How 7 Months Turned Into 3 Years — My Expat Story in Colombia

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that hits you on arrival — not from the flight, but from the altitude. Medellín sits at 1,495 metres above sea level. Your body knows before your mind does that something is different here.

I came planning to stay three months. I’d heard it was affordable, beautiful, full of other expats who could ease the transition. All of that turned out to be true. What nobody mentioned was the way the city gets under your skin quietly — not all at once, but in small increments, like learning a language.

The city doesn’t perform itself for you. You have to earn it, slowly, by just showing up.

By month two, I had a coffee shop I called mine. A bakery where they knew my order. A neighbourhood route I walked every morning before sitting down to work. These are small things — embarrassingly small, if you’d asked me before I left — but they are the architecture of a life abroad.

The hardest part wasn’t the Spanish, or the bureaucracy, or even the loneliness that creeps in on quiet Sundays. It was letting go of the pace I’d imported from home. Medellín is full of people working incredibly hard, but the city itself moves differently. Lunch is long. Evenings are unhurried. The hills go on forever.