Written by Sam Lambert, (Berea College), Student Correspondent for CET Colombia, Spring 2026
Imagine walking down the streets of Cali, Colombia, and you pass by the strangest-looking person you’ve ever seen. She’s super tall, lanky, white, et cetera, but that isn’t the weird part. She’s wearing long sleeves, long pants, gloves, and a hat—all while the muggy heat of midday weighs down on your bones. It’s a spectacle. What’s wrong with that gringa?
Well, friends, that gringa is me. My name is Sam, I’m a student in the CET Colombia program, and I’m allergic to the sun.
Why Colombia?
So many students have asked me why I decided to come to Cali. The sun allergy alone ought to have pushed me away from Latin America entirely, but add to it my propensity for heat exhaustion and an easily disturbed stomach and many assume that I should have gone somewhere else—maybe London, cool and rainy with bland food. That would make more sense, right? However, there are three main reasons that led to me choosing CET Colombia:
1. As a sociology student planning to enter the field of social work, I consider it my business to understand cultures foreign to my own. CET Colombia focuses on race and ethnicity in Colombia, with classes on Afro-Colombians and how blackness factors into the culture of the people of Cali. Learning about these issues from the people who actively live them is invaluable in my career. Taking classes like Race and Identities: Debates in the Colombian Context and The Cultures of Afro Descendants in Colombia will broaden my understanding of the people in the picture and increase my depth of empathy with the people I work with in the future. The program also includes a Travel Seminar that will bring us to various parts of the country so that we can be truly immersed in the rich cultures found there.
2. I already speak Spanish. After serving as a full-time Spanish-speaking missionary for eighteen months, I became proficient in the language and was ready to jump right in. However, I’ve never spent any significant time in Latin America—my missionary service was spent in California. The full immersion in the Spanish language is something I’m super excited for—and CET Colombia offers some awesome opportunities for learning. From daily interaction with the city to having a local roommate to direct enroll classes at la Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, I foresee that my language skills will grow exponentially. I guess we’ll see at the end of May!
3. This is the most brutally honest reason—CET Colombia is super affordable compared to other study abroad programs around. All these awesome experiences for half the price of comparable programs is utterly astounding. Additionally, CET offers unique program scholarships to financially assist students. Being able to study abroad is a privilege, but CET makes an effort to include students that might not otherwise be recipients of that privilege.
So here I am, in all my tall-white-allergic-to-the-sun glory, exploring the streets of Cali with the other members of my cohort and our local roommates. Honestly? It’s been pretty great so far.
So, uh . . . what’s been going on?
We’ve only just finished our first week and a half here in Cali, and boy has it been busy. Our orientation schedule is varied and meticulous. We’ve met one another, learned all kinds of safety tips, explored the UAO campus, eaten at local restaurants, enrolled in classes, gotten bus cards, ridden the sky tram, joined the salsa party at the Boulevard, and taken a tour of the city. I’ve also visited the restaurant of my local roommate’s mom, which was an hour bus ride across the city. As students with CET, we have native to Cali roommates who are currently attending university to show us the ropes of the city. They love to go exploring with us and take us to their favorite spots! They also give us the inside scoop on which street food is the best.
That’s been my favorite part so far—the food. I write down every night what I’ve tried for the first time, then give it a rating. So far, pandebono is my favorite without competition. It’s a kind of bread made with cheese and enjoyed warm, one of the staple treats of Cali. I could eat pandebono all day every day for a week, but it isn’t the only good thing. A normal lunch here includes rice, beans, salad, protein, a fried plantain, and a cup of juice. I haven’t yet had a meal where I didn’t clean my plate.
The fresh produce is just as delicious as everything else. Colombia has fruit that the United States does not, like lulo, which tastes kind of like citrus-y and is delicious with condensed milk in a drink called lulada. I’ve come to be quite attached to lulo! Some other students and I ventured out to the market this week and bought some of our own, alongside other fruits and vegetables to prepare them ourselves. It was in this venture that I unfortunately discovered I’m allergic to mango, which will prove to be more devastating than the sun allergy.
The thing I find most interesting is how much juice people drink. Every meal comes with juice, sometimes sweet, sometimes not. I’ve seen lulo, grape, mango, pineapple, tomato (!), mulberry, and an unidentified citrus fruit that tasted kind of like a tangerine. I love juice as much as the next person, but it isn’t really a popular drink option in the U.S., let alone a complementary one. No complaints here, I love a good cup of lulo juice, especially when it comes free with my lunch.
The cost of living is low here—we bought a wide selection of produce at the market and didn’t spend more than $15. An Uber to Casa CET is usually a max of $5 from our apartment, and eating out for lunch is about $4. Even so, those small costs add up, and I decided to download a budgeting app to help me keep track of my spending. This has helped me a ton to not go bankrupt over fresh bread, because I would buy pandebono every single morning if something wasn’t keeping me in check. I set an amount I can spend each month (split into categories like food, groceries, transportation, etc.) and I can report my transactions at the end of each day to make sure I don’t exceed my own regulations. Now I don’t have to be constantly stressed over money!
These past two weeks have been so fun. I know I made my sun allergy the whole hook to this post, but I haven’t been worried about it at all. There’s been so much to learn and explore that with proper sun care, I’ve been able to enjoy every second without even thinking about it! It’s also been fun to brag to my family about the warm weather we have while they’ve been dealing with snowstorms back home.
I love it here. I can’t wait for classes to start—next time, I’ll give a rundown of my classes and maybe share a funny story or two!
Much love,
Sam