On the trail of the next apartment.

So, Brent had found that place for us to move into.

And then the owners decided not to rent it. They want to sell instead.

We still had almost two months to find a place, but those months go quickly. I contacted the property manager of the first apartment we lived in when we got here, and he did indeed have an unfurnished apartment available for a somewhat reasonable price. Brent's friend was looking into an apartment for us elsewhere, so I told our original property manager that we could let him know by Monday. He said that was fine.

On Saturday, we knew the other place wasn't going to work out, so I emailed our guy and said we'd take it! We enjoyed the apartment the first time, loved the location, and were excited to move back there.

He told me he just signed a contract on it the day before.

I was shocked that he hadn't bothered to give us the first right of refusal, considering he told me we had until Monday, but he must have his reasons. At any rate, it left us scrambling.

And we're still scrambling. We're supposed to move out on August 15 and we have nowhere to go.

Apartment hunting is tricky. Not only do you need to find the right apartment in the right location for the right price, like you do anywhere, WE, as foreigners, also need to find one with a landlord that will let us rent without having a co-signer and without giving them a six-month deposit (which, we've heard, tends to disappear).

Backtrack: not really nowhere. We do have friends here with a large apartment who told us we can move in if we don't find anything. This will be nice -- we're good friends who really enjoy spending time with each other, and we've stayed together before for up to two weeks and it has worked out great. They also have a dog with whom Max can play, which will be nice for him and us, and they're in a great location. Plus, it helps them out with their rent and takes the pressure off of us to find something.

But. Then we have to move twice. And these times, we've got furniture.

En Fuego

I'm looking out the window at great plumes of black smoke rising from a building I can't see, but it's just four or five blocks away. This is the third structure fire -- visible from our apartment -- in the last two weeks. The first one was just two blocks away and brought sirens from all directions.

Not only that, the hills have been burning. It is dry season and the lack of rain does put the foliage at risk, but we also heard a story about one of the forest fires (that has been burning for days) was the brainchild of someone who wanted to do something with that land but wasn't allowed to do it because it was a protected area. Sad deal.

It's interesting to see so much fire, which I associate with transformation, at a time when we're undergoing a lot of it.

In what sounds like a grievous setback for Brent's office, he fired one of his employees, who then took the secretary with him (we suspect a bit of a love affair, otherwise it just doesn't make much sense) and they proceeded to call and reschedule every client to their new location. Theft, plain and simple: they stole those people's private information from the company.

Then they had the gall to ask for "liquidation" which is, by Colombian law, basically a bonus for getting fired or quitting. Seriously. When someone willingly leaves her job, like the secretary did, her employer is obligated to pay her an extra month's salary.

We'll see.

So it looked bad, and for a couple of days it felt really bad, too. But then things started shifting. Dramatically.

The phone rang: people looking for a first appointment. Other people came in off the street when they were walking by -- something which, Brent told me, just wasn't happening before. A retired chiropractor with lots of experience and success in marketing called us, saying he was new in Medellin and just wanted a place to work and play. The other secretary and the new one Brent just hired are great people and they're getting along wonderfully. The negative energy, which we already had associated with the former chiropractor but hadn't realized the former secretary was responsible for it, too, is gone. The place is blossoming, and we're feeling great.

2015 P.M. (Post-Marathon)

I'm practically living online now, with more and more computer projects taking my time, so when it comes time to write something here, I usually don't.

We've had a great time in the States--such a long visit was really welcome for me. Brent came after I did, so he hasn't been here as long. He went up to SD to watch me run the marathon, which turned out to be a very wonderful experience. I was very happy with my time of three hours and 57 minutes.

It feels weird to be done with that. I spent four months spent training for and thinking about running 26.2 miles. The three weeks before the race especially were focused so strongly on the race. Now its over. What's next?

I would definitely do it again. My knees are a bit uncomfortable with the idea, so I'll see how they recover before I commit. In Medellín I have to train mostly on bricks, concrete and asphalt.

Speaking of Medellín, it's going to be good to see the pup again. Max has been at a kennel outside of town ("camp" as we've been calling it), where he gets to run around in a field all day long with other dogs. He did a trial run the week before Brent left, and he came back tired and happy. I'm sure he's done well there. I hope he hasn't forgotten me.

Brent has found us a new place to live. Which means we have to move. Again.

When we found the place we're in now, I was SO HOPING and we were SO PLANNING to stay there for awhile. But, it does feel far from everything, including his office, and I don't blame him a bit for wanting to shorten that commute. For me, it doesn't matter much, since my work is all at home (well, in Medellín it's mostly at the coffee shop in the mall, because we had to wait for our Colombian paperwork to hook up the internet at home, and that just went through before we left, so we never had a chance to get it). I will enjoy being closer to restaurants and grocery stores, and not having to take an elevator 11 floors to take Max outside.

The new place will enable Brent to have an office on the ground floor, and we will live on the top two floors. There are three little balconies and a much bigger kitchen. I'm in no way looking forward to moving again, especially now that we have furniture, but it'll be good in the long run.

For now, we've got one more day to enjoy here in Colorado, and then we're catching a plane and heading south.

Springtime Here and Away

Obviously, I fell behind here.

Spring settled in to Medellín. The rains were heavy in April, but there were still periods of just pleasant cloudy weather. That pretty much ended in May and it's getting hot again.

Internetty things got busy very quickly, and we still don't have access at home so I've been setting up my "office" at the Juan Valdez coffee shop in the mall near our place. This means I only work online for four to five hours a day instead of the marathon sessions I'd likely be doing (and need to be doing) at home.

The good news is that it has given me more time with Máximo, who is growing like a little champion...

...and time to train for the marathon. That was been going incredibly well, better than I ever imagined it could. Now here we are, just three weeks left until the race. I'm back in the States and running on dirt (and sometimes in the rain). Weirdly, I'm looking forward to race day.

Back to electric.

As I was typing that last post, the gas guys were there saying they still couldn't hook up the gas because the meter had never been used. Brent said, well, that's why you're here, to HOOK IT UP. They reused. He wasn't sure if they were trying to make more money or if they really couldn't do it or what, but he'd had it. I don't blame him. He's been the one waiting around the apartment for gas people who show up at 1:00 pm after they'd said they would be there "first thing in the morning."

So, they left. Still no gas.

The owners came by later, just before I got home, to apologize and say they'd bring us an electric stove the next day.

Which they did. The cabinets, fixed to accommodate the gas we'll never use, got put back in. The flat-top electric range has been installed.

We are, just in time to pay our second month's rent, cooking. To celebrate, Brent brought home Vietnamese take-out.

Now we're (still not) cooking with gas.

We got the keys for our new apartment on February 15. The property manager told us to let him know when we could be there for the guys to come and hook up the gas so we could, you know, cook and stuff. We said that Friday.

He called back the next day to say that we didn't get to schedule at our convenience, but rather that the Gas would call within the next 20 (that's TWENTY, yes) days to say when they could come.

So we waited. About two weeks later, we got the call.

They showed up and said sorry, we can't hook up the gas because some dumbass built a cabinet directly over the nozzle, which is an obvious fire hazard, and also there is a cabinet directly above the stove without any protective element, also a fire hazard.

The property manager shifted into high gear and got someone over the very next day to take the cabinets out in order to fix them.

At that point the gas guy was able to come back. Which he did. And he said sorry, we can't hook up the gas because the line is full of water.

What the WHAT?

So, a few days later some guys came to clean the line. It was so bad that they couldn't get it done in one shot, so they're back today to work on it.

Brent thinks that perhaps the gas had never been hooked up to this apartment, because the line is so ridiculously full. Not a great sign.

At any rate, the cabinets are still not back. The gas is still not hooked up. Also, I am at the mall because we can't get internet at home yet, either.

At least I've got my puppy.

And puppy makes three.

Unbelievably, with everything going on with the trip and getting back and getting ready to move to a new apartment, I forgot to share this most exciting news:

We have been talking on and off about getting a dog the entire time we've been together (four years, actually, which coincided with the arrival of this little dude). We always kind of said, no, we shouldn't, because we travel a lot. But, we find ourselves feeling pretty permanent about Colombia AND we found someone who will love dogsitting, so, for my anniversary present, Brent went ahead and found Máximo -- or, as Brent says, Máximo found us.

We think he's about six weeks old. We think he's at least part Husky. (But his ears are floppy and his eyes are brown....I looked up Husky puppies just now and even as babies their ears stand up.) But we're not sure on any of it. He was not in the best situation, so I'm relieved that we're able to give him a better home.

Can I brag about my brilliant puppy? He's SO SMART. He doesn't really cry at night when we put him to bed -- in a week, he only cried about it twice: one morning when he wanted to get out, and one evening when we didn't do a good enough job tiring him out that day. Otherwise, he goes quietly to bed and stays until I get him around 6:30 am. House training has proven to be fairly easy, much to my surprise, and within two treats he knew how to sit.

I haven't had a dog in a long time. Yes, it's a little extra work, but so far it's so incredibly worth it. He's so full of love and joy, and that spreads like wildfire. Max is the best addition to our household.

Your Body Best

I've been a bit restless in terms of what I'm doing with my time. Truth is, I really miss teaching fitness and helping people get in shape. I miss that sweaty, in-the-gym time with my class participants.

Not that this will get me sweaty (thought I'm still doing plenty of that on my own, as always), but in order to keep teaching and sharing, I've at long last started a fitness blog: Your Body Best. This is where I'll be sharing my thoughts, ideas, and tips on all things related to fitness and healthy living. There are already some posts I'm really excited about, including one on yoga poses you can do in the chair, why I don't listen to music when I run, and some of the many ways people make themselves hate exercise.

It's a labor of love, so I'd really enjoy seeing your comments on the posts, and if you feel so inclined you can click the little share buttons to put your favorite posts on your Facebook, Twitter, or what have you. Spread the good word, and all.

I've also got a Facebook page; if you'd like to like it, I would like that.

Thanks for the support! I'm looking forward to sharing the years of fitness knowledge and ideas I've accumulated -- I hope you find it useful!

Spelling Lesson

C-O-L-O-M-B-I-A

That's Colombia, with two "o"s. ZERO "u"s.

This is how you spell the name of the country where I live. North Americans tend to get confused, I think because we have Christopher ColUmbus, ColUmbia University, ColUmbia Sportwear, ColUmbia South Carolina, and so on. But there is no "u" in the name of the country.

Thank you.

December happened, so we went to Ecuador.

Our first trip to Ecuador: December 17-23. It was a bit of an unexpected trip, at least as I booked the tickets. We just wanted to go to Panama for Christmas, but they were far pricier than normal and I realized it would be just an extra $20 to do a multi-destination flight than it would be to just go to Panama. Welcome to Quito!

It's a HIGH city, and even though we were coming from Medellín, which is about as high as Denver (where Brent grew up and where I lived for three years), we both noticed the altitude as we were walking around. Especially because Quito is also very hilly. Being, as it is, in the mountains and all.

We had a great time.

We rode up the Teleferico (like a ski lift, no snow) and saw a llama.

Unfortunately, the rest of the pictures are on my phone and I'm having trouble getting them HERE where I want them. So, hopefully, more soon. We did do more than see a llama. Though that was pretty awesome.

My Birthday: Marking the Beginning of the Holiday Season Since 1982

My birthday was a quiet but lovely Tuesday, capped off with sushi (and cake!) for dinner and a Vemma meeting.

We debated for a long while about how to do Thanksgiving: invite people and cook, go have turkey dinner at one of any number of bars that were offering it, or what. We finally decided on the bar meal, which was surprisingly not too bad. Our friends from upstairs joined us, and it was a really great time -- just ended too soon since Melanie had to get to an appointment.

Birthday trip!

On Friday, I kept threatening to go to the grocery store and couldn't understand why Brent didn't want me to. He eventually spilled that it was because we were going out of town the next day -- my surprise birthday trip!

We've taken a little trip every year for my birthday, though I truly wasn't expecting it this year because we've been so busy getting settled here. But, on Saturday, off we went to nearby Guatapé, a town we had both been hearing a lot about.

It was a gorgeous two-hour bus ride up, up, up the mountains. We arrived and were delighted by a quaint little town on the lake.

We were hungry, so we dropped in to the first hostel we saw. They had a room -- a painfully small room, but hey, we just needed a place to sleep that night and store our stuff. And it was ridiculously inexpensive. We didn't realize it was on top of a discoteca the jammed until about 1:30 the next morning, nor that it was half a block from the church, whose bells pealed around 7;00. Over and over.

Anyway, we had a nice lunch, walked around town, and took a short tuk-tuk ride up to La Piedra, a huge rock that overlooks the lake.  The views from up there were absolutely incredible.

We walked back in to Guatapé, cruised around the market a little more, and stopped for dinner at a restaurant that served Indian, Italian, Colombian, and Mexican cuisine. We were concerned that a restaurant that does everything couldn't possibly do any of it right, but we were wrong -- I had an excellent veggie quesadilla and Brent had some awesome red curry.

We got up the next day (after that rough sleep), strolled around once more, and headed back to Medellín.

This is a must-see kind of place, and we look forward to going back there -- especially with some of you people who might come to visit. We'll pick a different hotel next time.

Home sweet gym.

The salsa class a couple of weeks ago was fantastic, and I was definitely interested in returning for more and more. But, they are private classes, and the price adds up, so I decided to keep exploring my options before committing.

We stopped by the gorgeous gym next door, where it took the saleswoman 30 minutes to explain the many enrollment options and the many, many benefits of being a member. It was an awesome place, but the only way to get it under $100 per month was to pay the whole year up front. Since we'll be moving in another month or two and we don't yet know where to, I didn't want to do that.

Up the hill there's a kid's dance studio which, to my great sadness, does not offer adult ballet classes. They do, however, have an adult rumba class every morning. First one's free, so I dropped by last week. It's a sort of mix of steps from a variety of dance styles, and as we got started I wondered if it was going to manage to be a big enough cardio challenge for me.

Uh, yes.

There were only two times when the steps tripped me up, and the instructor was quick to give me a little one-on-one attention until I was up to speed. Aside from that, they were big, fast movements that wore me out.

It was awesome. So I told the teacher I'd be back on a Tues/Thurs schedule.

Also last week, we met a guy in our building (from Colorado!) who does Crossfit. I've been wanting to try this for ages, and he said I should come along sometime. First class is, after all, free. So I did that today.

I had no illusions that this would be too easy. In fact, I was almost scared. I've been keeping in shape with yoga, pilates, running, and some cardio kickboxing, but I haven't done a workout with weights in over a year, let alone one as challenging as I've always heard Crossfit to be.

If you're not familiar, Crossfit workouts vary but they're always intense. Today's warmup was some walking lunges and wall sits while holding a 10-pound medicine ball at shoulder level. This was followed by a 12-minute segment. To start, we had one minute to do 12 squats (with weight). If you finish early, which you do, you rest until the second minute starts, at which time we did an overhead press with dumbbells. The third minute was 15 dynamic planks (hands to elbows and back). We repeated those three exercises four times.

Then came the WOD, or Workout of the Day: 300 jump ropes, 45 PULL-UPS (deargoddeargoddeargod), 45 thrusters (a squat into an overhead press with the bar), and another 300 jumping jacks. As fast as you can, with a limit of 15 minutes.

The pull-ups were every bit as difficult as I expected, if not moreso. I can do pull-ups, but I've never made them a part of my workout aside from proving to myself that I'm capable of them, so I've only ever done a couple at a time. Never 45. I did get to use an elastic band that helped a little bit, but not enough to enable me to go to sleep tonight believing I'll be able to move my arms tomorrow.

After that, the thrusters were tough, but I broke them into sets of 15, 15, 10, and 5. I finished the whole workout with about 30 seconds to spare, which was pretty much on par with the rest of the class.

Tired, but successful. And I really liked it. That free class. Always gets you.

The best part for my ego was, as I was thanking the instructor, I learned that he hadn't realized that was my first time in class. WIN.

Not such a win: tomorrow I'm going back to rumba, and I'm going to feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel it.

Back to school.

If you haven't heard about Coursera, you need to check it out. It's a site full of college-level courses you can take for free. You can't apply them toward a degree or anything, but there are tracks you can take for a small fee that give you a certificate or something in case you need proof that you're learning stuff.

I don't need the proof, so I'm just going to class.

There are courses in every subject you can imagine, and I've been browsing the site since my last days in Argentina. I didn't take a class then because we were getting ready to leave the country and I figured I would have other things on my mind. Over the last couple of years I went back and forth between forgetting about the site and not being able to find a class that interested me enough and started in the time frame I was looking for.

Until now. Three weeks ago I joined a class called Better Leader, Richer Life. It's not so much about studying as it is about reflection and self-critique and growth, which is more up my alley nowadays, anyway. It has forced me to think of a few things in new ways, and we've got some challenging assignments coming up.

Oh, and there are like 30,000 students in my class. Wild.

More recently, I discovered the Denver-based site Craftsy.com. They offer classes in a variety of artsy thing, from cake decorating to painting, weaving to gardening. They have a few free mini-classes, but most of them you do pay for -- though it's much less than you would pay to take a class at the studio or community center, and you don't have to go out in the snow. (Not so much a problem for me anymore, but definitely something I would have taken into consideration while living in South Dakota or even Denver.) I haven't taken any yet, but it's on my radar.

Yes, I am scouting real-world learning opportunities, as well. I'm taking a private salsa class tomorrow. I had found a fantastic dance -- and pole dance! -- studio to try, but it's a long walk from our apartment and in a sort of warehouse area. Not really a place I want to be walking home from at night, at least not yet. Of course, there are a variety of yoga studios and gyms to check out, too. We'll see what I land on in the next couple of weeks.

Back to the city life, and...

You may not remember, because when we first arrived in Buenos Aires I was excited and trying to keep my chin up after a very rough couple of months in Chile, but on our first day there I took a trip to the grocery store and spent the next week recovering. In fact, I never really did recover -- we had some wonderful times in that city, but it never quit feeling heavy and panicked to me.

Fast forward to a month ago as we were getting ready to move to Medellín. I was very excited about it, even though it was hard to leave our Panama friends behind, but there was a part of me that was dreading the idea of living in the city again. I was afraid it would be like Buenos Aires.

Good news: It's not.

It's still a city, with its traffic and whatnot, but as I've written about it's incredibly clean and friendly. We've got the movie theater just down the street again, and so many restaurants we'll never be able to try them all. I'm frozen by choices as I consider the various dance and yoga studios I could join -- and I haven't even looked at the gyms yet.

It's a great place to be. If you're reading this, I hope you're simultaneously planning a visit.

Happy birthday, Brent

In honor of one of my very favorite holidays: breakfast enchiladas, homemade banana pudding, and the Broncos game.

Happy birthday, love.

The rainy season strikes!

A few days after we arrived, Brent was told that the rain would start "any day now".  And so it did, about a week ago.

It's sort of like our Panama rainy season, in that it rains for a couple of hours a day. The difference so far is that it has been doing that every single day, with one day where it only STOPPED raining for a couple of hours. And I'm told the season doesn't last as long.

Today has dawned bright and beautiful, however, and if Brent wakes up we're going adventuring.

Let them look at cake.

The market seemed a little thin on Sunday, and when Brent got to talking to one of the vendors, we learned that it was because some of the other vendors were at a food festival at the convention center at Plaza Mayor.

Food? Okay! we thought, so we walked our purchases back to our apartment, consulted the map, determined it was a long but doable walk to the convention center, and we headed out. Luckily, since it was Sunday, Avenida Poblado was blocked off for pedestrian use and we were able to follow it for probably four miles before we had to turn left and walk just a bit further.

We happened to arrive just as the festival was opening for the day. When we walked in, it didn't seem like much -- a bunch of disinterested-looking wine vendors. But we walked through that and into another room -- and that's where it got awesome.

There was so much. We walked through it all twice, then realized we'd totally missed an upstairs AND a downstairs!  And downstairs is where they were holding a cake decorating contest.

I would have loved to watch it until the end, but the Broncos were playing that afternoon so Brent was in a bit of a rush to get me home and get himself to the right television channel. No matter -- we were at the festival for about four hours. Very well done.

Low-rise living in the high rise.

Our 24-floor building has an incredible view from the top (and the area's only rooftop pool, though we know how many cares I give about that):

We live on the second floor.

It's a nice little apartment, carefully chosen after an exhausting online search from my over-hot living room in Panama: two bedrooms, furnished decently (awesome purple barstools, stupidly uncozy living room chairs). The price is higher than one should be paying in Colombia, but we have to keep in mind, A.) it is the lowest 2-bedroom price in this building; B.) this building is brilliantly located and pretty nice with its amenities and security; and C.) we are living in a furnished vacation rental in the nicest, most expensive part of the city. So.

I actually really like it (would love it if it had a couch you could sprawl on). We've got lots of big windows, so it's always light and airy. The bathroom is big, the closet is okay for one (Brent doesn't like to share closet space with me, so he took the spare bedroom. And bathroom, for that matter.)

I've let myself forget that we're only here for two months. We just wanted something to get us started, at which point we'll find a longer-term arrangement. That means more apartment hunting, which I'm pretending doesn't have to happen....

At home in the new city.

We got to Medellín on Saturday (after a nutsy two days of packing and cleaning in Panama). Life in Colombia is off to a fantastic start.

We went to a Vemma meeting and got to see the absolute excitement and momentum that is building here. The first shipments -- and the first checks -- have been received. So awesome.

Brent's office is fantastic. He's got a great assistant who is so excited about the changes and new ideas, and a couple of great doctors who are going to stay on with him.

I've been catching up on work, doing some local research, and walking around our neighborhood -- which is pretty fantastic. We're close to the farmer's market on Sundays, not much farther to the main, trendy bar and restaurant area, and a couple of blocks to two huge malls, grocery stores, and movie theaters.

We've got a gym in the building, but it's lame -- four cardio machines, the treadmill of which I can't seem to get to work. So we're casually scouting gyms and yoga studios, and hiking up these monster hills in the meantime.