...and I'm off!

As promised, I would start and maintain a blog for my Colombian Adventure. Now that I think of it, I should have named my blog "Aventura Colombiana", but it doesn't matter right now because I'm an American and can get away with those kinds of mistakes. =)

Today, I've been cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, packing, and doing a whole bunch of other logistical stuff that is necessary to leaving the country for a month! I'm very excited because this is only the second time I've ever left North America. Last summer, I went to Europe - London and Paris. This trip to Colombia will be quite different. I'll be immersed in the Spanish culture of one of the most culturally rich countries in South America, aside from Argentina, arguably. I hope to pick up Spanish and further pave my dream to full fluency in as many languages as possible. At this point, with Spanish, I can understand conversations and pick up main points in them, but I'm still finding difficulty with conversing as fluidly as I do with English.

Tomorrow morning starts my 5 week vacation from San Francisco. I will be visiting my family in Toledo, and will spend my 27th birthday there as well, which is Friday! I leave for Cartagena, Colombia on Saturday, the 19th. It really hasn't hit me yet that I'm going to be gone for thirty-four days! I look forward to this trip impacting me on many levels. I'm sure it will be challenging, exciting, difficult, and enticing!

Over the coming weeks, I hope to help others live vicariously through me via this blog. I will post at least 2-3 times a week. And thankfully, I won't be bitching too much about the weak dollar. 1800 Colombian pesos = 1 US Dollar. I was told an easy way to convert, since everything in Colombia is in thousands, is to just take off three zeros, and divide the remaning number in half. Therefore, 10,000 pesos = 5 dollars.

Also, during the time I will be there, all of Colombia is equilvalent to Central Time. (One hour behind Eastern time zone, and two hours ahead of West Coast). I will be there from July 19th-August 16th!!! No puedo esperar! (I can't wait!)