A
few years ago I had the opportunity to go on a vacation around the Caribbean
with my family. I was fortunate enough to be taken by my grandparents on a
cruise and one of the stops we made was in Cartagena, Columbia. This city is a
huge port city with a bay similar in size to San Diego’s bay. Now as we all
know, Columbia doesn’t have the best anti-drug policy. I expected to see a
sketchy city that was full of slums and other such things. However, that part
of my trip was eye-opening.
The
tour guide for our trip had lived in Cartagena his entire life. Through the
tour I started to talk with him. Having already taken four years of Spanish, I
spoke almost entirely Spanish with him. Since he had such enthusiasm, he was
happy to speak to me for the duration of the tour, and even happier to listen
to me struggle through my broken Spanish. Listening to him talk about the city
he loved so much was incredible and it opened my eyes to what I think is one of
the most beautiful cities in the world. Even
though I came into this thinking it would be something you hear about in
cartel stories, the love that the tour guide had for his city made me see it in
the same light that he saw it,
Cartagena has tons of beautiful
architecture from the Spanish occupation including a giant fortress on the top
on a hill. After climbing the ramp up to the top, we met a group of Columbian
school kids on a felled trip to the city from further inland. After talking
with their teacher, we found out that all of the kids had to save up money to
afford this trip.
This
group of students was just as amazed at the massive scale of the architecture
as they were with meeting Americans. I couldn’t understand exactly what they
were saying, but they definitely amazed to meet people from a country they had
only ever heard about. It was hard to
believe that I was just as impressive as a fortress bigger than the campus at
San Marcos. While all the tourists were marveling at the scale and beauty of
all the buildings, the students were amazed by us. Just as what we all see as
regular and banal, like the computer we typed these on or the classrooms we sit
in, the students lived everyday around what we found fascinating.
Now
that I’m going to be studying more Spanish at San Marcos, I really want to go
back to somewhere like that to study abroad. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of
a chance of being sent to Columbia due to the unsafe conditions. However, the
school does have programs in plenty of other Spanish speaking countries. I
would love to go and study abroad, not only to earn credits and improve my
speaking abilities, but to learn more about the lives and cultures of people
outside of the U.S. I loved seeing the amazing world outside what we get to see
in our lives. There’s a lot more to learn in life than what can be learned in a
classroom and I think everyone should have the chances I’ve been given to see
so much of the world. I would encourage everyone to take a trip to somewhere
you wouldn’t think about going if they ever get the chance. Tons of people can
say they went to Paris, or France, or Rome, but not many people can say they’ve
spent time somewhere that no one’s heard of and learned how they lived and seen
a side of life that no one in America knows.
