Telling my old-school, overly-patriotic, republican, German family who've lived in the same city for generations that I was moving to Colombia did NOT go smoothly. Here's a direct quotation from my very sweet grandmother whom I love dearly right after I told her: " You're going to take one step out of that airport and get kidnapped and raped and we'll never see you again!" That lovely chat is what began to show me just what little opinion some people have of Colombia. Being nervous about my move, I of course researched the topic. What I found was that while the United States had an annual murder rate of 14, 249, Colombia had 12, 776. Neither of those numbers are particularly great but Colombia is significantly safer in terms of murder that the U.S. is. I
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