My fi­nal se­mes­ter had fi­nal­ly ar­ri­ved. It all be­gan in Ja­nu­ary, when I tra­vel­led to Co­lom­bia for the fifth se­mes­ter of my uni­ver­si­ty stu­dies as part of my dou­ble-de­gree pro­gram. Af­ter th­ree months, I re­tur­ned to Ger­ma­ny to spend an­o­ther th­ree months wri­ting my bachelor’s the­sis. Then, in July, I tra­vel­led back to Co­lom­bia for the fi­nal se­mes­ter of my de­gree.

Sin­ce I had al­re­a­dy spent th­ree months li­ving in Bu­ca­ra­man­ga, co­ming back felt com­ple­te­ly na­tu­ral as if no time had pas­sed at all. The same peo­p­le, the same lec­tu­r­ers, and the same fa­mi­li­ar places were all still the­re. Now that I knew Co­lom­bia bet­ter, I did not was­te a sin­gle se­cond. I made the most of every mo­ment I had, spen­ding time with fri­ends, stu­dy­ing and tra­vel­ling. Tog­e­ther with my two Ger­man class­ma­tes, we took ad­van­ta­ge of the many pu­blic ho­li­days that crea­ted long weekends, gi­ving us the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plo­re even more of the coun­try. We vi­si­ted the la­goon that in­spi­red the le­gend of “El Do­ra­do,” ex­plo­red a ca­the­dral built from salt in­si­de a salt mine, and tra­vel­led to Val­le del Co­co­ra, home to the tal­lest palm trees in the world. We also re­tur­ned to Ba­ri­ch­a­ra, one of the places said to have in­spi­red the film “En­can­to,” and vi­si­ted Pá­ra­mo de San­tur­bán, whe­re a lake lies more than 4,000 me­ters abo­ve sea le­vel. Over­all, this ex­ch­an­ge taught me so much. Th­rough my class­ma­tes, lo­cal peo­p­le, and the places we vi­si­ted, I gai­ned a deeper app­re­cia­ti­on for Co­lom­bi­an cul­tu­re, food, and tra­di­ti­ons. I am lea­ving Bu­ca­ra­man­ga with a smi­le, gra­teful for the won­derful time I had and for all the ama­zing peo­p­le I met along the way.