I’m beginning to truly regret my recent absence here on the blog. In all honesty, the only reason I’m able to update so frequently these days (by which I mean that I write entries down on paper and then can’t upload them because my home internet connection is messed up) is because things are slow here at work and I’m able to plan my workshops in a couple of days; so I am left with many hours to fill. I’m hoping for more work to keep myself busy with soon, but in the meantime my thinking is that a) if I fulfil all my duties and meet all my deadlines, I’m doing my job; and b) if the participants in my workshop had written what I asked them to last week, I’d have about 7,000 words of Spanish to keep me busy translating. Not my fault nobody listens to me… Continue reading
Episode Forty Two – Día de la Madre
It wasn’t long after I arrived here that we made our first little trip. Destination: Zarcero. Or, more precisely, Bernardita’s parents’ farm a little past Zarcero. The climate there is like that of Monteverde: green, chilly, draped in fog. When the mists cleared – rarely for longer than 20 minutes or so – the mountainous landscape was impressive to behold, and it felt very natural, fresh and rural.
It was a farm, after all.
Mum's favourite little critters!
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Episode Forty One – A Realtime Update
How many months does it take to turn a tourist into a tica?
That’s not really a fair question, and of course I know I’ll never be Costa Rican. However, I’ve been here in San Ramón, with a job and a (host) family and a purpose, for two months now; and I’m feeling pretty settled in.
The sunset from my window that first night
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Episode Forty – The Last Month Of My Life (Part 4)
Episode Forty, huh? Well, well, well. Celebrations would be in order, only I don’t really have anything to celebrate with.
How about you all celebrate by leaving me a warm and friendly message to tell me you stopped by? That would really make my day.
Remember when I said that I was writing from the clouds of Monteverde and you should stay tuned for news on our adventures there? Well, that’s what I have in store for you today. Just when the heat of La Fortuna was getting to be oppressive and a little too much to bear, we high-tailed it out of there and hopped on a minibus to the cloud forest. Ahhhhhhh, refreshingísimo. Continue reading
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Episode Thirty Nine – The Last Month Of My Life (Part 3)
Hola amigos y amigas.
As promised, Episode Thirty Nine will be packed full of goodies, anecdotes, Did-You-Knows and photographs. Are you ready? Then let’s go. We’ll start with a little orientation in La Fortuna.
Grant insisted on wearing black t-shirts and then complaining about the heat.
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Episode Thirty Eight – The Last Month of My Life (Part 2)
Hello again.
I know I only posted very recently, but truth be told, I don’t really like the way my super-long and pictureless rant looks at the top of my homepage. I’m not ashamed of it, and I stick by everything I said; however, it’s not really what you all want to be reading about, and it’s not really what I want you to be reading about, either. What I do want you to be reading about is the fantastic time that Grant and I had in La Fortuna! After Episode Thirty Seven, if you read it, you’ll probably be pleased to hear that we only spent three nights in La Fortuna and this will consequently be a short-ish blog post. And after all the times I’ve said that before, if you read them, you’ll probably be a little skeptical about the truth behind that statement. Read on and see! Continue reading
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Episode Thirty Seven – Why My Next Computer Will Not Be A Mac
Now, it’s not often that you’ll find one of my posts tagged with the keyword ‘technology’ but this is really less of a technological issue and more of a psychological, emotional, financial and general well-being related post. It takes the form of a letter.
[EDIT: Steve Jobs resigned as head of Apple Inc. on the same day as I published this, and especially since his early passing away I feel a little bad about the timing of this post. Please just remember while you read that at time of going to wordpress, he was still alive and kicking as CEO.] Continue reading
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Episode Thirty Six – The last month of my life (Part 1)
I was planning to begin this post with an apology. My pristine blogging system has gone quite down the drain in these last few weeks, and I was going to say that I’m so sorry for just copying out the running commentary that I kept in my lovely Liberty notebook as I was travelling. Continue reading
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Episode Thirty Five – Something New: Something Old.
Today I’m going to do something new with this blog: I’m going to post something old. Old pictures, to be precise. Not all of them are very old, but they all seem very much as though they’re from my past now. So this post will mostly be pictures and not many words: something new indeed! I was just looking back at all the pictures in my iPhoto library today, and feeling proud of my life up until now. Here are some photographs that made me stop and think ‘Well done us’.
Click the image to see the many other brilliant pictures from that night.
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Episode Thirty Four – The Capital of Costa Rica, Again
¡Hola a todos!
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I have some catching up to do, that’s for sure. I have a confession to make: my last few posts were queued and posted automatically according to a pre-determined schedule. I know, I know, something about that just seems like cheating to me too, but it was necessary to prevent another post-five-times-in-four-days-then-post-nothing-for-weeks scenario. Grant and I just could not justify taking my computer with us on our travels, so I left it behind and left my posts in WordPress’ hands. Anyway, where was I?
/Rhetorical question. Continue reading
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Roamward Bound 