El riesgo es que te quieras quedar

I’m sitting here watching rows of arms reach upwards to adjust the air on the plane. We’re taking off from Bogota in the middle of summer and the AC system is struggling to compete with the heat at this altitude. As I’m writing this I notice my newly bronzed skin against the white paper, and my handmade wooden bracelet that boasts yellow, blue, and red from the Colombian flag. The tan I got from spending two weeks in the sun—frisbee fields, crowded plazas with Botero sculptures, country trails, and abandoned side streets. But the bracelet I got from a sweet woman who sold me very South American looking cotton pants at the market. We had so much fun haggling with her. I complained that she didn’t have the colors I wanted, and that I looked like I was a man because the seam of the crotch was so low. She sort of giggled and kept drawing a horizontal line across her throat as if we were killing her with the prices we were asking for. But since we were all exaggerating, she sold us the pants as her family nearby cheered, and she tied this bracelet on our wrists as if to say it was all in fun. We were obviously two American girls in desperate need of something to cover our legs before the sun nestled down into the mountains. I had no idea Colombia would be this cold at night!

We went hiking:

Rode in a potato truck:

Celebrated my 20th birthday:

Checked out the Christmas displays:

Rode bikes around Bogota:

Played lots of ultimate:

Ate amazing food:

And tried to cook our own:

The woman next to me makes a cross as the plane leaves the ground and the city shrinks into glittering Christmas lights. I reach for my own cross and remember the necklace in its place: a simple black cord with a silver coin. The design is an ambiguous figure running with a disc. The cold metal feels good against my slightly burnt chest. Everyone who played in the tournament in Medellin received these necklaces, and now that the games are over, people in Argentina, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Canada, and the US are wearing them. We are part of a community that is bigger than our practice fields, bigger than our team, and even bigger than our own continent. It’s always awkward having new people play representing with your team, but I am grateful for the two female teams that let us—three American girls with Argentine accents— play with them. Everyone has different styles of playing, different strategies, and different philosophies, but at the end of the day, you are still playing the same game. And hopefully having fun! So after two tournaments, two weeks, two Colombian cities, and two decades of life, I sit patiently in a country I never dreamed I’d visit as the clouds consume the plane and I am consumed by a heat-induced sleep.