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Published: July 30th 2006
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Clown at the new Maxi-Bodega
What an unexpected treat to discover the store was opened today. July has been a strange month for us, an emotional roller coaster of sorts. We reached our six month mark in Costa Rica and still couldn’t be happier with our decision to relocate. That doesn’t mean it’s all been an easy road.
The month began with our friends the Eury’s returning to the states. As their departure date neared we learned our friends and neighbors, the Dyck family we returning to Canada. The leaving of friends caused unexpected sadness. The Eury’s represented a connection to a former life. The Dyck’s represented a part of our new life. It’s understandable that losing the connection to our former lives would cause sadness. The day we said good-bye to the Eury’s, Callista began asking when she’d be old enough to fly back to the states alone to visit them. Until their visit she’d had no desire to return to the states. The departure of the Dyck family, who had sold their 53 acres in Alberta to begin their new lives here, caused Bill a bit of frustration. If they couldn’t make it here maybe we couldn’t either. Once we discussed our situations he realized how different things were for us.
We rented
Dyck's rental house
Street front with no yard. a large house with a yard for Bear and Callista to have room to play and Bill to putter about. The size of the house is a big factor. The Dyck’s rented a small, three bedroom house with no yard. I would call their house an efficiency house, just bedrooms, a kitchen and small dining area. Their porch was caged in and the only play area for the three children 2, 4 and 6. I commented to them several times on how I wouldn’t be able to handle living in their house. Their rent was $200 less than ours but I’d rather pay more and keep my sanity.
Another difference is that we retired here. The Dyck’s moved here to start a business. It adds a great deal of pressure when you have to work to support your family, a growing family at that. They discovered after four months here that Jennifer was pregnant. While John hung out at all the local North American hang outs making connections, she managed the house, three children and home schooled their daughter. Their lives here were very different than ours.
After re-evaluating the reasons we moved and the way we are
Our front yard
A few of Bears friends coming over to play in our yard. handing our lives here we are no longer sad. We are happy with the way we are living our lives. The conversations in English will be missed but we didn’t move here to be with North Americans and their attitudes. We moved here to escape that.
Other emotional situations this month included finding out that the time spent on our residency prior to leaving the states had been wasted. We learned the paperwork sent by the consulate in Los Angeles to immigration in Costa Rica had been submitted incorrectly and 90% of our paperwork had been lost. Our first response was “UNBELIEVABLE!”. Then we remembered we were in Costa Rica, it was to be expected. Luckily, we had extra original copies of most of the paperwork so resubmitting wouldn’t be as big of a hassle.
In addition to the frustrating news about residency we were still battling our former attorney for the completion of our Costa Rican corporation. We had been told it was a two week process and we were looking at nearly five months. Needless to say, we are no longer associated with that attorney. Please feel free to email me with questions about him as
I’d be more than happy to share his name on an individual basis. I’m cautious about publishing something publicly. As I’ve said before be very careful when choosing who you deal with in Costa Rica.
We are now working with the Association of Residents of Costa Rica (ARCR) for our legal needs. We were hesitant previously about joining an association as we aren’t “group” people. Associations bring to mind negative thoughts for us. We met a family thru the blog not long ago who told us of their positive experiences with them and decided to give them a chance. We’re hopeful everything will go smoothly with them as they’ve helped expats relocate for many years. We’ll keep you posted.
As far as the property goes, we met with a Tico architect/builder at the end of June and are still waiting to hear back from him. We spoke with his wife, Callista’s dentist, over a week ago who said he would call us but still haven’t heard anything. We made contact with an American builder and hoped to meet him last week but he had car issues so that did not happen. We’re hoping we can meet later this
Fairy Callista
Callista playing fairy in the back yard. week.
The rains have increased from last month so maybe that has had some effect on us coming from the desert. The mornings are for the most part bright and sunny with the showers moving in after lunch and sometimes continuing on into the night. We enjoy watching the rain and making rain gauges out of milk jugs. Our mornings are spent doing household chores that require electricity as you never know if you’ll have power when the rain starts. Some days it only takes a heavy fog to knock out the power. We’ve not been walking as we had been as you can’t (ok, we don’t) walk in the rain.
In addition, I’ve had a cold this month that I just can not seem to shake. I caught the cold sitting outside watching the rain in the evenings. Bill finally insisted that I do NOTHING for a few days and give my body a chance to rest. I’m trying to comply. He’s done a great job keeping up with everything around the house. We received an M-Bag from a friend the other day filled with magazines so I have something else to do besides watch TV all
New haircut
It took some convincing but once Callista got the haircut she loved it. day. That was such a blessing and the timing couldn’t have been better. Thanks, Donna!
August holds a great deal of excitement for us as our 20 year old son will be coming for a two week visit. It‘s his first trip to Costa Rica and we’re all anxious to show him our new country.
Pura Vida,
Jen, Bill, Callista and Bear (who doesn’t seem to have any trouble with the language barrier)
OK.... BREAKING NEWS!! We now have a new Wal-mart owned store in San Ramon, Maxi Bodega. We knew it was opening soon and went by today to see how the construction was coming along. It OPENED on Friday. YIPPEE!!! We had to go in and check things out. What a treat to have a new place to shop AND see a familiar name. All the employee name tags have "Wal-Mart" on them. We found the prices less than we'd been paying at other stores but it's grand opening weekend so we'll see if they stay low. It made me feel like we were back in the states in Wal-mart with the exception of all the announcements in Spanish.
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Donna
non-member comment
Great
Everyone looks great. Jen glad your enjoying the magazines. There old but some thinks never change! Love Donna