Traveling to Medellin Colombia for 6 months

[Zac]

I took vacation for this week so I could start focusing on important stuff. I still coach lax every day this week but I don't have to go to my other job. First thing I did, spend a ton of time on the internet....

Currently I'm at the stage of kind of figuring out what to throw away, what to pack up, and what to take. I plan on only filling one suitcase and 1 60ltr mountaineering rucksack for the 6 months. Basically it will be electronics, clothes, climbing shoes, and a few random little things. Anything else I might need I can buy there.

I'll be writing about my experience in this thread and on my personal blog. The entire thing sounds amazing and like hard work. It definitely gives me some anxiety thinking about changing my entire life around in another country.

I'm very excited about this trip. My family thinks I'm going to die. My girlfriend and I are kind of having problems but kind of having an even closer relationship right now because I'm going away. Everything is all kind of happening around me pretty quickly and I'm juggling a lot of responsibilities at the moment.

I really don't know much of anything about Colombia. I've read some blogs but I don't know what to trust really. Mark says it's pretty safe and I definitely believe that. Everything else I'm going to have to find out for myself.

I don't know any Spanish. I took about 3 years in high school and will probably remember some things. So far I've done 2 audio lessons on the way too and from practice. I will get better at this. I just bought a dictionary so that I can listen to the radio like I have been but actually understand what some of the words mean.

Basically I just wanted to kind of put this here as a starter and then work through any issues I have or things i want to share on here.

If you have any information about Colombia you want to share I'd love to hear it. Anything about traveling or thefood/culture/art/nature/history/archaeology/ of Colombiaor whatever else you can think of really I'd appreciate it. As I come across stuff ahead of time and during the trip I'll share here.

I'll be staying in the El Poblado area of Medellin for about 6 months. More info to come soon on that too.

Here are a few videos I've found so far










1. http://medellinliving.com/photos/
2. http://medellinliving.com/poblado/ (wealthiest neighborhood)
3. http://medellinliving.com/work-visa-colombia/
4.http://medellinliving.com/nightlife/
5.http://medellinliving.com/restaurants/
6.http://medellinliving.com/things-to-do-see/


Google Images of Poblado
http://bit.ly/yxPWYk

Poblabo Wiki
http://bit.ly/AAApZF

[The Notorious PhD]

Best of luck, have fun, enjoy, be productive!

The only advice I can offer from personal experience is on the long-distance relationship (1 year; she was in California, I was in Boston): figure out how you guys are going to communicate (email/skype/phone etc) and stick to a schedule for when you guys will talk.

With so much physical separation, time difference, asynchronous work schedules, it's easy for one or both parties to feel neglected. This can be ridiculously stressful and distracting because it's hard to console someone when you're not there. I found that having that structure helps alleviate the problem somewhat.

[Zac]

I think to be honest we are going to break up and just stay in touch. That's kind of what we've been saying lately. I'm not really completely sure how everything is going to go down but yeah, I think that's kind of where it's headed.

We are very close and very much in love so this is very hard but we are just trying to have the most fun we can with each other while we are still with each other.

Probably gonna Skype here and there.

[The Notorious PhD]

Yeah, my long-distance experience taught me that unless I was planning on marrying the girl...breaking-up is the best thing to do. We ended-up doing that anyway, and it would've saved us both a lot of stress.

I just didn't wanna suggest that as the first thing because I didn't really know how serious you guys were.

Anyway, enjoy your time man - sounds like an awesome experience!

[Zac]

I think I'd marry her if we were older but I think we would be really far from that now and if we are meant to get married it will work itself out?

I'm very excited. Thanks for the words man =)