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March 25, 2022

Zip, zoom, zip to Colombia...

Columbian Monomania-Episode 3

Learning Spanish​

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Currently, I am unilingual.

 

Norwegian, German, Japanese, and Chinese

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Yes, I know a smidgen of Norwegian. I studied at it when I was living with a Norwegian farming family for six weeks in the summer of 1964.

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Yes, I know two smidgens of German, picking it up while living in various homestays in Cologne, Germany over four months in the fall of 1964.

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Yes, I know 100+ words of Japanese, compliments of a former Japanese wife and living in Tokyo for a year in 2000.

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And I might be able to come up with 55+ words of Chinese Mandarin garnered during my 21+ years in China.

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Spanish, here I come!

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I am going to become at least semi-fluent in Spanish. Two days ago I started using an app called Duolingo.com. It's cool! And it's free. Here's a screen of me showing off my first few words of Spanish.

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Precrastinating on my packing​

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If you don't know what precrastination is, it's a must. 

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Just 10 kilos of "sentimental" books I will take with me. ​

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And then there are historical papers, like old letters from my mother, and other small sentimental items.

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Visa empyrean

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Although I already knew this, my friend Phil in Medellin reassured me about the easy access to a Colombian retirement visa.

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Intra-country flights are insanely cheap

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A roundtrip flight between Medellin and Bogota, an hour long, will set me back $37 according to this search with Skycanner.com.

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Living in Colombia by July 1st

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Assuming everything is still a go for liftoff after I do my final vetting of Colombia during my upcoming holiday there, officially settling in Colombia is going to happen faster than I thought it could.

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Earlier, I believed it might be sometime in August before I was living there permanently. But, after talking with Heidi and creating a strategy, which even includes some buffer time, July 1st is a doable by-when-date. 

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One nice advantage of this July-1st-moving-out-of-China date is that I won't need to negotiate the money issue with my current landlord of how much I would need to pay him for the month or two extra that I was thinking I needed past July 1st, hopefully instead of the six-months-in-advance rent that would normally be due by July 1st. I'll be breaking my lease and losing my deposit, but that has all been included in the calculations.

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Start of Columbian Monomania

click here

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