Long lost blogger returns!

So, after some prods that included lines like "I thought you might be coming to this conference, so I checked your blog, but of course it is out of date..." and "Where the hell are you? You haven't blogged in over a month!" I thought it was time to come back and let you know what I've been up to.

Sorry I was out of touch. I've been busy!

At the beginning of May, I went to Mexico to co-facilitate a 3-day workshop in Guadalajara on bilingual language programs. This was the contract I took on after leaving my other job at Christmas. I went down with the director from U of C. Our months of planning paid off, as did our long days while we were there. It was successful and now there is talk of establishing a formal memorandum of understanding between the two organizations.

After that, I took a few days to chill out with my friend, Cindy, a Canadian who now lives in Puerto Vallarta. We had a great weekend! We did a full-day boat tour that included a short hike. We saw two live Latin music concerts and hung out near the beach until sunset (photo below). It was fantastic.
Since I got home, I've been busy with maid of honour duties for my friend's wedding and connecting with my family on various things including my older brother's wedding next weekend and a trip to England in July.

Yup. I'm going to England again. This time, I am going to a conference first, and then spending a few days with my family. I was thrilled to find out I'd received funding to attend a major conference in my field in July. Being able to see my family again just makes it all the better.

Sandwiched in between the Mexico and England trips, there was a recent jaunt to Vancouver, where I attended another conference. Here's me with some other U of C students who were also there.

A few days before I headed to Vancouver, I also welcomed a new tenant/room mate into my home. Claudia is a civil engineer from Colombia who is here studying English. She moved in the day before I left for Vancouver. And I just returned yesterday, so we have hardly seen one another! I am looking forward to getting to know her.

And just so you don't think I've abandoned running altogether, I did a 10K run in Vancouver. Here's me with two other University of Calgary conference delegates who also took part in the run. In true Canadian style, we went to Tim Horton's for a coffee afterwards. Even though one is English and the other from Kosovo, they were game to uphold the venerable Canadian tradition of having coffee at Tim's, which I thought was admirable.

The run itself was beautiful and I must say that running at sea level was pure heaven. I am thinking that it would be delightful to run the marathon at sea level. Training for that is going well enough. We reduced the Accutane dosage and I'm tolerating it much better now. There's still muscle and joint pain, but I can manage it and that's good enough for me.

So, there you have it. Hence, I beg a thousand apologies for my truancy and promise to try to be more diligent in my blogging efforts. I'll be around to visit blogs soon. I've been wondering what you've all been up to, anyway.

But for now, I must be off. One of the duties of being maid of honour includes planning the bachelorette party. It's tomorrow and I have some ... er... "party favours" to go buy.