Journey & Adventure

I am so happy to see January on its way out the door. January is a month that provides me with nothing but misery – it’s long, cold, dark and dreary. With a little luck, I’ll only have to endure four more Canadian Januarys. Hooray! I’ve started with my Fluenz Spanish lessons and so far, things are progressing nicely. I’m only on lesson 4 of the first DVD – only 26 more lessons to go and then I have another 4 DVDs. Good thing I started early. Keeping with the Spanish theme, I’m noticing that the voices in my head are now speaking to me in Spanish - particularly after completing a lesson and then heading straight to bed. I guess it’s not necessarily a bad thing – unless I can’t understand them. J and I are still engrossed in our relocation research. I’ll only say this – we’ve started to look at yet another country as a potential candidate. I’m sure we’ll end up looking at plenty more before we even book another flight to take a research tour. Our new living room furnitu...

Continuing with the 5 4 Year plan discussions, and in order to get cracking on my need to learn the Spanish language before our move, I’ve ordered my Spanish language DVD’s. Once again, I realize we still have 4 years, but at the rate things are moving along, I better get started. After much research and watching online demonstrations, I’ve chosen the Fluenz program. From what I can tell, it’s similar to Rosetta Stone, but Fluenz seemed more progressive and includes DVDs, audio CDs and podcasts. I spend so much time commuting, I figure the audio CD’s and podcasts will be put to good use.  I’ll let you know how I progress with this independent learning thing. Maybe one day, I’ll write an entire blog post in Spanish. Ha! Seriously, that was just crazy talk.

Well, maybe I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I now have a better sense on where I might want to go when I get there. What am I talking about? Well, as we start the investigation process on our relocation plan, we’ve been reading about places and points of interest throughout Ecuador. We know, we want to live on the coast, but we’re not sure where exactly, so to help orient us, I purchased a map of Ecuador.   Before you think it - yes, I’m well aware, you can simply use Google Maps to find the location of pretty much anywhere in the world, but I’m an old fashioned sort of person. I like maps – physical, hold them in your hands, type of maps. And of course, no trip to the virtual bookstore, would be complete without purchasing some books. After all, if you spend $25 or more, shipping is free! So, in order to complete the South American experience, I purchased a couple of “Learn to Speak Spanish” books. I’m pretty good at ordering food and drink in Spanis...