Monday, April 21, 2025

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up once at 4am, finally waking/getting up at 6:15am.

Well, if the goal for our trip was to get tans, we failed spectacularly. We spent most of the time in the shade, Teresa working on her craft projects and I reading, studying and playing chess.  (As usual I brought 2 tubes of SPF cream and didn’t use either of them.) Teresa wants to return around Mother’s Day to work on a tan before we visit Chicago. We’ll see!

I left the apt at 7:45 for Smartfit which seemed not as busy as usual. Because I missed a week I completed my workout using 10# less on each of the machines and I only did 10 minutes on the treadmill. I had a latte in Ganso y Castor where I took this photo of the red squirrel after the peanut was already gone.

Oops, I guess I accidentally delete the photo. ☹

I don’t know what I did to my camera settings as they aren’t the same as previously. I used to be able to zoom in 1, 2, 4, 10 times but now I’m only on a 2-second wait to take a normal photo.

I read on my news feed that pope Francisco passed away this morning.

I left at 10am and bought a bag of milk in Ara on my way back to the apt.

Time to take stock of my health: 1) the Calendula capsules I get from the US work wonders for my lower back but the Calendula tablets here don’t seem to work the same; 2) my dry skin problem flared up again now that we’ve returned to Medellin so I’m thinking Teresa is probably right it’s because of the cold(er) temperatures here; 3) my eyes seem to be affected by Medellin’s pollution as they felt more normal in Santafe de Antioquia; 4) I didn’t seem to have much leaking on our trip, not sure if it’s just because we didn’t move around much or is it because I did the Kegel exercises twice a day?

Teresa returned at 11:15 with a bag of groceries.

I checked my files and the last Claro (paper) bill I have is from June of 2019. I checked my blog notes and my Claro plan was set up June 1, 2019 for 4GB. That gives me a good idea of what I should ask for (4GB) when I load our sim cards for the month we are in the States.

I got permission from Teresa to switch to Movistar fiber optic internet (and television) as long as its contained to the living room and they don’t make any more holes.

I texted Paola at Movistar with the conditions and I’m ready to make an appointment. She needs from me a photo of both sides of my cedula, my address, my email address, and phone number. She repeated that the cost is 62,000 pesos for this year and after.

I left the apt at 2pm and paid the Tigo/Une WiFi bill of 129,722 ($30) at the Gana kiosk. I continued on to Los Portenos where I had a latte while solving 12 more chess puzzles.

This young girl must have spotted this red squirrel because she ran through the park:

I left at 4:15 and stopped at the copy center to scan my cedula to my USB drive but the lady said she can only scan to print, not direct to my drive. I thanked her and returned to the apt so I guess I’ll be making a trip to the mall tomorrow morning.

Someone posted this on Expat Facebook.

I’d hate to be trapped in the US because I don’t have a Yellow Fever vaccination.

Esmeralda came over about 7pm and we walked to Piccolo’s where we shared a half mushroom, half tomato pizza and we all had Cokes for 113,565 pesos ($26.50). I noticed across the street Smartfit was quite busy.,

When we returned to the apt, I watched (actually just listened) the news and commentary on MSNBC before going to bed at 10pm.

 

FUNNY