Good to know: I prefer the tinto hangover to the guaro - at least I know a good cure for the red wine hangover (eat a raw tomato before bed, licopene, apparently)!
Well...a LOT has happened since Semana Santa. The spring and entire summer has come and gone, and with them a swarm of changes - all of which have led me to a new here and now, which is Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica on the 4th of October, 2011 :)
How did these changes begin? Long-story-short, somehow between April and June, the plan for Costa Rica became more or less solidified when I discovered the Spanish company I´ve worked summer camps for in the past actually, in fact, DID have a job for me - a guaranteed 6-weeks of work, and a lot of dough for it! That meant, in addition to the savings from my previous year in Granada, I was able to pack up and ship out of Granada by September. Basically, a job changed everything. Which is interesting, because here and now - 2 and a half months after that last job was completed and paid - I sit frantically searching for another job, one that could change everything all over again. Interesting part of all this is I did kind of a reverse of the natural way to move to a different country (if there is a natural way): I bought a ticket, got here, and now am looking for a job. I´m hoping the spirit of adventure that I had when "planning not to plan" this trip will carry me through the humiliating process of job searching.
What´s been left out since my last post, thus, is the finalizing of my last months in Granada, saying goodbye to people and places one by one, until I left Granada for good to head for summer camp in Alcantará, Spain (in the extremadura, near Portugal). I spent 6 weeks there in a surreal luxury summer camp with my nearest and dearest, enough time for us to remember why we´ll miss each other, and then left Spain for a final 3 weeks in France to finalize the trip and get last minute details in order. On September 3rd, I flew an exhausting 45-hours to arrive in San José, Costa Rica, where the plan was to float on our savings for 1-3 months before finding a place we liked, renting an apartment, and look for work. The most recent development has proved Costa Rica to be far more expensive than we thought, so we´ve rented an apartment after only 3 full weeks of being here.
Why Costa Rica, then? Truth is, it wasn´t my first pick of places to go after Spain. I´ve had a yearning to return to Mexico one day, and felt it calling me once Granada started to feel too familiar. But talking it over with the folks and friends, thinking about the current state of the economy and society there, I got to thinking maybe now isn´t the best time for Mexico. A few people mentioned Costa Rica in several unrelated "cosmic" moments, moments that seemed all linked together, pointing me towards Costa Rica, and after that I couldn´t deny that it was definitely a good in-between destination for someone leaving Europe and wanting to move to Latin or Central America - the economy´s stable, tourism is growing there, and I shouldn´t have much trouble thus finding English teaching jobs. So that´s how I got here, three weeks ago, at the current moment deflating from the newness of it all and trying to find that elusive job that will mean I really do LIVE here.
Upside is our apartment and the location, Manuel Antonio, are perfection; there are monkeys that visit twice a day in the trees at the back of our private yard; we go to the beach every single day, rain or shine; today I saw my second WHALE at the beach, so close I could have swam over to it but of course was too terrified to do so; we have everything we could want, except one important thing: WORK.
On that front, I´ve got one major lead on an online English company - small world: an American girl I met through Craigslist when apartment-searching actually works for them; she and her boyfriend have been amazing, inspiring friends throughout our move here, and we´re so fortunate to have found them. So I´ve submitted my application (twice!) and all I can do is wait. Something I´m admittedly terrible at. Meanwhile, I´ll just sit and watch the monkeys doin´their thing. In paradise :)
