Colombia, My Love!

Ten years ago, I was on the bus from my town (El Naranjito, Guerrero, which is close to Lázaro Cárdenas international port at Michoacán State) to Mexico City. Despite the terrible Internet service on the bus, I accessed online to check the results of the internationalization call of DGECI. I pressed Ctrl+F to look for my student identification number on the long candidate list. I started; 4300 results; student identification number 4100019… three results. I was a bag of nerves, but I typed in the last two digits of my student identification number… I got one result, and it was written on the right: “ACCEPTED – SERGIO ARBOLEDA UNIVERSITY – BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA”.

Everything stopped, even my heart. I knew a massive change in my life was to begin; I just didn’t know its magnitude. I only knew that everything would go in a 90-degree turn! (How naïve was I! It was a 270-degree turn).

An amazing phase began! A time of many expenses was coming. It was already a considerable expense for my family to cover my living costs as a student in Mexico City; I couldn’t leave all the responsibility to them. The news of my exchange brought joy to my whole family. I was the first family member to access tertiary education, and now I was going to be the first one to go study abroad. All of this is thanks to UNAM.

So, I got a job as an intern from Monday to Friday at ADO Group. Then, I got a job at the construction company Techint and worked at night as a waitress and on weekends as a promoter at BestBuy. At the same time, in the afternoons, I kept, of course, attending my regular courses, and I couldn’t allow myself to lower my grades! During vacation, my sister came with me to make raffles, and my friends helped me selling sodas. These months were exhausting, but I needed to save as much as possible since the scholarship I obtained didn’t include my expenses, and I wanted, no matter how, to seize the chance of having this experience.

Finally, on January 10, I flew to Bogotá. It was the first flight of my life, and it was already an international one. After a long scale in Costa Rica, I landed in the Colombian capital, and the adventure began.

I arrived a week before classes started in order to look for a place to live during my six-month exchange. I chose the neighborhood La Española, which is near Cali Avenue.

One night, while I was missing home intensely, sitting in the main garden of the hostel, I played the song “Déjenme llorar” (Let Me Cry) by Carla Morrison. Someone screamed from the second floor: “Mexican?” I laughed and answered: “Yes. Why?” The person who screamed was Pepe, who would become my friend; he was also an exchange student with a scholarship. We exchanged some stories, and that’s how our great friendship started. I must mention something that nobody really talks about exchanges: the huge impact they have on social bonds. As for me, besides having thrown myself into the adventure, I also had ended a relationship in Mexico; I was convinced that I was doing the right thing for my professional development; it was a chance I wouldn’t get twice in a lifetime.

Finally, the first day of university arrived at my beloved “Sergio”. I met Luli, from Argentina, and Fernanda Doquiz, a Mexican student from UNAM’s Faculty of Higher Studies at Cuatitlán, and we clicked instantly. The internationalization team of the Sergio gave us a very good tour, explained how our adventure was going to be, and gave us all the necessary instructions: from how to keep our migratory situation in order to details of how life in Bogotá was.

The three of us were still in shock! There we were, in our 20s, living abroad in South America. Everything was so confusing sometimes: the accent, the money… How is it possible that one Mexican peso becomes two hundred seventytwo Colombian pesos? How about paying a sixhundred-thousand-pesos rent?

Finally, classes began. I had designed my class schedule in Mexico but didn’t know what was coming at the Sergio. I enrolled in Project Evaluation, Risk Analysis, Markets, Currencies, and Ethics courses.

The level of my professors was really high! Thanks to Diana Carolina, the Project Evaluation professor, now I only need to take a look at the initial numbers of an operation to tell, without making any calculations, whether a project will be viable or not. My Risk Analysis professor, an imposing, intelligent, and capable woman, was a chief risk officer at one of the most important banks in Colombia. The Stock Market and Currencies professor was calm and gentle, but he motivated us enough to participate in Colombia’s Stock Exchange contest, “La Bolsa Millonaria” (The Millionaire Stock). It was a great challenge; it involved operating stock exchanges in real time, designing strategies, and advancing to the next rounds. And then, there’s the esteem I feel for my Ethics professor; his teachings are reflected in my ethical stance and how I conduct myself as a professional. Thanks to his experience working in transnational and national corporations and his teaching style based on the case method, I grew professionally.

The level at the Sergio was high, but, at the same time, it felt easy. The professors I chose guided me in the best possible way and left a mark on my career.

As for my university friends, I’m grateful for still being in touch with them. Diego Libonatti, Diana Prada, Kate Vega, Diana Cubillos, the Gringow; all the people who, without knowing me, opened the doors of their homes and hearts to welcome and embrace me in their country and let me know why people abroad spoke so many wonders of Colombia. They invited me to meet their hometowns and made me feel like a Colombian. Some friends who weren’t from the university like Vivi, Felipe, and others who became closer, like Andrés Emilio González Cortázar and his whole family, made me feel like a true Cali native, a Caleña; they let me experience what being part of Cali’s community was like: they took me for a walk in Avenida Colombia (what is known as a “paseo de río”, a walk by the river) and to dance the typical rhumba from Cali.

Time to go back to Mexico arrived. How was I supposed to fit all these experiences into my little suitcase? All the evenings I spent studying finance with Diana while eating some popcorn with guacamole; all those nights I walked to the Transmilenio (the public transport system of Bogotá) from my university; the strolls organized by the Sergio, in which a professional accompanied us to hike, raft, and get to know the natural side of Colombia as just a few people know it. The evenings I spent at the architecture workshop of the Sergio with professor Gloria, admiring buildings, monuments, museums, and churches; the clown and theatrical improvisation lessons I took with an actress of the standing of Paola Barrera; the moments after class I spent with the group Salsa in One of the Sergio, the little rhumba trips with my friends, my first arepa, the first time I ate a soft coffee bean, the time I was taught to dance vallenato in Bogotá, dancing salsa in Cali with a Caleño; my first sip of “champus” (a typical beverage in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru), the conversation I had with my friends, who motivated me to use a Colombian slimming belt, Medellín’s Metrocable (a telfer used for public transport); when my friend Arroyo, before we got to know each other, asked me for a blanket because he didn’t have one and was cold in one of the rainiest cities in the world (thanks to that blanket, I now have a great friend); how my Colombian friends encouraged me to travel by land from Bogotá to Cuzco, and all the wonderful people I met.

I did it; I came back with my little suitcase filled with my new Colombian soul. How? I gave away most of my Mexican stuff and came back. The biggest surprise was that fifteen days after coming back, the Shared Services Center of the Coca-Cola Femsa Company, at the Mansión office, contacted me because they wanted to hire me as a price analyst for Colombia.

In each of my professional experiences, indicating in my resume that I have international experience has always made me stand out among other applicants. The change in point of view, the ability to adapt starting from scratch in an unknown country, is a unique experience; how it broadens your criteria and makes you focus on negotiating and being tolerant of cultures that are different from yours has allowed me to work with people from various countries.

I can say with great fondness that, even though all this happened ten years ago, I still use some Colombian expressions when I get mad or get carried away, like “Ay, pucha,” “Paila,” “No mire vea,” “¿Cómo así?”, “Ea pues, hágale”, “A la orden”, “¿Señora?”, “Bien pueda”, “Aló?”.

This trip gave me lifelong friendships. Ten years later, Luli, my adventure companion, came from Mallorca to Mexico City to celebrate my thirty-second birthday eating churros from El Moro and dancing cumbia in the Alameda Central.

I’m convinced that there are experiences that leave a mark on you forever, and having the possibility to access the scholarship through DGECI is one of them. For this reason, I’m currently applying for other scholarships to pursue my graduate studies.

Thank you, UNAM; thank you, Sergio Arboleda University; thank you, Bogotá!

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