Settled in Turkey, and busy, I have neglected this site for months. But I still keep up with friends in Colombia regularly and read the Colombian news from time to time. Turkey and Colombia have so very much in common, I couldn’t even begin to list them all. Some things I found charming or frustrating about Colombia are double or triple or more here in Turkey. And yet the countries don’t have much to do with each other–they don’t even have embassies in each other’s capital cities.
Maybe I would find other countries that are kind of 2 1/2 world-ish that are also like Colombia and Turkey–lots of people have suggested that. But, based on my friend Jose’s experiences in London in the past seven months (he went there when I came to Turkey), I’m drawing some anecdotal conclusions about the similarities between the two.
Jose went to London to study English, and I helped him to get there. Basically he loves Colombia but feels the need to escape (that’s the correct word) if he is ever to have any opportunity to improve himself. He has a university degree and is hard-working, but those things don’t count for too much in the classist society that Colombia still is. So, he got a visa to study English in London and is about to renew it for another year.
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