Hola! I've been so busy so haven't had much time to update my blog but I'm back from Medellin now so here we go! On Friday night I went to the AIESEC awards at the university, it was called 'Papalito' because it was for AIESEC members' parents to come and see what they do and to give out awards. Some committee members made speeches about their exchange experiences and then Jenny, Will and I had to go up and introduce ourselves. After this, there was of course much picture taking. After the awards we went back to Melany's house for celebrations where they tried to teach us how to salsa dance.

Just before we left for the awards, Jenny booked flights for us to Medellin the next morning! So after a late night and 3 hours sleep, we got up bright and early to catch our flight. We arrived in Medellin and got a taxi to the Urban Buddha Hostel. The taxi driver decided to rip us off by going round a big roundabout 3 times so his meter went up! We checked in to the hostel and met the others there from AIESEC Uninorte, also in Barranquilla. We went for a wander and had some food, before going to bed because I was SO tired. The next day we went to Guadapé which was about 2 hours away by bus. In Guadapé there is a massive rock with 700 stairs to climb, with amazing views from the top. We then wandered around Guadapé and took lots of pictures.

The next day (Monday) we went on a tour to Pablo Escobar's house, where we met his brother, Roberto Escobar. Pablo was a Colombian drug lord and cocaine trafficker, and in 1989 was named by Forbes magazine to be the 7th richest man in the world. It was really interesting to hear about his story and to meet his brother, who we were told uses all of the proceeds from the daily tours of his house to find a cure for HIV. After the tour we went for a wander and had lunch before Jenny and I went back to the hostel and the others got a bus to the airport to fly back to Barranquilla. When we got back to the hostel we spoke to a man called Ricardo on the phone (in Spanglish) about booking paragliding for the next day, which eventually we managed!

The next day soon came and Jenny and I got a bus to the top of the mountains in Medellin where we went paragliding. I didn't have any appropriate shoes so Ricardo leant me his wife's shoes, which were only 3 sizes too small. Paragliding was amazing and the view from the top of Medellin was beautiful! We sunbathed on the top of the hill for a while (and I got burnt) before heading back down where we went to the Botanical gardens. By this point we were really tired and couldn't be bothered to walk around much longer so we got some food before heading to the bus terminal for our 15 hour bus journey back to Barranquilla! The bus was absolutely freezing the whole way, with air conditioning on full blast, but we eventually made it back to Barranquilla at 10am the next morning.