That Flighty Temptress, Adventure

I'll never forget the day that I carried a 150 pound door up the side of a mountain. To say that the endeavor was rather daunting, would be putting it mildly. Towering at 5'2 and a half inches and weighing in at 103 pounds, my body was not made for the labor that even full grown men would have had difficulty with. Muscle spasms rippled through my arms as I balanced the door on my back and made my way up the steep incline. To my left was a throng of men and women, both native and foreign, carrying various other pieces of the transitional homes we were going to build. To my right was a sheer drop that plummeted several hundred feet (safe to say I kept my eyes glued forward).
My group and I eventually reached our stopping point and I unfastened the door and slid it off my back. Already caked in mud and undeterred by whatever protests my body was making, I skidded down a small slope to a bed of rocks right on the trails edge. I sat there, one leg swinging over the ridge and basked in the warmth of the pulsing Colombian sun. I took long deep breaths and flooded my senses with the redolence of flowers, fruit trees and the heady, sweet smell of sugar cane that was wafting up from the valley below. Built almost entirely of red brick houses with red clay roofs, Medellín appears a sea of copper tiles from above, interspersed regularly by swatches of greenery and flowers. The city’s perpetual springlike weather, coupled with it’s vast expanse of blossom meadows, earned it the nickname “The City of Everlasting Spring.” Now, gazing down upon the valley, with the sun shining high above and the cool breeze tousling my blonde locks, I couldn’t suggest a more perfect name. Medellín, Colombia is one of the poorest cities I have ever visited, and yet it is simultaneously one of the most breath taking. I came to Colombia as part of a nonprofit organization whose mission is to fight extreme poverty in Latin America. My goal in Medellín was to help rehabilitate families in need, and yet I felt like I was the one being rehabilitated. Although plagued by poverty, Medellín does more to stir the soul then any affluent city with skyscrapers ever could.
Hearing my guide's voice calling me back to work, I stood. Medellín glistened as the sun shone down on it, the rooftops melding together in the light, looking almost as if the lush green hills had amber rivers streaming through them. I took one last look and then made my way back up the slope, turning my back on the city of Spring.