Intro: Julian in Colombia
Hi I'm Julian and I really like coffee. I want to say "and I always have", but that's not true. I didn't start liking coffee until I was 19 and had my first real job. And when I say real I mean that it was my first job that wasn't working for my parents. Starting in high school I worked at my parent's bagel shop, making batch after batch of our 12 different flavored drip coffee options and highly syrupy lattes on our tiny old espresso machine. When I moved away for college I got a job at a nice grocery store with a cafe inside. The coffee was through a company with a coffee lab and trained us on tasting coffee, latte art, and manually pulling espresso. This is when I learned that coffee was more than just a drink that my parents made in the morning, or an ingredient to add to a cup of syrup and milk.
Over the next few years, I worked at different cafes making and serving coffee. I learned a lot of contradicting ideas and rules about coffee. Each place had its own rules, or they didn't have any rules at all, which is always worse. I developed my skills as a barista and decided what my rules are for coffee.
In 2023, LuLu and I decided to leave the country and move to Colombia,. LuLu is working on their dissertation and the work is based in Colombia. We'd been going back and forth on if we should stay in Miami and travel, or just move. One of the main factors that pushed us to move was the anti-trans legislation being pushed in Florida. I didn't have access to hormones at the time that we made our official decision. It was a hard decision to make of course, I had plans for some sort of coffee business in Miami and no real job prospects in Colombia. It was also incredibly exciting! I would say I am historically a person who gets bored by staying in one place for too long, and LuLu is the same. A move to another country was the right amount of scary and exciting.
We got to Bogotá in September. LuLu works in the Amazon rainforest, and even though we were ready to move to another country, we weren't quite ready to go from Miami straight to the jungle. We settled into Bogotá. There are so many things about emigrating to another country that you can't know unless you do it. Some are big, like navigating the visa process. Some are small, like grocery shopping and not knowing any of the brands on the shelves. The grocery store got easier, the visa process was hard and annoying until it was over. I started researching what I could do to get a job. Any job really, but I was hoping for something that didn’t require a “coding bootcamp”. During my search, I found a company that partners with small Colombian farmers to help them distribute their coffee to larger markets.
This was the beginning stage of Sorry Coffee in Colombia. I reached out to the company, ordered samples, and started building my website. All of this required a pretty steep learning curve; aside from learning what kind of coffee I like, I had never done anything like this.
And now here we are! Kind of. I’m still on that steep learning curve. But I’m enjoying every part of it. Creating something like this where I get to be creative, drink amazing coffee every day, and connect with new and old friends has been incredible. The people part has been my favorite. I’ve felt so supported by people I know really well, people I don’t know, and people I now consider good friends, because they have supported this thing I have created. I have also been fortunate enough to be in a position to help a friend achieve their top surgery goal. I had mine in 2018, after saving up for months to pay my copay, and it is the best thing I have ever done. I’m so proud that I get to help Cata, and I hope to be able to continue to support my community like this.
So yeah, buy some coffee! It’s just really good and it supports at least two (2) queer people :)
Follow us on Youtube to see what it's like to live in the Amazon! (as queer vegans)
The last picture I took in our Miami apartment. This was our first home together and I will always love it.
Got to Bogotá and started settling in and getting to know the city.
First time trying the coffee!
LuLu began traveling back and forth to the Amazon. Sometime I went, sometimes I stayed in Bogotá.
First look at the bags!
We're living in Leticia now (the Amazon). We're sad about leaving Bogotá and our friends there, but we are so excited for this next part of our lives.
