Welcome to my blog!

Hello family and friends! I'm relatively new to this blogging thing so please bear with me as I learn my way around the blogosphere. So the reason behind this courageous or maybe silly attempt of mine to start yacking away in cyberspace is to document and share with you all what I expect to be the biggest adventure of my life thus yet: my long awaited return after more than a quarter century to COLOMBIA, the country where I was born!

As most of you already know, I have been offered a teaching position at a British Montessori School in the capital city--Bogota--which as of now will be an entire academic year (August to June). If at the end of the original contract I like it there and they like my teaching I have the option to extend for another year or possibly more (I think my mom is secretly hoping I marry Juan Valdez, jajaja). However, I do plan on coming back to the U.S. eventually. Ideally I'd like to have a career in which I'm stationed for most of the year in a place like New York or D.C. and then be able to travel to other countries to oversee and manage different development projects. So this teaching thing will be for only a couple of years at most so that I can satisfy my need to return to my place of birth.

The journey back to Colombia has already been quite a challenging quest up to the present moment. A few months back my US passport expired so I applied for a renewal but was rejected because I had apparently given them my Peace Corps passport and NOT my original passport that I had received back in 2001. Thus, after receiving the job offfer, I applied for an expedited passport at the end of May but after not receiving anything in the mail after the supposed 2-3 week processing period, I called the National Passport Agency and was told they had never received my application. Then I contacted the post office from which it was sent and they also could not track it. Thus, I figured it had been lost somewhere during shipping so I figured my last shot was to go in person to the regional passport center in Boston to have an emergency passport processed within 2 weeks of my departure. However, miraculously a brand-new passport showed up at my house last Saturday with my old passport as if nothing had ever happened! How happy (and surprised) I was because now I didn't have to go in person to the agency in Boston! Plus, I got billed the regular $110 and not the expedited amount of $170 so I saved money too. That's always nice!

Meanwhile, during the same time I thought my U.S. passport application had been lost, I found out that Colombia still recognizes me as a citizen so I have to have a valid Colombian passport to enter Colombia as well (in other words, I'm a dual citizen). My Colombian passport just expired this last January so I also had to go to the Colombian consulate in Boston to work on getting my first-ever adult cedula (Colombian ID) and a new passport. After getting my parents to Fedex me some critical original documents, a few stress-induced tears, running back and forth between the Consulate and the CVS at Copley Square for the proper visa size photos and correct money order amount for cedula and passport processing fees, I now also have a Colombian passport! Wooohoooo! So after thinking the gods were against me, I managed to get both passports within a period of two weeks or so. Amen!

So now I'm ready (at least paperwork wise) to head off to the place I've always dreamed of going back to someday. I'm a little sad to be leaving behind my dear friends from my two years of living here on the East Coast and I'm kind of in a state of disbelief that I'm actually going back to Colombia after so long. However, I'm excited about teaching again and even more excited about eventually making it back to my little pueblito where it all began. I hope you will decide to follow me on my journey of self-discovery!

So long for now and see you in a week or so when I'm in the southern hemisphere!