We Moved to Costa Rica

I'm celebrating my 33rd birthday in Costa Rica! How did I do that? That sure wasn't where I thought I'd be at 33. When I was a kid, growing up in West Virginia, I was under the impression I'd be there my whole life. I had goals and aspirations of traveling and seeing the world, but I never thought I'd actually do it. Over the years I'd spent birthdays in places like, Nashville, Anaheim and Myrtle Beach. I traveled to Canada once with my family, but we only spent a couple hours there. My sister, Amber, traveled abroad to Paris once for school. I remember being super envious of her, I still am. I remember watching movies where people backpack to places like Alaska and Mexico. I thought, "That's something I'd like to do", but again, I never did. When my Dad said his job was relocating him to Kansas City, even then I didn't want to go. I'd only ever traveled outside of West Virginia, I'd never actually moved somewhere else, I didn't...

So before we left Kansas we called all of the companies we had utilities through. We called Cox, Evergy, Water/trash and Gas. We dropped off our router back to Cox, Evergy sent us a refund check, I guess because they over charged us somewhere, no surprise there. Water/Trash sent us a final bill and so did Gas. Now let's flash forward a couple weeks. We left Kansas for Missouri, and then Missouri for Costa Rica. On day 3 Evergy charges us $56, we think, eh whatever, that's probably for something we don't know about, that'll be the end of that. Then, this morning, Evergy again, charges us $13. We check our account, someone dropped the ball, it was never closed. At some point today we'll have to call and see what's up. Also, we have a pending gas bill for something that's supposed to come out in July, guess we'll be making another phone call for that too.  Automated systems are a good idea in theory, until the people running the systems don't hit the bu...

I took the day off yesterday and unplugged for a bit. Even here in Costa Rica where you wouldn't think you can still get hooked on technology, you absolutely can. I realized this morning that my birthday is next week! 33 years old, wow, my knees tell me I'm older, but what do they know. Today I spent the better part of the morning adjusting, and fixing my website. I was unable to sleep for most of last night because of something my sister had said the day before. She said, "I think if you merged your Blog with your sticker website it would be more beneficial for you", or something to that affect. I took those words and added a link from my Blog to my website and left it at that. Then, last night, as I laid my head down, it hit me all at once. No you idiot, the website should be where people go to find your blog! When I woke up this morning, that's exactly what I did. Thank you Canva, I don't know if anyone at the company will read this, but you are a lifesaver...

     Today I walked to the nearest grocery store. I'd walked there already a couple times before, but today I actually purchased something. On my way there, I ran into some locals on bikes attempting to ask me how far the nearest chicken farm was. After a couple fumbled attempts at explaining it was only about half a kilometer up the road, I broke out Google translate on my phone. Everybody we've met so far has been super nice and welcoming. I wave at cars as they pass me, and about 60% of the time they wave back. I attempt to say Hola more than Hello, but Hello just comes out naturally. Eventually I will catch on, but it is certainly not this day. Anyway, back to my grocery store journey.     The nice man who runs the local store, La Casa, recognized me from a couple days ago. He had asked me if I spoke Spanish. I said, "Not very well, but I'm learning". He just smiled and looked away. I could tell he had no idea what I had just said, and I certainly couldn't...

We had laptop issues a couple days after arriving that finally got resolved as of this morning. Laptop was working fine for the first couple days, and then the camera stopped working. We took it in to a local computer repair store, but they said the camera was "beyond repair". They were able to get the laptop past the lockscreen, which was farther than we were able to do. We got the laptop back, but then Microsoft decided it didn't like Ryah's password. We left the computer alone for a couple days, because if we hadn't we would have chucked it into the field behind our Airbnb. Now was arrive to this morning. We attempted to call Microsoft, but there automated machine kindly told us to go away. After doing some sleuthing on the internet, and finding similar issues, we were able to log in to Microsoft again! Hallelujah! 

Today we took an Uber to Grecia. Cost $9 to get there and $7 to get back. We ate at Rejn Asian Fusion. The food was delicious! We got 2 entres, 2 boba drinks and 2 entres to go. Our meal was $80 so we definitely can't be doing that all the time. We've come to an agreement of going back once a month. We told our waiter that we are coming back so now we have to. We can't have someone out there in the world thinking we are liars right? In other news it's raining again here. It held off for most of the day at least. The rain here isn't bad. It's been mostly at night. It's great for vegetation and introverts who don't go out a whole lot. Today was another good day.