I spent 4 weeks studying spanish at EAFIT university in group lessons (4 hours per day in class and then lots of homework) which covered levels 1 and 2. It was good learning the basics as a group and I liked the fact we were following a well-defined syllabus. However I found it slow going in the group environment even with 4 hours of class every day. My main problem was that I wasn't spending very much time speaking in class and felt that i could spend the time more productively. Level 3 was gearing up to be an even bigger class and after a lot of indecision I finally decided to drop out of university and change my learning to have 1-on-1 lessons in a private school called ABC Spanish (thought i'd give them a plug as they were so good!). This worked really well for me. I found I was speaking during the whole class and all the vocabulary was geared towards me (rather than using text book examples). I was learning much more with less hours compared to the university course. I still have my student card so was regularly back there to use the facilities for free which worked out well! EAFIT was still a great experience and i loved being back on a university campus again! Through the university I met a great group of friends, both extranjeros (foreigners) as well as colombians who I spent a lot of time with and had a lot of fun. Lots of barbecues, karaoke, day trips, football matches, picnics, beer pong competitions, finca visits as well as big nights out! Its been awesome.
I have now had 3 months of spanish class and pretty much covered everything. That by no means I am any good – I only use and have memorised a fraction of what I have been taught so i now need to put a lot of effort into revision and practice! I use a lot of present tense... some future and a bit of past. The subjunctive tense I find very hard at the moment to build into my conversation. It was very easy to speak spanish in class, but then outside class very easy to spend the rest of the day speaking english with my friends. Progress has therefore been slower than I would have liked but I am going to keep at it!!I stayed with my colombian family (see last post) for 2 months in total. They really looked after me and did everything for me so I was very spoilt. It was a great experience which has definitely helped me to pick up some everyday phrases and vocabulary as well as sampling home-cooked colombian cuisine! There were many moments where it was very hard to communicate. We would get stuck on some phrases and then spend half an hour jointly flicking through a spanish-english dictionary to work out what each other were saying. It was a hard decision and very sad to leave but after a while I was craving my independence. For the last month I moved into my own apartment which gave me the opportunity to buy food / cook for myself, have people over for drinks.. oh and watch tv which was a good spanish learning experience.
The other big news since the last update is that I have a girlfriend! Her name is Daniela and we met at the university salsa dancing class where she became my friend and conversation partner before becoming my girlfriend!! She is studying business at the university, speaks good english and is a lot of fun. She has introduced me to a lot of her family and friends while I have been staying in Medellin who have all been very kind and welcoming. Her immediate family do not speak english so I have had several interesting family meals with them where I try my best spanglish on them in an effort to make a good impression... usually ending in me misinterpreting questions and replying completely off-topic!
Dani and I had a mini break to Bogota during Semana Santa (Holy / Easter week). Things generally grind to a halt in Colombia during this week as most people have several days holiday. Bogota was fun and during the few days we were there we really packed it in seeing all the major touristy sights. I didn't fall in love with Bogota – its just too damn big and the climate is not as good as Medellin.
Since the trip to Bogota, my mate Jeremy and I spent a long weekend in Manizales which is about a 4 hour drive from Medellin. The drive is very picturesque through the colombian hills and countryside. Manizales is a city surrounded by lush countryside and a big national park. We had a day trip to 'Los Nevados'(the national park) where we climbed upto a height of 5,125 metres (starting a few hundred metres below that). It was the highest I have been and the altitude made walking even 20m extremely hard without stopping for a breather (maybe also because i'm not fit at the moment !!). At the top there was snow which wasn't something I had expected on experiencing in Colombia !! 
On the way home we had a much needed soak in the local volcanic spas. Manizales is also in the zona cafeteria ('coffee region') where much of Colombia's coffee is produced, so we also made a trip to a coffee farm outside of the city to see how coffee is grown and farmed, before tasting a freshly roasted cuppa. Manizales nights ended up being very boozy. The first night we settled into a 'giraffe' basically 4 litre towers of beer that sit on your table from which you can pour your own beers from. The hostel we were staying in was brand new and so on Saturday night was the first night the bar was open.
Jeremy and I settled in there where we met a new amigo – 'Ron de Caldas' (the local rum) and found out that jointly drinking the majority of 2 x 750ml bottles of the stuff ended up resulting in a messy night !! A group of colombians strayed into the bar and into gringo territory - so we pounced on the opportunity to have some new conversation partners (god knows what we said !!). On the last night we went to what seemed like the only bar open that Sunday night thinking we would have a quiet night. Next thing we know we are working our way through another giraffe. A random bunch of young colombians had shown interest in us - weird looking foreigners. Then soon after they are helping themselves to our giraffe, snorting cocaine in front of us and offering us group sex!!! Not a normal sunday night. (no we didn't indulge and no this is by far not the norm in Colombia!!)Other news is that the President of Colombia (Uribe) visited the university. Dani managed to blag me and Jeremy a seat in the auditorium to see the big man himself in the flesh. It was really hard to understand anything of his speech but was an interesting experience all the same to see the man himself. Afterwards there was free wine and nibbles so as students we made the most of that!! I love being a student again!
I have had some issues recently with my colombian visa. I was forced by the university to get a student visa which ended up only being granted for 6 weeks - the same validity as my original tourist visa. I didn't know at the time but when the student visa was granted, it implicitly cancelled my tourist visa. This caused a lot of confusion when I went to the government office to extend my visa. The first time I successfully managed to extend my tourist visa for a month (even though at that time it wasn't valid?!?!) but then the next month it became evident I had a problem. The conversation initially started off very bad 'you need to leave the country immediately' was what I interpreted from their spanish. After a bit of Tibbitts charm and some legendary Tibbitts spanglish I had a new stamp in my passport for another months stay, but told that would be my last and I will definitely need to leave the country before that expires. This really messed with my plans which had been to spend a few more weeks in Medellin and then a further month exploring the caribbean coast, but not impossible to work around.
I finally left Medellin after 4 months on a flight to Quito (Ecuador), with a quick pitstop in Bogota. I left a few days before the elections on the 30th May. I had a few days left on my visa when i left but I thought it would be a good time to escape the country for a few weeks during the election period. President Uribe has been in power for 2 terms and is constitutionally not allowed to stand for a third. Therefore after a long period of stability the country faces a change of government which could be potentially unsettling.
It was really sad and hard for me to leave Medellin after staying there for so long, but made easier by the fact i would be returning in a few weeks. I still want to see the north coast of Colombia so after 3 weeks in Ecuador I am going to be returning to Medellin and then onto the north coast. Hopefully I will get a new visa stamp in the process!
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