Christmas in Colombia is a BIG deal. There are weeks of events and celebrations running up to the big day. Shopping centres and the apartment complex where I live got started with decorations soon after halloween and they have gone all out! 

For the whole month of December there is a fair opposite Cosmocentro shopping centre on Quinta and we went right before Christmas. It is located right next to Siloé, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cali, which you can see in the background on the mountain and this year all of the houses hung blue lights so it was really pretty. I was quite scared that the rides were a bit dodgy and feared for my life a little, but it ended up being fine and really fun!

I've got to say that my least favourite thing is the noise level, there is almost always extremely loud music playing even in residential areas in the day (in my complex at least!) or late at night and it seems the country goes mad for it in December. On the 12th December for example, every year loads of people where I live sit around in the stair-wells drinking and singing at the top of their voice all evening until midnight and then stay up and at 5am walk around the complex singing once more. Again on the 23rd and 24th unbelievable noise levels at 12-2am involving loud bangs of gunpowder explosions (pólvora) making you feel like you're in the middle of a war. Not sure I understand the attraction of not sleeping and keeping everyone else awake if I'm honest! I just have to keep repeating my mantra 'cultural differences, cultural differences!'

On the 7th December it was the día de las Velitas (little candles) which is where families go to an open space with candles and sit around them for the evening. We went to a park next to our complex to check it out and it was really nice apart from that one of the apartments overlooking it caught fire due to the excess of decorations and candles that people leave on 24/7 even if they are out - scary! I've got to be honest, I wasn't really feeling Christmassy but I was appreciating the beautiful decorations!

Alumbrados: This is a light festival and I imagine it comes from the Latin for to light or something since in French allumer is to light/turn on a light. Cali has a new boulevard built along the Rio Cali and I think it is the prettiest area of Cali. It has a beautiful gothic church that is really well maintained and in the run up to Christmas they put on lights and light shows and the whole city flocks there every evening. We went on Friday 12th and it was really beautiful, especially the light show projection on the church. However, it was incredibly busy and there were a few incidences requiring police attention. Here are some photos and I will also embed a couple of videos I took of the light show (click to enlarge them).

An authentic Colombian Christmas experience: Every night for the nine nights (novenas) leading up to Christmas, families and friends meet up to read scriptures, sing religious songs and then eat and drink. We were invited by a friend to the novenas. My boyfriend’s family are not religious (shh, don't tell anyone) and not very traditionally Colombian so I was grateful to see the tradition in all its glory. 

Even before entering the flat we were blinded by lights and glitter. But once inside, it was bigger and better than anything I could have imagined. Never have I seen so many Christmas decorations outside of a decorations shop. It was as if the flat was no longer meant to be lived in but was some sort of Christmas museum. I kid you not, every square inch of the relatively large flat was filled with religious figurines, talking reindeer or miniature Father Christmases. There was even a full sized inflatable snowman, two 'rivers' with real water flowing through the enormous (4m x 4m) nativity scene and a talking doll of the divisive ex-president Uribe, which was … awkward, to say the least. It seems there is some competition within Colombian households for the most extravagant decorations, especially the nativity scenes which take on a life of their own. 

After being made to step into the nativity scene and hold hands for photos (amazing), we went to a neighbour’s flat for the official novenas. It was an extremely hot night so I awkwardly stood there trying not to sweat on anyone and hoping no-one would notice I was not singing along or doing the 'sign of the cross' movements with my hands. I didn't want my atheism to stand out too much! I had already learnt my lesson with that three years ago when teaching English in a university here, when the students found out I did not believe in God they were mortified. Oops.

When that was finished, we were given a tour of the shiny modern flat and the hostess told me that I definitely looked imported, what a line! We then ate natilla (see below) and buñuelos (fried dough balls) and avena (oat drink) with whiskey and made a swift escape. 

I definitely appreciate the effort they go through and the community feel of it all, it's an experience I will never forget. Honestly, I don’t think words can describe what I saw last night but I hope that these photos speak for themselves!

Christmas food: Colombians are notoriously sweet-toothed and at Christmas, this love is multiplied throughout December! They have a lot of Christmas biscuits here called Navideňas that come in a variety of flavours and often in very English-looking tins depicting snowy scenes or red English front doors with wreaths on them. In spite of being half a world away both physically and in terms of weather, Christmas in the South tends to still be associated with imagery from the North. Another biggie in this region is Natilla which is a flan/custard type dessert with, you guessed it, arequipe (thick caramel-type spread) flavour or sometimes coconut. I am not a huge fan as they also put a load of cinnamon in it, unfortunately for me! Another favourite is Panettone which originates from Italy and is a large fruity bread. 

In this region, in addition to the love of arequipe, they have similar sorts of sweet spreads that are sometimes just more cooked arequipe (manjarblanco), or mixed with a tiny bit of rice and are called pegado (stuck) or cortado (cut), depending on which point of cooking it is taken out and always just eaten on its own with a spoon. They come in these little bowls which are actually the shell of the mate fruit.

As you can see, most of the typical Christmassy food is sugar-based and the main meal ended up being so too (see below).

The big day: In most of Latin America, unlike the Western world, Christmas is actually celebrated on the 24th of December and the normal day goes as such: people often still work on the 24th but may have the afternoon off, then at around 7 family starts arriving and then you try to stay up as late as possible with the aim of eating at around 11pm and opening the presents at midnight. Then there are a couple of hours of madness in the street with explosions and music and then off to bed. It's quite a compact celebration given the immense run up to the occasion and, since we hardly got any sleep the night before due to the noise levels, staying up that late was very difficult and we were exhausted. 

We had a normal day (when I actually was sorting out going to Panama to get my work visa) and in the evening my boyfriend and I made some little mushroom and cheese bites for the apéritif and we cracked open some Brut that I bought his parents. We listened to Colombian Christmas music all evening which, to me, just sounds like regular salsa unfortunately! Then we waited as long as we could before eating at around 10 and we had the following typical Colombian Christmas dinner: cold ham in a sweet sauce, tinned peaches and glacé cherries, cold mashed potato, pea and carrot salad and salad with raisins and apple. It made me chuckle that, where possible, all the savoury dishes had sweet things in them. Colombians really do love this mix and anything goes at Christmas! 

Then we opened presents and waited for as long as possible for midnight before deciding we were all too tired and went to bed at around 11.30! It felt weird waiting up for midnight when nothing was going to happen, unlike New Years, but I guess it's a tradition here! But we had a nice time and it was a lot more relaxed than most Colombian Christmases and actually Christmas I'm used to at home, but at least I had my first Christmas in flip-flops and no warm jumper!

Tropical English Christmas: The day after (on the 25th) we were invited to a friend's "English Christmas" at his place in San Antonio which was a hidden treasure with a big garden but it must have been about 38 degrees! There were a lot of expats there from around the world so it was interesting to hear their stories. Most of them were teaching English here and some were just travelling indefinitely. We played pingpong tournaments and the host cooked a proper English Christmas dinner with turkey, roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and stuffing. He also had muffins and REAL custard for dessert - amazing! We then did secret santa and I was lucky and picked the best one with three mugs, a head massager and some dollars! My boyfriend got his first stocking and then surprised me by filling it for me when we got home which was amazing! After that, we went to see the feria...

La Feria de Cali: This is a continuation of the party madness throughout the city including the Boulevard of alumbrados that stay lit for weeks. This feria is like a carnival involving drinking, live music and dancing with open-air salsa shows and streets full of people often throwing flour or setting off explosions with gun powder. At least the flyer for this shows an afro-colombian woman rather than the usual white and blonde people! We went to a friend of my boyfriend's whose flat was right above where the salsa show started on the first night (25th) so we watched it from above. It reminded me of the Rio carnival but obviously a lot smaller and without the floats. It was about 40 degrees in his flat and then his mum whipped out a boiling hot soup for everyone which was our cue to leave! Colombians love eating hot soup when it's hot! My photos aren't great but you can get an idea of what it is like and it goes on for a week with events all around the city.

This feels like the longest blog post ever and has been weeks in the making but I hope it reflects the enormity of Christmas in Cali and Colombia! 

I hope you enjoyed your holidays wherever you are! 

So, in the end, my work visa didn't come through in time for me to get it before my tourist visa ran out. I reluctantly decided to do a border run to Ecuador to get a new tourist visa stamp which I would only need for a week or two as my work visa was going to be approved any day, so I didn't particularly want to spend that money to go to Ecuador. So, my boyfriend and I bought our bus tickets to Ipiales (Colombian border town) for $75,000 pesos for the same night and quickly went back home to pack. 

I did a quick Google search to see how long I actually needed to be out of the country before they'd give me another tourist visa and I stumbled across a tripadvisor post from an ex-pat in Cali who explained that you could extend your tourist visa for another 90 days without leaving the country! I had seen something similar a few weeks previous but this person had said that it was extremely complicated and a big hassle so I had ignored it. This post, however, said that the system had changed in recent years and was no longer done through DAS, but through Migración Colombia, a new entity and was much simpler. You are, in fact, allowed a total of 180 days per calendar year but have to do this extension in order to get it. 

I was set to leave for Ecuador in a few hours so my boyfriend called up Migración Colombia in Cali to confirm what this person had written and we decided to stay and do it this way. We went back to the bus station and thankfully got a refund on our tickets - phew!

So, today, the day before my tourist visa expired, I went to Migración Colombia (located at the regular DAS office: Avenida 3N Barrio la Flora) and extended my tourist visa for another 90 days. Here is how it worked:

What you need:

• Photocopy of passport info page
• Photocopy of entry stamp to Colombia
• Booking of flight out of Colombia within next 90 days (can do this on Iberia)
• One passport sized photos (4cm x 3cm)
• Receipt of payment to Migración Colombia: go to a Banco Occidente, fill out a deposit form with account number 263-05464-5 for $78,300 pesos and your passport number for Referencia 1 and reference code 103 for Referencia 2. The cashier will tell you to fill out some other boxes too. You also need a photocopy of the receipt (I didn't find this part anywhere online so had to leave the office to get a photocopy done). 

The information is given on this website, but is slightly different than what we were told on the phone.

http://www.migracioncolombia.gov.co/index.php/tramites/permiso-temporal-de-permanencia

The process:

I arrived really early just before the 8am opening. For those who don't know, the old DAS and now Migración Colombia office you get to slipping past a metal gate on a side road and then you will see people queuing up outside it. My boyfriend was not allowed in with me. You go into the room, sign your details in a book and tell one of the officers what you are there for (para prolongar mi visa de tourismo). I was seen immediately and she asked for all my papers, then I had to go around the corner to get a photocopy of my bank receipt. Then I waited for about 40 minutes and I knew something wasn't right as everyone else online had said it was really quick and a Spanish man who arrived after me already had his. 

The lady told me that she had to ring Bogotá to check why the system wasn't approving my request but that they didn't know. I was told to come back at 10am. I went to find my boyfriend and we went across the road to a bakery to wait. Once I went back at 10, still no answer from Bogotá. I was getting really nervous at that point and thought maybe there was a clash between my work visa request and this one, but the lady assured me that they are different systems. She was on the phone to Bogotá for around 15 minutes and then gave me the all clear. It turned out that my nationality said my hometown instead of country or something so there was a mix up. Phew!

Check out my post outlining my monthly budget here!

I would say that the cost of living here is among the expensive in Latin America, maybe on par with Brazil and less than Argentina. Obviously I haven't lived in those countries so don't know about rent etc but, having traveled around most of Latin America, I find Colombia quite pricey for some things, especially given the income inequality here and the low purchasing power of most Colombians. Then again, you can find cheap rent in Cali and live on a shoestring here, as much of Colombia has to. 

To give some context: 

• The minimum salary in Colombia is £169 ($616,000 pesos) per month
  
• The average household salary is £442 (and given that these averages are greatly skewed by the few super rich that rise the average disproportionately since over half of Colombian earn the minimum wage, see article below)
• Over half of the urban workforce in the country is informal.
• Normal working hours are at least 45 hours a week, 6 days a week.
• There are loopholes and there is poor regulation of this with a lot of people employed in the service sector having to make up their salary in tips. 

Daily items: Daily necessities such as clothes, shoes, toiletries, toilet paper, household electronics, phone contracts and cars are the same price or much more expensive than in the UK. It is clear than there is a sort of monopoly shared by very few, normally foreign, companies leaving very little choice or room for Colombian alternatives, and exceedingly high prices compared to incomes. Added to this the fact that quality education and healthcare is private here, it is not uncommon for families to work long hours to be able to afford what most would consider a relatively basic standard of living. For example, I spent days searching for affordable hairspray and ended up having to buy a tiny bottle for $6,000 pesos (£2.25) that was the cheapest out of only two options available in 2 different large supermarkets. Sanitary products such as tampons and sanitary towels are also extremely expensive and often double the price than in the UK. The infamous cartel de los panales (nappy cartel) is jut one of the examples of price fixing for toilet paper, nappies, kitchen roll and serviettes etc

Rent: When I was here 3 years ago, I rented a room in a very basic house in San Antonio (the colonial part on a hill) for around $250,000 pesos (£80) a month with bills, internet an a cleaning lady - although for most of my time there we had no fridge or gas to cook with so the kitchen was unusable. At the moment I am giving my boyfriend's parents $300,000 a month to contribute to living here. I would never be able to afford to live in a place like this on my own, we have a pool, security fences and armed guards. When I looked at getting our own place, for a 1 bed flat in an OK area (strata 4/5) it would have been between $500,000 - $750,000 (£180-£270) but just for the flat, and most come unfurnished and without electricals. So with bills, internet and maybe a monthly payment for the upkeep of the complex you'd be looking at around $650,000 - $900,000 (£240-£350) a month, plus obviously the cost of a fridge, sofa, bed, cooker etc. Hence I decided to stay at my boyfriend's parents!

What is cheaper here: Transport is quite cheap here with busetas charging around $1500 pesos (60p) and taxis around $8000 (£2.50) for a 15-20 minute ride, but then again this is in comparison with UK prices that tend to be very high and, relatively speaking, prices here are more expensive. This is the main reason why the experience of being a tourist here is very different than living here, since actual prices are cheaper here than in the North, but relative prices can be higher (i.e. compared to most salaries). You can find cheap food here just outside of shopping centres in the more traditional Colombian-style restaurants where you might find a hot lunch for around $7000. You can also go to cheaper supermarkets like Mercamio and spend around $40,000 pesos (£12) on a weekly food shop so there are ways of living cheaply (I will do a post on how much every day items cost for a weekly shopping budget).

General guidance: With all of that being taken into account, I would say that you can live very basically on a salary of $800,000 pesos per month (I lived on less three years ago) and more comfortably on a salary of $1 million pesos and above. For the former, you would have to prioritise cooking at home, never taking taxis and being very careful where you buy toiletry products and clothing. On the higher salaries, you would be able to afford more luxuries and be able to save up for trips. It is important to note that although many expats come here to take advantage of the cheaper cost of living compared to the North and live a pretty good lifestyle, it does not mean it is not possible to live on less. Many Colombians with a degree (which are mostly a privileged minority) earn around $1million pesos per month and I have even seen job adverts for doctors with a specialisation and experience for $3million which is very low, so of course it is also possible for an expat who is not prioritising maintaining a luxury lifestyle and, rather, wants to live like most Colombians do.

One crucial part of the culture here is bartering and you can negotiate down the price on just about anything, apart from shops in shopping centres. For example, bus companies charge you at least $5000 pesos more than the actual fare and just last week I negotiated down a purse from $18,000 to $10,000. Every little helps!

Related reading:

Hurtado, K. (2013). La mitad de Colombia vive con el mínimo. http://www.kienyke.com/historias/cuantos-colombianos-se-ganan-un-salario-minimo/

Health insurance for ex-pats can be a real pain. You don't qualify as a backpacker, nor do you qualify as a citizen of that country so in my weeks of searching for the best fit in the UK before flying out, I felt like I was somewhere in the middle. When you ring up insurance providers to explain that you are going abroad to look for work they will give you one of three responses 1) that they do not cover people working abroad, 2) that they do but only for certain temporary jobs such as fruit picking or 3) that they will cover you as a backpacker, but this leaves them with some power to refuse to dish out when it comes to it as providers will use anything to claim you do not comply with their smallprint. And regardless of the provider you end up going for, most do not cover private hospitals or clinics. 

After having already lived in Colombia before coming this time, I knew that this was the most crucial part of my insurance that I needed. Public hospitals here are really terrible so paying hundreds of pounds for health insurance which only covers you for the public care is no better than having no insurance in my book. After much investigation, I ended up paying for a few months of regular travel insurance with Debenhams who said that they may (or may not!) cover private hospitals and it depends on the type of injury. They said when an incident arose, that I, or someone in my family, should call them to clarify whether I can be treated in a private hospital or not. Now, this is less than ideal as if I am alone and get run over, no-one will be able to call to check this, but it was the best I could find.

I now have a better solution for ex-pats that I didn't realise was an option before I left. My boyfriend's dad works for Coomeva, one of the best private health insurance companies in Colombia and, a few weeks into my arrival, he told me that I could sign up for a plan through him. I pay $80,000 (£22) a month and can be treated in any private hospital/clinic in the country, have elective blood tests and check ups, and am covered from small illnesses like tonsillitis, right up to serious accidents, without having to claim anything back or go through difficult paperwork. Had I known I could get the same insurance as Colombians without the need for a cédula (ID card) or anything, I never would have bought the insurance from Debenhams. 

So, for any ex-pats planning on coming, or any already here, if you want this insurance you can get in touch with me (click on the 'Contact' tab at the top) and my boyfriend's dad can set it up so easily and can even give you a discount. All I had to give him was a copy of my passport. Problem solved!

During my Spanish degree, I enjoyed learning about all the little differences and funny parts of the language. Those are now more or less normal to me now, however, here in Cali I am learning new local differences which I thought I would share.

• You: In Spanish you have the standard tú for you familiar and usted for you formal, like the french tu/vous. Here people also have vos which is even more familiar so between friends or partners and is conjugated differently, I am still getting the hang of it (replaces the tú completely in Argentina, for example). However, here people use usted for their parents/children which I find so difficult to get used to. So within our house, my boyfriend says tú to me, usted to his parents, his parents say usted to their son and I, and vos to each other. It is insanely confusing and I cannot understand how people can say usted to their own family, and even with babies, since in standard Spanish it is formal. Also, since there is the same thing in french with vous it would sounds so odd to say vous to your parents or children as it's normally for people you don't know well. I am getting there though!
• Hi: In Spanish, like in most languages there are lots of ways of saying hello/hi/good afternoon etc. Now, in Cali, the most common way of saluting someone informally is by saying 'que hubo?' which literally means 'what was there?', or 'what happened?'. I can get on board with this except for they don't say it like that, what they say sounds more like a phonetic 'Q-bo'. Most of the time if someone says that to me I just smile politely as I feel like it it a rhetorical question as it is more of a salutation than an actual question but replying with hola or buenos dias would be far too formal. 
• Mami/papi: These mean mum and dad but here, they are not confined to parental relationships and you can often hear people calling their friends papi, parents often call their young children it and even between married couples can call each other mum/dad. Given that in French, mami/papi mean grandma/grandpa, this is very confusing for me!
• Sorry: This is less of a Colombia thing, than just a Spanish language thing. There are so many ways to say sorry in Spanish that I often need a couple of seconds to figure out which one is appropriate before saying it and by that point the moment has passed and I just look rude! Here are some examples: 'Que pena' is I think more of a Colombia or Latin America phrase, not used in Spain. It is used a lot for example on the Mio buses when people push past you in a rough way so they say que pena to excuse them having pushed you a little. It literally means 'what shame', however, I find it very amusing because they aren't actually sorry because they continue to do it while saying it so, to me, it's a bit like saying sorry while you are continuously punching someone, it doesn't really count. 'Perdón' is the more official, formal sorry or forgive me. 'Lo siento' would be for a more emotional sorry like if you offended someone or lost/broke one of their possessions. 'Disculpa' is like excuse me in the sense of excuse my actions i.e. bumping into them or if you want someone's attention to ask a question i.e. a police officer or local (but then it would be 'disculpe' in the usted form).  
• Diminutives: The Spanish language as a whole uses a lot of diminutives in order to denote small size or to make a word less harsh sounding or more affectionate, for example, casita (small house), perrito (little dog or beloved dog if it is big). However, I have noticed that here it is used a LOT more frequently for example with ahorita (right/just now), gentecita (meaning there were some people). Also, some common words simply do not come without it. For example, you never hear abuela (grandma), only abuelita, pajarito, never pajaro (bird), agüita never agua (for ordering water). Some seem quite paradoxical, for example with grandecito (big with diminutive so it sounds like a little bit big).
• Girl/boy/woman/man: Goodness me, how many words are there for these?! The standard Spanish words would be niño/a for boy/girl and hombre/mujer for man/woman. However these are rarely used here and instead they use some of these for girl/boy: pelada/pelado, nena, muchacha/muchacho; and these for man/woman: tipo, man, caballero, vieja, dama, señora. Granted in English and French there are several ways of saying these terms, but I feel like we mostly use the standard ones of man/woman, homme/femme, girl/boy, fille/garcon, whereas in Colombia the alternative ones are more common and mixed up so it can be difficult to pick one based on the context of the conversation. 
• Your/her: In standard Spanish the possessive your is tu and of his/her is su. However, here in Cali/Colombia these are rarely used and instead they would say, for example Como va la mamá? ('how is your mum'). So instead of saying your they say 'the'. It gets confusing though because this is exactly the same sentence as for how is his/her mum as they avoid using possessive pronouns altogether and replace them with a 'the', regardless of who they are talking about. As an extension to this, instead of saying within the context of a conversation about someone else, 'how is her mum?', they may say como va la mamá de él or de John? Literally, 'how is the mum of him' or 'of John'. I find this really odd since it is a long-winded version of saying his/her/their. This extends to object possession too i.e. saying 'this is the car of him or of Sam' instead of saying 'this is his car'. They do, however, use the 'my' possessive pronoun and do not say 'this is the house of me'. Thank God. 

This post will be constantly updated with more funny/interesting things about life in Cali and things that I will easily forget if I don't write them down. Obviously these may not be generalisable to the whole of the country, or even to all Caleños, but they show the side of the culture that I have been in touch with.

• Women's fashion: The most fashionable and commonly used outfit  (by that I mean every single woman aged 10-50) is skinny jeans, a strap top/t-shirt and high heels. To me, given the heat over here and the fact that a lot of Colombian women have plastic surgery to show off, or are just very body-proud, it seems illogical to cover up in these 'bluyíns' (blue jeans phonetically). Although they do serve as a second skin that highlight the enhanced curves, especially as there are 'levantacola' (push up bum) jeans made especially for bum implants, but to me, women look so much nicer in pretty dresses or skirts and they would distinguish themselves from the other thousands of women wearing the exact same thing!
• Women's hair: Another repercussion of the race issues here is that hardly anyone embraces their natural curly/wavy hair, especially mixed race people. In addition to the standard outfit I described above, most girls/women's hair is straightened to within an inch of its life and is as long as physically possible, often brushing their 90 degree angle bum. Coming from a country where wavy/curly hair tends to be prettier, I find this fashion of dead straight hair so plain! I would give anything to have the incredible voluminous waves of most people here! 

• Serviettes: It is a crime here to serve a drink or food without a paper serviette. At every meal you must have one, and they all get used, even if it is a very clean meal with a knife and fork. Even bottles of beer or fizzy drinks often come wrapped in a serviette! It's not that I am complaining, apart from the environmental side of it, it is more of an observation than anything.
• Busetas: These are the private mini buses that operate an informal network of routes in crazy colours some with fairy lights or disco lights and most never close the door which petrifies me. You see people just hanging out of them. I took a video 3 years ago from inside it, I will try to find it and upload it. The other day, one even had Pablo Escobar's face on the bottom.
• Chivas: These are the famous party buses with insanely loud cheesy music and disco lights all over that can be hired to drive around the city at 30mph holding up traffic. It is quite a sight for all senses and strangely appealing if only for the novelty factor. 
• Names: There is a phenomenon here with English-style names which show the massive influence of the USA and western culture. I find these fascinating and my favourite so far are: Madeinusa (literally, Made In USA), Ladi/Leidi (influenced by Lady Diana as they thought Lady was a first name), Leidi Dayana as a double-barrelled first name, these have also been transformed into Deidi, Zeidi, Bleidi and other Lady-sounding names, Jhon/Jhony, Nixon (from the president but used as a first name), Erwin (a variant of Edwin – also common), Estiben (Steven phonetically), Estiwar/Estiguar (combination of Steven and Edward phonetically), Jhon Estiwars (incredible double-barred first name that to me sounds like John Starwars), Hoover (yes, hoover as a first name), Williams/Jackson/Anderson (lots of last names as first names), Neil Armstrong (double barreled first name, so the full name would be something like Neil Armstong Gonzales Ortega).
• Eggs: They never eat their eggs runny, even when fried, and since for me a runny yolk is like liquid gold, this is disastrous! It also means that they have never had egg and soldiers which was the joy of my childhood and secretly still is now!
• Dental hygiene: I noticed this 3 years ago when I was working in a university that people brought their toothbrush and toothpaste to work and after everything they ate they went to the toilet to brush their teeth. This time too, I have noticed that people do that and brush their teeth at least 3 times a day if not more and in shopping centres it is not unusual to see workers or customers in the toilets brushing their teeth. Of course there is nothing wrong with this and maybe if it is due to the expensive dental insurance it is a logical preventative measure.
• Minutos: An amusing/great entrepreneurial invention here are the minutos (minutes) people you find at every street corner or little shop who have a variety of old-school mobile phones tied to a string or chain and tied to themselves or a post from whom you can buy minutes to call people. They tend to have a mobile for each operator, as here operators tend to be very separate and have different rates depending on who you are going to call. So people tend to only use their own phones to call people on the same operator as them. Not very convenient but logical in a country where phone credit does not last long and contracts are incredibly expensive, for example, £10 for 3GB of internet, without a phone, minutes or texts. 
• Queuing: Obviously coming from the number 1 country of professional queuers, the UK, to me, Colombia is a country that basically doesn't queue. You get used to it after a while! But one thing I have noticed is that in public toilets, instead of queuing in a line somewhere near the door and waiting for a cubicle to free up so the person at the front of the queue goes in, in Colombia, people queue outside each individual cubicle. This means that if you have been waiting the longest, but the person inside the cubicle you are stood outside is in there for ages, you will be the last to use the toilet!
• Getting ill: Due to the hot climate here, when people get a runny nose or a cough they call it flu (gripa) rather than a cold (resfriado) and complain as if it is really bad. They are clearly not used to having colds and thing it's a proper illness even though they are not bed-ridden, don't ache and don't have headaches. It's quite funny for me to hear my boyfriend so angry that he's got a runny nose when in Europe, that's normal for various months of the year and we continue to function. It's like a national epidemic of man-flu!

Getting a work visa in a foreign country is never easy. When I first started thinking about moving to Colombia last year, I contacted some of my UK friends who work here to ask them what kind of visa they got and whether they sorted it before flying out or converted from a tourist visa once in Colombia. The consensus was that, in true Colombian style, it is very difficult to get anything planned ahead of time and most people end up entering the country on a tourist visa. However, most foreigners here teach in schools so not only is getting a job easier, schools here are used to having a quick turn over of foreign staff who come to teach for a year or two. 

I decided to enter Colombia on a tourist visa since all my efforts job-wise were proving futile from the UK. However, in my research online, I discovered that Colombia has a Partner visa (TP-10 visa) that is the same as a Spouse visa except you don’t necessarily have to be married. Since, legally, in Colombia if you have been with someone for 2 years or more you are as good as married, this visa gives you the right to a cédula (ID card) and to work for 3 years. You don't even have to prove you have been together for that long but may need a convincing story. Since my boyfriend and I have been together for over 3 years, I figured this would be a good plan B if I wasn’t able to get a work visa quickly. 

Nevertheless, getting this visa is not easy, especially if you do not live in Bogotá. In short, you have to go to a notary and pay around $50 for an escritura pública which is a document that states you are in an official partnership with a Colombian. You then have to go to Bogotá with your partner and book an appointment for $50 for the visa interview, then pay over $200 for the visa itself. All in all with transportation, visa fee and accommodation I would have been looking at over £300 for the whole thing. This would have been difficult to do since I am unemployed and would have had no guarantee of finding paid work after obtaining this visa. 

This blogger provides a more detailed account, albeit a little outdated:

http://alittlecameo.com/2013/03/01/getting-a-partner-visa-in-colombia/

I was debating whether to bite the bullet and start the process for this visa in the last month as my tourist visa runs out on Christmas Eve and time was running out but thankfully I received a job offer literally 2 days before I was about to book the flights to Bogotá – great timing or what!? Now I am getting a work visa but since I am foreign, I have to collect it in a foreign consulate which is quite inconvenient but of course it’s worth it as I know I am starting work soon as a result of it. So now I am waiting for all the paperwork to be completed and as it is Christmas time with expensive flights that are quickly filling up, and there are less working days this month, I am still worried I won’t be able to go to Panama before my tourist visa runs out in which case I’ll have to make a quick dash for Ecuador to get a new tourist visa and go to Panama in January just before starting work. The expenses add up!

In hindsight, it would have made much more sense to get my Partner visa in London while I was there with my partner and enter Colombia on that visa originally! Silly me!

I hope I have given a good overview of the visa options available in Colombia and I will post an update when I finally know when I am getting my work visa! 

The unexpected happened! I got an email offering me a job at CIAT! It was even more unexpected due to the fact that I received it on a Saturday so was not even checking my emails. It is fair to say that this was my reaction:

I will post more when progress has been made, don't want to spill the beans before it's set in stone...

This post is more about what I have been up to apart from job hunting and being a lazy unemployed person! 

For the first month or so, my boyfriend was less busy with his university work so we would go and read by the pool and have a swim, eat my body weight in nutella waffles from Crepes & Waffles, people watch in the shopping centres and go to the incredibly cheap (£1 on Wednesdays!), extra cold air-conditioned cinema where Colombians have the american style traditions with huge boxes of popcorn, soft drinks and hotdogs which all seem to buy. I am a big fan of the Postobon apple or grape fizzy drinks here. We also went to Cuuc, a juice bar, quite a lot and I became obsessed with the Pandebono that they sell there which are small balls of warm bread made with powdered cheese - delicious! Although Colombians eat them with Arequipe (thick caramel-type spread), their love for sweet-savoury combinations is another story for another time!

Now people watching really is my favourite hobby here. Ultra modern outdoor/indoor shopping centres that dot across Cali are the place to hang out here. Since public spaces are generally quite run down and/or dangerous, private shopping centres have come to replace these and you have high-end ones which are more exclusive and have internationally renowned designer shops. Other shopping centres are more run down and often experience violent crime such as shootings. So, I am clearly not interested in the designer shops in these shopping centres, however, they are full of plastic surgery, with Colombia being the capital of plastic surgery in Latin America. I feel a mixture of fascination and pity when I see hordes of women lugging around their enormous bum and breast implants in 5 inch heels and skinny jeans. It obviously catches my attention coming from a country where it is almost non-existent but also how it is a symptom of the patriarchy and lack of opportunities for women in this country. I will probably write another post on gender issues in Colombia expanding on this. 

I also experienced my very first Colombian Halloween and, although we did not dress up or go to a party, apparently this is not required to be in the thick of it. In Colombia, since much outside space is dangerous, especially at night, most children dress up and go trick or treating (or triqui-triqui) in shopping centres. Adults and shop keepers bring bags of sweets of hand out to children and this results in the most crowded experience in my life but with incredibly cute kids dressed in an array of Disney-inspired costumes! 

For the last month it has been the rainy season which, actually, has been somewhat of a relief for me. It has been no more than 30 in the day and around 20 at night, which is much more pleasant than the usual 38 in the day and 25 at night! The rainy reason is well and truly ending though and I am going to have to get used to sweaty days again! Christmas preparations are well under way here and apparently the celebrations last weeks with daily traditions of singing, parties and drinking called the Novenas (Nines?), in addition to the Velitas (little candles). It is going to be strange having a hot Christmas but I am looking forward to seeing what goes on! It's already starting to look like Christmas where we live too which is nice!

I have posted some photos below of what I have been up to and some shots of Cali and where I live.

As I explain in the 'About' section, I made the choice to come to Colombia as a chance to start my career in a country where a lot of environmental and social issues are occurring. For the past year I have been trying to make contacts here via some people I met 3 years ago to scope out whether there would be any opportunities out here and discovered an organisation called CIAT (International Centre for Tropical Agriculture) which, not only focuses on ending hunger through sustainable agriculture, but is located just outside of Cali where I was planning to be based. It seemed too good to be true so my decision was made that I would do whatever it took to try to get a job there, even if it didn't work out. I made contact with the organisation while I was doing my MSc and made sure they had my CV. 

Since I arrived in Cali late September, I have been looking hard for other sources of work as the CIAT trail had gone cold and I had almost lost hope of ever working there. I frantically refreshed my email and went on job hunting, NGO, private company websites scrolling for employment listings and cold emailed organisations to almost no avail. I was contacted by an organisation CEID in Bogotá, the capital, and the director said he would be interested to meet if/when I went to Bogotá for a visa appointment, for example. The organisation seemed great but I really didn't want to move there as it is a huge chaotic city with crumbling public transport, expensive rent and bad weather. 

Any advice I can give to people in similar situations job hunting here or in other countries of the South is 

1) Look through the relevant organisation's website and, if possible, instead of emailing the generic 'info@' emails, find the person you think could be your potential boss/head of the department you want to work in or just email the director directly.
2) Be persistent, keep emailing your contact every 3-6 weeks, reminding them politely that you are still very keen to meet them and reminding them of your suitability for the role. Make these short and sweet, no more than 5 sentences. Most employers are busy but appreciate little reminders.
3) Be very confident in your abilities and don't undersell yourself. This has been difficult for me to do since I am always pushing myself to be better and am fully aware of my faults, however, it is a worthwhile exercise to write down what you are good at and the skills not so evident in your educational background that you have developed i.e. negotiation, teamwork, resourcefulness, leadership. 

After doing the steps above, I got a meeting with someone at an organisation called FIDAR who work in sustainable agriculture and little did I know, they were located on the grounds of CIAT. So off I went having prepared interview techniques in Spanish all weekend and finally got to see this famous CIAT that I had been dreaming about all year. Unfortunately the meeting did not come to anything and there was no position on offer but I took the opportunity to drop of my CV to someone at CIAT just as another reminder that I was still looking. Next, something amazing happened and the secretary that I gave my CV to said that the gentleman in charge would like to see me so I had an impromptu interview with him which went incredibly well. I also received my MSc results a few days later so emailed to confirm these with the gentleman and hoped that they serve as evidence of my abilities given that I got a Distinction! Nevertheless, what followed were weeks of silence...