nd of august. The same week I was so lucky to get visit from Europe -my mom from Norway and my aunt from Holland - they´ve never been to Latin-America before and didn´t know any spanish - I really respect them for coming this far. They stayed for a little week before they continued to the coast and the capital before returning again in the end of august for a second time. We got some time to visit some small villages situated around Medellin.














Otherwise, I´ve been studying a lot, working with the spanish language and try to have the weekends for smaller excursions and for bikeriding. I have gotten the pleasure to get to know many wonderful people at the university, especially at the faculty of history, where I spend most of my time considering that I´m taking 3 history courses, two about Colombia and one about Latin-America. In total I have 4 courses, the last one about Colombia and post independence in the 19th century. Ofcourse I have to add a picture of my bicycle:

Otherwise I have thinking about staying here for another semester, so I hope that it would be possible to extend my exchange and being able to write my bachelor assignment down here. Anyway I will be home for xmas in Norway, so don´t worry guys, I´ll see you in december / januari. Well, enough writing, don´t want to bore you. Will write again soon. Last picture here is of my friends and me, the one is my neighbour and the other lives close by.