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THE MEMOIR

After the savage Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968, a South American boy confronts countless puzzles, inequities, and contradictions of life behind the Iron Curtain. Educated in Prague at an international school in Schoenborn Palace, the youngest son of a Colombian diplomat will grow in the twilight between complex politics and ruthless perils of a callous Cold War. Seeking to make sense of the desperate world around him, this resolute runt sets-out on a series of adventures that will forever mark him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rafael Giraldo was born in Medellin, Colombia on June 23, 1963. As a member of a diplomatic family, he experienced extensive travel early in life. Raised in Prague, Czechoslovakia during the Cold War of the 1970s, he attended the International School of Prague at Schoenborn Palace. During this period, he had the opportunity to enhance his understanding of the world of geopolitics and of the immense historic and cultural diversity of the planet.

Rafael Giraldo graduated from the Columbus School, studied law at Universidad de Medellin, Sociology at St. Thomas University, and Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University. He has taken courses at Universidad de Salamanca and The Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute.

For more than 17 years, he was in the business world as an executive, director of a chamber of commerce, private banker, and entrepreneur. The 1995 Internet company he built from scratch would, at its height, have over 5.3 million online visitors per month, over 60 million visitors per year. While in his mid- 30s, he founded his own multinational corporation with offices in North America, South America, and Europe.

In 2004, fate lead him to discover his true calling and became a history teacher. From the moment he stepped into a room filled with complex, irreverent, and yet impressionable teenagers, Rafael Giraldo instinctively realized that this was the hidden purpose of a lifetime of collecting experiences, knowledge, and wisdom.

Wanting to inspire and educate his students about life and personal commitment, Rafael Giraldo will spend the summers of 2009 and 2010 cycling alone for 149 days across 25 states of the American Union. He covers 6,730 miles, a good 10,768 kilometers of the North American Continent, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from Maine to South Florida. He shared more than 18,000 majestic photographs, 250 vibrant videos, and many wholesome stories of North America with countless worldwide viewers through tourofdiscovery.com. While out on tour, he wrote a weekly column in the SunSentinel, and delivered a weekly segment on The Morning Show of WSFL-TV, which provided him the opportunity to enhance the online experiences which engaged, educated, and inspired young minds.

This audacious spirit and passionate teacher has spent his life avidly collecting untold experiences. His life is an assemblage of fascinating adventures in every imaginable area. The wealth of knowledge he acquired during so many years prior to becoming an educator was not solely for him; it was meant to be shared, to enrich others, destined to be transferred.

Rafael Giraldo lives in Las Cordilleras, a farm in the Andes of Antioquia, in Colombia. He continues to teach history while writing his memories. Chronicles of a Resolute Runt is the first book of the series The Long Way Home. The third book of the series, Blessings Given, was published in 2008.

www.rafaelgiraldo.com