tiny grass

We just got a subscription to the Tico Times, a popular English weekly newspaper in Costa Rica. Being aware of what’s going on in our prospective home is important. Our scouting trip was successful because we learned as much as we could, and had a good grasp of what to expect - the good and the bad. The grass isn’t perfectly greener, and being realistic helps. I’ve used a number of resources to learn about Costa Rica and to become aware of the important issues.

1. The Tico Times - A weekly English language newspaper with a nice pdf option for overseas subscribers.
2. A.M Costa Rica - A daily English news source (ignore the horrible design).
3. La Nacion - Costa Rica’s main Spanish newspaper. My Spanish is not nearly good enough to read it, so I use Google Translate for now.
4. Costa Rica Living - This is a Yahoo group that I joined nearly 3 years ago. Learning from others’ collective experience is great - especially when they have enlightening perspectives on news.
5. Inside Costa Rica - Another English news resource.

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I’ve been trying to convince my dad to retire. He’s one of those old guys who thinks he just has to work, and the last time I bugged him about it, he insisted that he wouldn’t know what to do with his time. But he could come up with a list of 10 things he would do if he didn’t have to work. That’s what you’ll be doing when you retire, I told him.

Maybe all those years I went to school for 2 months and spent the rest of the time in India made me resistant to having my time monopolized for nothing more than a paycheck. I used to keep track of all the times I’d been fired or quit (ie no notice) with pride - it’s somewhere between 12 and 15. Read more »

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We met many interesting people during our trip, and it seems that everyone has different reasons for moving to Costa Rica, with the two most common are cost of living and climate. Here are 5 reasons why moving to Costa Rica works for me.

1. Climate

I prefer hot weather over cold, by far. Costa Rica is in the tropics, where there are two seasons: Dry and Wet. The majority of the population lives in the Central Valley, around the capital of San Jose. San Jose is about 4000ft above sea level and has a mild climate, with temperatures ranging between 59 and 79. What’s really cool is that you can pick the exact climate you want. Go for a higher elevation for cooler temperatures, or go lower for warmer. Our first destination will probably be Atenas - an hour or so from San Jose and warmer. A better climate also has monetary benefits, leading to… Read more »

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That list of parenting dos & donts I found recently got me thinking of the power of the word.  It’s not the first time I’ve come across the idea that writing down goals makes them more tangible and more likely, but it is the first time that I realized that there may be something to it.  Must really be something since we pretty much nailed everything on that list.

I started thinking of other decisions that I made at some point or another (written or not) and whether they’ve come true or not.  And I was surprised to find that a number of them had.  Like the desire to have a menagerie, which may be written in my journals sometime in high school.  I think 4 cats & 4 ducks counts, no?  I’m pretty sure they’re just the beginning anyway - we definitely need a goat to make chevre. (said goat will be named Starla btw)  Definitely 1-4 dogs some day.  And maybe some alpacas or water buffalo or something.

Other desires and decisions have come true as well, like marrying for love and not being driven by materialism.  I started feeling a little better, knowing that a number of my deepest dreams and desires have come true.  Except for all the places in the world I’d like to experience, but there’s still plenty of time.  Since the pre-parenting list worked out so well, I have to make a list of the places to experience and see what happens.

10 places to experience before dying (ordered by train-of-thought)

1. Angkor Wat
2. Australia
3. Goa
4. Machu Picchu
5. Tibetan monastery
6. Cage dive with great white sharks (I don’t like the idea of bringing them in by artificially baiting water with chum, so it has to be done some other way)
7. Costa Rica
8. Patagonia
9. the Appalachian Trail
10. Spain

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Unschooling isn’t all about the kids - it’s about us too.  Our attitudes and perceptions and, what’s become very apparent to me, our own desire and capacity for learning.  One of my main supporting points for being an unschooler was that I taught myself everything I know for my work.  I realized that I wanted to learn something and followed my desire. I also have memories of enjoying learning in school until it became drudgery.  I like learning, and it seemingly was dulled out of me for years.  Now I find that I’m learning stuff all the time so I thought it would be cool to keep track of things I’ve learned in the past week.  Here goes:

1. Ancient Egyptian kids had a ponytail above one ear with a shaved head.
2. Tadpoles grow REALLY fast, like a millimeter a day.  (We got some toad eggs from our neighbors pond and put them in an aquarium)
3. The poor polar bear at the Bronx Zoo looks super, super bored.  He needs a helluva lot more space than a few hundred square feet, like a few hundred miles.
4. Ducks are smart - ours have been heading into their house at sundown.
5. If a diaphragm develops an ‘odd film’ on it after a year of steady use, it’s probably going to fail at contraception.  (Thanks to a friend’s unexpected tale of pregnancy)

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