Two years and it seems like two minutes

That's such an old bastard thing to say. It seems like only yesterday i was wolfing down chunchuyos and tannind aguardiente like there's no tomorrow, i mutter decrepitly to myself in 50 years time...

One week left!

It's been an interesting couple of years. I wrote a wee article about my time here for the Language Centre blog and was almost getting teary eyed at the thought of Colombian scran and tunes, had to insert a totally unnecessary Terminator quote AND photo just to cheer myself up a bit.

I'm writing this in my room (where the kind neighbours are providing me with unusually high speed internet) which is even more of a shambles than usual, with a battered suitcase overflowing with books, clothes and all the unclassifiable tat i've amassed over the years and can't bear to part with. Said tat includes a really nice wooden spoon, a vast stack of highly illegal pirated DVDs, assorted crochet hooks in various metallic colours and a green alarm clock which has a chicken who pecks at seeds as the minutes tick by. Hello giant excess baggage fine! When i have a prog rock band it's going to be called Giant Excess Baggage Fine.

Selling all our furniture has been another interesting experience. Try offloading a giant 1920's parrot cage, the world's most elderly red velvet sofa or a paint-splattered and excessively creaky bed on the unsuspecting Bogota public. Actually the ladies i teach at the nuns school have been magic, there's even a parrot fan among them! Serendipitous.

At the weekend we had a bit of a cheerio party in Galerias with some of the colleagues and assorted pals, air conditioning faults and serious overcrowding meant i spent the whole night sweating and worrying that there would be a fire and we would all get crushed trying to get to the exits before realising that the brutal humidity would make a laughing stock out of any unexpected fires. My photos the next day contained an enthusiastic series of unidentified hands giving the air vents the thumbs up in a vain attempt to flatter them into life.

On balance they've been a great two years. The second one was a thousand times more difficult than the first, for a variety of reasons. One of the many things i've realised here is perhaps not to trust people so much, aye they might be out to rip you off which is fairly easy to pick up on but more heartbreaking is when they turn out to be different from who you thought they were. Hard ways to learn things.

However, most learning experiences have been braw. Learning to drive was a laff and a half, and with a week of classes under my belt i am now the proud and totally legal holder of a bona fide Colombian driving license. Get in! Learning to dance salsa was crackin' as well, not that i'm any expert but at least i can enjoy whirling around to Grupo Niche or the godly Marc Anthony without worrying about where my feet are landing. Although i give all the credit for anything i may have picked up to the brave and persistent Sergio, who after countless afternoons of bruised feet and hissy fits finally managed to have me enjoying myself instead of worrying about crap footwork. Learning to speak like a true Bogotano with a mixture of old buffer language and total youthful slang was a joy, as was learning how to coax a class of 45 bored 17 year olds into chatting away in English.

At work i learned a lot of incredibly useful things like how to use Excel and how to organise film festivals which hopefully will come in handy in the ongoing search for gainful employment...

I tried a huge variety of bizarre food, swam in rivers under leafy canopies of vines, drove across deserts in the back of trucks and explored the length and breadth of Bogota. I saw El Pibe Valderrama waddle up and down the pitch at El Campin and got teargassed at the Mayday march. I was interviewed on breakfast television and sang crap karoke in front of far too many people. I got a tattoo, did some volunteering, went to the oldest bowling alley in Latin America, turned 25 on a very depressing and rainy day, made some great pals and lost a few along the way. Aye its been good while it lasted but i'm ready to go home.

Coming up: Colombia to Caledonia...