Viva Costa Rica!

Yikes, it's been over a year since I've written on this blog. Which means that it's been over a year since I've been out of the country. Which is waaaay too long but I'm planning on making up for it during my 10 days in Costa Rica. Wa-hoo!

But to back up for just a minute, last year's blog was considered "Part I" of my post-fulltime job life and at that time I truly had NO idea how it would all turn out, how I would support myself, find work, pay my mortgage... all I knew was that it was time for me to make a major life change, to ditch the office job and start living a life I was truly excited about. It was a leap of faith but what I've found since then was that if you do what you're supposed to do, it all works out one way or the other. Long story short, I have been amazed by how things have just fallen into place. While I have done everything over the past year from painting to leading groups of international students to working at market to selling flowers, the best part is that the certificate I received in Chile last year paid off and I have also found work teaching ESL as well as more recently finding work teaching Spanish, which I looove. So it's an interesting life and I still have months where I wonder how I'll pay my mortgage... but it always works out and I love the variety of it all (no two weeks are EVER the same) and, yes, even the unknown aspect of it. But mostly, I love the freedom it allows me. Hence, back to me being in Costa Rica...

My cousin who lives in LA recently passed her boards for work (yay, Niki!) and we decided there was really no better way to celebrate that fact other than to take a trip to Costa Rica. Why not, right? She arrives on Wednesday so I decided to come down a few days earlier (again, why not... another benefit to not having a full-time job!) to get the lay of the land and chill.

Those of you who know anything about me know that I travel with no plans, ever. To me it's another part of the adventure to just wing it and figure things out as I go. My only plan upon landing yesterday morning was to rent a car and drive to Panama and be back in time to pick Niki up at the airport on Wednesday morning. But when I got the car they told me I wasn't able to take it out of the country. Doh!

So instead I decided to just check out San Jose for the day and get a hotel room there to sleep since I had only slept 45 minutes the night before leaving (you're lucky I like you, Ali!). I drove around the city for about an hour to check it out and found that, really, there isn't much to check out. So I found a nice hotel, got to my room and... passed out. Guess I can't get that far on 45 minutes of sleep after all.

I was so disappointed in myself to have wasted my first afternoon here! So today I plan to start making up for it. I am moving hotels (time to start living the cheap Costa Rican life, as opposed to the nice hotel I'm in now) and plan to do some day trips this afternoon and tomorrow to start getting a real feel for the country.

I shall post more later... hopefully. There is a very real possibility that, with the types of hotels I'm imagining myself in from here on, internet will be only a fond memory of days gone by... we shall see!