Tag Archives: barranquilla

Life, Liberty, and the Boston Marathon: Why Road Races Matter in the Pursuit of Happiness

Posted on April 19, 2013 | 7 comments

Hearts around the world ached upon hearing the news of the lives lost or forever changed by the bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The assaults were an attack on our humanity, an affront to our collective conscience. To hurt for the victims and to feel revulsion for the killers required neither U.S. citizenship nor personal experience with terrorism, and it certainly didn’t require one to be a marathon runner. And yet, for me, the fact that the bombings occurred so close to the finish line of such a revered and enduring road race – one that I’ve aspired to run one day – made the tragedy feel awfully close to home.

The Starting Line of the Barran10Killa
The Finish Line of the Barran10Killa

I’m a lifelong runner and have finished three marathons – far fewer than many people I know. Yet each of those three 26.2 mile / 40 kilometer events has been a point of extreme happiness in my life. Continue reading →

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Posted in Running, Sports & Leisure

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We’re in the newspaper! Does that make it official?

Posted on April 18, 2013 | Leave a comment
"Congratulations to the great city of Barranquilla. From the first time we visited, we felt at home."

“Congratulations to the great city of Barranquilla. From the first time we visited, we felt at home.”

I think we’re officially Barranquilleros now!  The clip to the left is from the April 8th edition of the local paper, La Libertad. The photo and quote were taken when  Gio and I attended “Barranquilla Sabe Cantar” (“Barranquilla Knows How to Sing”), a free community event celebrating the City of Barranquilla’s 200th Birthday. We were asked if we’d like to extend our congratulations to the City, and of course we said yes! Even though our quote was “doctored” a little bit and makes us look more like visitors than residents, we’ll ignore that and instead assume that this means we have indeed arrived. Hooray!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Making the Leap

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Top Ten Ways that Going to the Doctor in Colombia is Different than in the U.S.

Posted on April 3, 2013 | 11 comments

As you might imagine or know from personal experience, living in another country requires getting used to certain things that, if you’re lucky, you never have to encounter during short-term travel. Among those are health care and health insurance systems. Besides obvious challenges like trying to describe your symptoms in a language that’s not your native tongue, there are lots of other surprises — good and bad. Here’s my top ten list of how going to the doctor in Colombia is different than in the U.S.: Continue reading →

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Posted in Daily Life, Health

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Divinely Human: Barranquilla’s 200th Carnaval (A Photographic Retrospective)

Posted on March 14, 2013 | 7 comments

DSC00172In some ways, Carnaval is all about dressing up in outlandish ways — either to hide our true selves in order to temporarily be someone we’re not (and perhaps give ourselves permission to indulge in ways that we normally wouldn’t), to allow a usually buried part of our personality to take the stage, or to simply revel in the joie de vivre of life’s excesses, good and bad. And yet, even with all the feathers, the makeup, the glitter, what shines through most is our humanness, our oneness, our inherent beauty. So without further ado (at this point, I recommend cueing up “Human” by the Killers as your viewing soundtrack), I present you with a few of the faces, a few of the people — a few of all of us — who made Barranquilla’s 200th Carnaval an experience to remember. Continue reading →

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Posted in Arts & Culture, Photography, Travel & Tourism

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Prepare Yourself… This is Big

Posted on February 6, 2013 | 1 comment

IMG_1218Something big is coming to Barranquilla. Very big. Bigger than Christmas. Bigger than New Year’s. Bigger than Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Bigger than the World Cup – oh wait, not as big as that. No one can compete with fútbol. But big. Very big.

It’s Carnaval – the traditional celebration that comes at the end of the church season of Epiphany and just before the belt-tightening of Lent. Continue reading →

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Posted in Arts & Culture, Photography, Travel & Tourism

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Fútbol, not Football

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 5 comments

IMG_0784As the United States gears up for Super Bowl Sunday, I thought it would be a good time to provide a little taste of Colombia’s sport of choice – fútbol. We’re talking “fútbol,” the game with the round ball that you kick with your feet, as opposed to American “football,” the one with the pointy pigskin thing (is it really even a ball?) that you mostly touch with your hands, despite the name of the game (honestly, I have been confused by that ever since I was a kid).

Colombia is crazy for fútbol, and perhaps nowhere more so than Barranquilla. Continue reading →

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Posted in Sports & Leisure

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Apps for Expats – Or Anyone Who Wants to Communicate (For Free!) Internationally

Posted on January 22, 2013 | 11 comments

Author’s Update, 2/12/14: It’s been over a year since I wrote the below post. While most of the recommendations stand true, I’ve switched from using magicJack as my primary phone for international calls to Skype. magicJack still works as described, but overall Skype connections have been more reliable and clear. Check back soon for Apps for Expats II, with more input and suggestions!
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Ask anyone who’s moved abroad or traveled for extended periods and they’ll agree: staying in touch with folks back home is one of the keys to adjusting to a new life. For those with friends and family in another country, being able to communicate easily can make the distance seem a little less.

Fortunately, casual communication across international borders has never been easier or cheaper. Virtually gone are the days of expensive international calls and internet chats with spotty connections.   And while apps like Skype and FaceTime are hugely helpful for calls and chats, there are plenty of other tools for more specific needs. Here are just a few apps – all of which can be downloaded for free – that I love and use regularly: Continue reading →

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Posted in Daily Life, Technology

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Santa Marta and Parque Tayrona – Destinations in Transition

Posted on January 18, 2013 | 7 comments
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Waiting for the boat that will take us to Playa Cristal

This past October, Gio, Marcello, and I took our first official family vacation. (Trust me when I tell you that moving to another country with your family does not constitute a family vacation.) We made the easy drive – about 1.5 hours northwest – to Santa Marta and its neighboring national park, Parque Tayrona. Santa Marta, founded in 1525, is the oldest permanent settlement in Colombia and supposedly the second oldest in South America. It is tucked between the Caribbean and the Sierra Nevada, the highest coastal mountain range in the world. Continue reading →

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Posted in Travel & Tourism

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The Question of Why

Posted on January 14, 2013 | 15 comments

It’s a new year, and in many ways, an official start to our “real” life in Barranquilla. Despite the fact that we moved here from Miami on July 23rd, 2012, just two days after our wedding, it wasn’t until our recent return from Christmas holidays in the U.S. that we finally felt settled.

The last six months, while good, were consumed with an almost endless to-do list related to our move: find an apartment, furnish the apartment, get Gio’s cédula (the national I.D. card), get our son Marcello into the national birth registry (so that Marcello could be a Colombian citizen), get Marcello’s passport, renew my expiring tourist visa, apply for my indefinite visa as Marcello’s mother (since Marcello is now a citizen), apply for my cédula de extranjería (the national I.D. card for foreigners) – you get the idea. We set December 13th, the day of our flight back to the U.S. for the holidays, as our deadline for jumping through all these hoops. While I had to put several things – like writing for this blog – on the back burner, we met our goal. Flying back on January 6th, I finally felt like I was coming home.

As you might imagine, a benchmark like this leads to some reflection. It seems like a good time to address the two questions that my husband and I are asked most often about our move: 1) Why? and 2) Do you like it? Continue reading →

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Posted in Making the Leap

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I Should Be in a Nike Commercial

Posted on October 16, 2012 | 7 comments

Okay, no, I am actually not that vain! Or that deluded. I have neither the level of fitness nor the physique, even at its worked-out best, to warrant a Nike commercial. (And I’m not sure that I could in good conscience advertise for them, although geez, I do like their running clothes….)

At the finish line of the Reykjavik Marathon in Iceland, 2009 (I think).

But that is how running often makes me feel: self-delusional in a good way – the kind of way that makes you get more done, act confidently, and generally avoid being a neurotic stress case. After years of running (and almost 1,400 miles logged on that Nike+ tracker thing), I can tell you with absolute certainty that the “runner’s high” is real.

So it’s no surprise, then, that one of the first things I asked Gio after his April scouting trip to Barranquilla was, “Can I run there?” Continue reading →

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Posted in Daily Life, Running, Sports & Leisure

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