Costa Rica's president Oscar Arias just recently broke ties with Taiwan in order to establish ties with Communist China. I'm shocked for two reasons:
1) Costa Rica is a democracy, (albeit socialist). One would think that they would align themselves with another freedom loving democracy.
2) How can one man make such an important decision for an entire country? Appartently that's how it is in Costa Rica. Their congress doesn't have any say so in the matter. Strange.
Here's an interesting article about how China might try to take the liberty-loving "renegade province".
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/10/frontpage/defense.php
Friday, June 15, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Errrrrr 1
We´ve been here for over a month now and still have not aquired a place to live (renting or buying.) It´s really getting to my wife. There have been two places that we kind of liked.
1) Up in the air. At first Meyling hated the place, but after seeing a bunch of rat holes, she decided that it wasn´t so bad. I like that place a lot. The rent would be about $325/month. The problem right now is that the owners want us to sign a 1 year contract. We´re extremely hesitant to do that. We´re asking for a 6 month contract. They´re thinking about it....
2) Communication is more than half the battle. This is a house in a very decent area of town. Meyling thought that I didn´t like it because it really doesn´t have a back yard and there weren´t any security bars on the front windows. I thought that Meyling didn´t like it because it didn´t have a telephone yet. All in all, we both we´re happy with it, but it rented before we talked about it. It would´ve been $308/month and the land lord said that 6 months was better than a year. What´s the point of even writing this?
After a miserable week, I think we´re on the same page even though we´re on different sides of that page.....
1) Up in the air. At first Meyling hated the place, but after seeing a bunch of rat holes, she decided that it wasn´t so bad. I like that place a lot. The rent would be about $325/month. The problem right now is that the owners want us to sign a 1 year contract. We´re extremely hesitant to do that. We´re asking for a 6 month contract. They´re thinking about it....
2) Communication is more than half the battle. This is a house in a very decent area of town. Meyling thought that I didn´t like it because it really doesn´t have a back yard and there weren´t any security bars on the front windows. I thought that Meyling didn´t like it because it didn´t have a telephone yet. All in all, we both we´re happy with it, but it rented before we talked about it. It would´ve been $308/month and the land lord said that 6 months was better than a year. What´s the point of even writing this?
After a miserable week, I think we´re on the same page even though we´re on different sides of that page.....
Monday, June 4, 2007
Some funny things
One day I saw a guy riding a bicycle and smoking a cigarette.
I saw a guy riding a bicycle with an open umbrella going up a steep hill.
I've seen several cases of 2 people on one bicycle in heavy traffic. Once I saw 2 teenagers one peddling and the other on the handlebars laughing and screaming obscentities at the guy pedaling.
Several times while I'm out running in the mornings, I've seen a dad with his son or daughter sitting on the cross bar. In all cases it looked like they were on their way to the school.
Twice I've taken an unlicenced taxi to get home. These taxis are called pirate taxis. When I got to the house, my wife asked me how I got home so I told her. My 4-year-old found it extremely interesting and said that he didn't know that there was such a thing as a "pirate" taxi.
We looked at an interesting piece of property that's forsale about a week ago. The couple live next to his mom. Over the years, they've added on to their house in pretty much any direction. They have 2 rooms that cross the property line, each room sitting half on the mom's lot and half on theirs. There are two filled in swimming pools in the back yard. One rectangular that now has corn growing out of it. The other is circular and encompasses part of the rectangular one. Again, both are filled in. Nevertheless it was all very interesting.
The other day my sister-in-law lost her voice, I told my4-year-old that it may be in the back yard and that we needed to find it. He looked for it for a while.
I saw a guy riding a bicycle with an open umbrella going up a steep hill.
I've seen several cases of 2 people on one bicycle in heavy traffic. Once I saw 2 teenagers one peddling and the other on the handlebars laughing and screaming obscentities at the guy pedaling.
Several times while I'm out running in the mornings, I've seen a dad with his son or daughter sitting on the cross bar. In all cases it looked like they were on their way to the school.
Twice I've taken an unlicenced taxi to get home. These taxis are called pirate taxis. When I got to the house, my wife asked me how I got home so I told her. My 4-year-old found it extremely interesting and said that he didn't know that there was such a thing as a "pirate" taxi.
We looked at an interesting piece of property that's forsale about a week ago. The couple live next to his mom. Over the years, they've added on to their house in pretty much any direction. They have 2 rooms that cross the property line, each room sitting half on the mom's lot and half on theirs. There are two filled in swimming pools in the back yard. One rectangular that now has corn growing out of it. The other is circular and encompasses part of the rectangular one. Again, both are filled in. Nevertheless it was all very interesting.
The other day my sister-in-law lost her voice, I told my4-year-old that it may be in the back yard and that we needed to find it. He looked for it for a while.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Week 2 coming to a close
Finally my brother-in-law has DSL in his house. Half of yesterday and all of today I've been able to work here. We're still having trouble getting my Linksys router to talk to the modem. Hopefully that'll be resolved soon.
No more internet cafes for a while. I'll miss the atmosphere a little. Those places were mainly filled with kids from 12 to 23 years old. Some of them would spend hours playing these blood and guts shoot-em up first person shooter games. Others would spend hours chatting or looking at music videos or something.
I'm kind of rambling now: There were 2 internet cafes that I went to in Paraiso. One opened up at 7:00 am but my VPN would not work there. This one was like a dungeon and was way in the back of a building behind several shops. The internet cafe itself was long and narrow about 15 yards deep and 3 yards wide. Sometimes the kid running it had some incense burning. The walls were all black.
The other internet cafe just up the street opened at sometime after 9:00 am. This one was kind of like a party. It never opens at the same time. Many days I'd show up at 9:00 and it wasn't open. Same type of clientel as the other one, but the place was more lively. The guy running that place is Jimmy. He's 22 or so and is studying to be a computer programmer. I say it was kind of like a party because he was always playing party dance music there. The advantage that this place had over the other one was that my VPN worked there.
If you want a sample of the music. Go to this url. In the bottom right corner click "Radio en vivo". Then you'll have a chance to choose one of 3 programs for streaming.
http://www.911laradio.com/
Both places charge 100 colones / hour. That's about $0.19 / hour.
No more internet cafes for a while. I'll miss the atmosphere a little. Those places were mainly filled with kids from 12 to 23 years old. Some of them would spend hours playing these blood and guts shoot-em up first person shooter games. Others would spend hours chatting or looking at music videos or something.
I'm kind of rambling now: There were 2 internet cafes that I went to in Paraiso. One opened up at 7:00 am but my VPN would not work there. This one was like a dungeon and was way in the back of a building behind several shops. The internet cafe itself was long and narrow about 15 yards deep and 3 yards wide. Sometimes the kid running it had some incense burning. The walls were all black.
The other internet cafe just up the street opened at sometime after 9:00 am. This one was kind of like a party. It never opens at the same time. Many days I'd show up at 9:00 and it wasn't open. Same type of clientel as the other one, but the place was more lively. The guy running that place is Jimmy. He's 22 or so and is studying to be a computer programmer. I say it was kind of like a party because he was always playing party dance music there. The advantage that this place had over the other one was that my VPN worked there.
If you want a sample of the music. Go to this url. In the bottom right corner click "Radio en vivo". Then you'll have a chance to choose one of 3 programs for streaming.
http://www.911laradio.com/
Both places charge 100 colones / hour. That's about $0.19 / hour.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
First update
We arrived here in Costa Rica last Saturday (5 days ago). Today is Thursday. I've been able to successfully work form internet cafes all this week. I started with one in Cartago that cost me about $0.58 and hour. I've found another one in Paraiso (means Paradise in English) for $0.19 an hour. I'm mostly there now. Meyling's brother is tyring to get DSL in his house for me. When that happens his house will be my office during the day.
The views here are spectacular. I never can get used to them.
We're trying to find a house to rent or to buy. During the day Meyling is out doing that. In the evenings she shows me what she's found. Currently we're staying with her folks.
So far so good. This internet cafe is about 4 or 5 miles from the house. It takes me about 20 minutes to get here. Part of the time standing aroud waiting for the bus the other part of the time on the bus. The bus trip costs about $0.27 one way.
Last Monday night, I bent my right ankle by stepping on an even part of the side walk. The thought of not being able to run for a while really scared me. This thought came to mind becasue a similar thing happend to me in Costa Rica during Feb of 2004. I couldn't run for 9 months after that one! Anyway Tuesday it was bothering me. But now its almost better. I'm going to wait until next week before I go out running again.
My kids are having a big time with their grandparents.
Amy, Meyling's folks' dog keeps barking and nipping at our dog Tica. It's getting better though. They're almost putting up with each other now.
That's pretty much it for now.
The views here are spectacular. I never can get used to them.
We're trying to find a house to rent or to buy. During the day Meyling is out doing that. In the evenings she shows me what she's found. Currently we're staying with her folks.
So far so good. This internet cafe is about 4 or 5 miles from the house. It takes me about 20 minutes to get here. Part of the time standing aroud waiting for the bus the other part of the time on the bus. The bus trip costs about $0.27 one way.
Last Monday night, I bent my right ankle by stepping on an even part of the side walk. The thought of not being able to run for a while really scared me. This thought came to mind becasue a similar thing happend to me in Costa Rica during Feb of 2004. I couldn't run for 9 months after that one! Anyway Tuesday it was bothering me. But now its almost better. I'm going to wait until next week before I go out running again.
My kids are having a big time with their grandparents.
Amy, Meyling's folks' dog keeps barking and nipping at our dog Tica. It's getting better though. They're almost putting up with each other now.
That's pretty much it for now.
Round 1over - a little back ground
We've been in Costa Rica for 5 days now. Our flight arrived last Saturday afternoon. That night, I slept 11 hours. It seems that since around my dog's birthday (January 14th) we've been moving non stop. Around that time we started working on the house to get it ready to sell for early Spring. We spent many weekends with the help of Miguel and Sarita and their son Esteban trying to whip that place into shape. ( Let me tell you, Miguel is one of the fastest people I've ever seen turn out quality work. Man he's fast.)
During the time of getting ready, our good friend from our small group, Rhonda (a real estate broker) lent us some of her wisdom by giving us key pointers on what to do in order to get the most bang for the least effort. This helped us tremendously. She even chose the colours for the paint and we even liked her colours more than ours!
After many hard weekends, we finally got the house on the market the 1st of March. Technically, it wasn't in the MLS until that Friday or Saturday afterwards. The long of the short of it is we had a bonified offer the following Tuesday. We worked with that and finally came to an agreement with the prospective buyer. After fixing all the things that the buyer and I agreed to fix from the inspection report, the house sold April 10th.
You would think that at that point we would be on the home stretch. The week before the closing date and the next week after we had 2 garage sells. We sold sold and sold. It was crazy. Then what was left we had to get into a 10x15 foot (8 foot ceiling) storage area (that was no easy task!) or ship to Costa Rica. (We did leave a few items with family members scattered around the north Atlanta area.)
Thanks to Meyling's sister Lindsay and her husband Bryan's generocity we stayed with them a little over 3 weeks after selling our house. (Incrediblely they still love us!)
During the 3 week period after selling our house, I even kept coaching my son's soccer team (the 3 year old Strikers). It was quite a haul from Lawrenceville to Newtown park in Johns Creek! Some days I even went from Buckhead to Lawrenceville to get my boy; and then from there to Newtown Park. (That was usually 2 hours of driving!) Concerning the game of soccer, I am by far no expert. I just love my boy and wanted to be his coach. I could not believe how attached I got to the other kids on the team though! One even told me at a practice: "Coach, I love you". It was heart wrenching!
During that 3 week period, every minute of every day was consumed by something. Finally, getting to Costa Rica has brought me from crazy busy to normal. Meyling on the other hand is still pretty busy.
During the time of getting ready, our good friend from our small group, Rhonda (a real estate broker) lent us some of her wisdom by giving us key pointers on what to do in order to get the most bang for the least effort. This helped us tremendously. She even chose the colours for the paint and we even liked her colours more than ours!
After many hard weekends, we finally got the house on the market the 1st of March. Technically, it wasn't in the MLS until that Friday or Saturday afterwards. The long of the short of it is we had a bonified offer the following Tuesday. We worked with that and finally came to an agreement with the prospective buyer. After fixing all the things that the buyer and I agreed to fix from the inspection report, the house sold April 10th.
You would think that at that point we would be on the home stretch. The week before the closing date and the next week after we had 2 garage sells. We sold sold and sold. It was crazy. Then what was left we had to get into a 10x15 foot (8 foot ceiling) storage area (that was no easy task!) or ship to Costa Rica. (We did leave a few items with family members scattered around the north Atlanta area.)
Thanks to Meyling's sister Lindsay and her husband Bryan's generocity we stayed with them a little over 3 weeks after selling our house. (Incrediblely they still love us!)
During the 3 week period after selling our house, I even kept coaching my son's soccer team (the 3 year old Strikers). It was quite a haul from Lawrenceville to Newtown park in Johns Creek! Some days I even went from Buckhead to Lawrenceville to get my boy; and then from there to Newtown Park. (That was usually 2 hours of driving!) Concerning the game of soccer, I am by far no expert. I just love my boy and wanted to be his coach. I could not believe how attached I got to the other kids on the team though! One even told me at a practice: "Coach, I love you". It was heart wrenching!
During that 3 week period, every minute of every day was consumed by something. Finally, getting to Costa Rica has brought me from crazy busy to normal. Meyling on the other hand is still pretty busy.
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