This is the story I never really expected anyone to know.

It is the raw, sometimes uncomfortable truth about building a life as a foreign woman in Colombia.

I first arrived in February 2013.

Colombia wasn’t even supposed to be my destination. I had planned to return to Peru after spending six months in Brazil the previous year. Then a job opportunity appeared—with legal work status, a salary and a reason to change direction.

I called my mother and asked her to help me change my flight to Bogotá.

She did.

And just like that, the trajectory of my life changed.

Within days of arriving, strangers I met on the plane had invited me into their world. I stayed in a working-class Bogotá neighborhood, traveled with them to Honda, continued to Ibagué for corporate training and, two weeks later, was sent to Pereira.

That was where the real story began.

Nothing Prepared Me for Being a Woman Here

Colombia made me much more conscious of being a woman.

Not necessarily because I felt constantly unsafe, but because I became much more aware of how women are watched, approached, judged and interpreted.

Catcalling was one of the first things I noticed.

A whistle.

Hola, hermosa.

A comment from a doorway.

A man slowing down just enough to make sure I knew he was looking at me.

Foreign women react to this differently. Some hate it. Some are frightened by it. Some laugh. Some eventually stop hearing most of it.

I learned to assess the situation rather than follow one universal rule.

Sometimes I ignore it.

Sometimes I offer the slightest acknowledgment and keep walking.

Sometimes I change direction.

Sometimes my instincts tell me not to engage at all.

Living here has taught me that cultural understanding does not mean tolerating behavior that makes you feel unsafe.

But it has also taught me that not every uncomfortable interaction needs to become a confrontation.

That distinction took time.

Being Foreign Creates Its Own Set of Assumptions

Being a foreign woman adds another layer.

People make assumptions about money.

About independence.

About sexuality.

About what you will tolerate.

About what you can afford.

And occasionally about how easy you might be to take advantage of.

Over the years, I have dealt with people who delayed payment, tried to pay less than agreed, expected free work or assumed that because I was foreign I had an unlimited financial cushion somewhere.

I learned eventually that being friendly and being available are not the same thing.

Neither are kindness and weakness.

Boundaries became one of the most important skills I developed in Colombia.

If somebody repeatedly proves that they cannot honor an agreement, I stop doing business with them.

If somebody interprets professional friendliness as romantic interest, I create distance.

If someone assumes that being foreign means I should automatically pay more, I ask questions.

You learn.

Usually after getting burned a few times.

I Fell in Love With Colombia—And Maybe With the Wrong Things

It didn’t take long for me to meet someone.

He was Colombian, around my age, and introduced me to a side of the country I could never have reached as a conventional tourist.

We went swimming.

We traveled by motorcycle.

We disappeared into the mountains.

We visited his family near San José del Palmar in Chocó, where I experienced jungle, farms, flowers, rivers and a degree of isolation I had never known before.

I fell in love.

Very quickly.

My Mother Changed What Was Possible

One of the most important changes in my life came when my mother moved to Colombia in 2015.

Living with your mother as an adult is not always effortless.

But having family here gave me something extraordinarily valuable: a support system.

We have disagreed.

We have worried about money together.

We have raised a family together.

And we have helped one another survive periods when life became considerably more complicated than either of us expected.

Foreign residents often talk about cost of living, weather, visas and healthcare.

We don’t talk enough about support systems.

Who takes care of you when you are sick?

Who can pick up your child?

Who notices when something is wrong?

Who can you call when you have a real emergency?

You don’t stop needing people because you moved abroad.

In many ways, you need them more.

Gender Roles Were a Cultural Adjustment

One of the more complicated parts of living here has been understanding gender expectations.

Colombia is changing rapidly, and there is no single Colombian attitude toward women.

A professional woman in Bogotá may live inside a very different social world from a woman in a traditional rural community. Age, class, education, religion, family and geography all matter.

But I have certainly encountered expectations about relationships, motherhood, appearance and the roles of men and women that felt more traditional than what I grew up with in the United States.

Sometimes that has frustrated me.

Sometimes I have learned that what initially looked backwards was simply different.

And sometimes I still think something is backwards.

Cultural adaptation does not require surrendering your judgment.

It requires enough humility to understand why people behave as they do before deciding what you think about it.

That is a skill I did not have when I arrived.

Colombia Also Gave Me Room to Build Something

For all the difficult parts, Colombia gave me something else:

Space.

Not physical space.

Creative space.

I began teaching myself things.

WordPress.

SEO.

Photography.

Video.

Digital marketing.

Writing for an audience rather than simply writing for myself.

I started OpenMindedTraveler as an amateur project and gradually learned what readers actually wanted from me.

It turned out they were less interested in polished tourism brochures than in the stories that made me uncomfortable.

Dating disasters.

Cultural misunderstandings.

Conflict-zone journeys.

Motherhood.

Money.

Loneliness.

The things people usually leave out when selling the dream of life abroad.

My work gradually became more professional because my life became more professional.

I learned how to interview people.

How to research.

How to walk into a press event and know what questions I wanted answered.

How to talk about Colombia without either romanticizing it or reducing it to its problems.

Those abilities did not arrive with my plane ticket.

They were built here.

Integration Doesn’t Mean Becoming Colombian

I am still American.

There are habits, assumptions and cultural instincts I will probably carry forever.

I don’t need to erase those things to belong here.

What changed was my willingness to understand the environment around me.

I learned Spanish because I needed independence.

I learned how people communicate.

I learned how bureaucracy works—sometimes.

I learned when formality matters.

I learned which battles are worth fighting.

I learned that social relationships can solve problems that no website explains.

I learned that appearance sometimes communicates more here than Americans expect.

I learned that family can extend far beyond the people living under your roof.

And I learned that foreigners who spend all their time demanding that Colombia behave like the country they left usually end up exhausting themselves.

Integration is not imitation.

It is learning enough about another society to function inside it without constantly fighting against it.

Culture Tip #4: Embrace Entrepreneurship

One of the biggest opportunities in Colombia is starting your own business. Some of the happiest expats I’ve met run small businesses, turning their passions into profitable ventures. Even a hobby that generates income is a valuable asset!

I Don’t See Colombia the Same Way Anymore

When I first arrived, almost everything was exciting because everything was foreign.

Now much of Colombia is simply ordinary life.

I buy groceries.

I work.

I handle paperwork.

I argue with service providers.

I drink coffee.

I worry about my family.

I make plans.

I change them.

I solve whatever problem appears next.

That may sound less exciting than the woman who once disappeared into Chocó on the back of a motorcycle.

But I think it represents something more significant.

I stayed long enough for the adventure to become a life.

That changed the way I write about this country.

I no longer believe Colombia needs to be presented as paradise.

It isn’t.

Neither is it the violent caricature that still appears in some conversations overseas.

It is a country full of contradictions, beauty, frustrations, generosity, inequality, ambition, bureaucracy, warmth and surprises.

And after more than thirteen years, I am still learning how to live inside those contradictions.

What I Would Tell Another Foreign Woman

Come with curiosity.

But bring boundaries.

Learn Spanish.

Keep control of your finances.

Don’t confuse attention with respect.

Don’t confuse romance with stability.

Build friendships that have nothing to do with dating.

Develop your own professional or creative identity.

Pay attention to how people behave when you say no.

Learn enough about the culture to understand the rules before deciding which ones you want to break.

And don’t expect moving abroad to turn you into a different person.

It won’t.

Colombia has changed me enormously.

But most of that change happened because living here forced me to look more closely at who I already was.

That may be the most valuable thing this country has given me.

It gave me somewhere beautiful, complicated and occasionally infuriating in which to become more capable.

I arrived as a foreign woman looking for an adventure.

Somewhere along the way, Colombia became home.

Thinking About Building a Life in Colombia?

Visiting Colombia and living here are two very different experiences.

Coffee Axis Living is my practical guide to long-term life in Colombia’s Coffee Region, including housing, transportation, everyday costs, cultural adaptation and the realities that rarely make it into relocation brochures.

Interested specifically in relationships and dating? Explore Dating in Colombia for more candid stories and practical context.