April Report

As hard as it to believe, I am now into the home stretch of April.

I have been so involved in one thing or another that I haven't really noticed what a good month this has been.

Among this month's highlights:

1. a very enjoyable visa run to Nicaragua (no this wasn't to pay a VISA bill...it was to leave Costa Rica for 3 days in order to renew my visitor's visa, which happened automatically when I returned to CR)
2. the launch of a new website that I am developing with a fellow canuck
3. continued growth of my own website: Alexa (the website that ranks other websites) reports that traffic to my site has grown 150% over the past three months)
4. good progress in my students' English skills...both have marks in the low 90s
5. yesterday I met another English teacher, a Tico who is home for a few weeks before returning to Switzerland, where he is working on his masters degree in environmental studies while teaching English and Spanish and also learning German. What an absolutely amazing guy!!!
6. more canceled classes for this week so I am off to Quepos/Manuel Antonio on Thursday for a few days
7. this morning, my landlady brought me breakfast of an omelet of some kind, cheese, tortillas and of course, gallo pinto.

As enjoyable as these events were, it is difficult to offer any meaningful insights or observations...or even see any kind of a pattern.

But that's OK: I'm not even going to try. I am just going to enjoy the satisfaction of having events unfold as positively as they are.

Oh yeah...one more thing. Seems the green...or rainy...is now underway.

The downpours that I have experienced so far are nothing short of torrential. And the thunderstorms are absolutely awesome in the true sense of the word. They seem to come out of nowhere and wham, bam!!

I suspect that the elevation may have something do with the intensity of the rain and thunder storms. I checked this morning and San Jose is almost 1200 metres above sea level. Toronto on the other hand ranges from about 75 metres at the waterfront to 200 metres at York U.

But right now...12:23 pm...it's not raining. So I am going out for lunch. It might even stay dry until I get back.

Saludos.

Central Amercian Resourcefulness

I am now pretty well back on track after last weekend's trip to Nicaragua.

My Costa Rican friends think of the trip as a holiday and ask how I enjoyed it. My answer to them is 'muy bueno, gracias.'

A Visa Run To Nicaragua

My non-Costa Rican friends think of the trip as my visa run...and we talk about the process of crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua..and vice versa. Most interesting procedures to follow. The bottom line on the border crossings, as long as you are prepared to trust the process and go with the flow (sorry abut the clichès) everything will work out the way it's supposed to.

It also helps to travel with a company that sends eight bus loads of passengers across the border one way or the other each day. They certainly smooth things out...for the passengers as well as the border officials.

One of the joys of my visa run was being free of all work responsibilities...related to both teaching and website development.

Among other things, I had the opportunity to just chat...and that's what I did most, with and without 'Tonia', Nicaragua's beer of choice.

Soon after arriving a the hotel (Casa Capicho...one of the nicest places I have ever stayed) I met Sharon, an American currently living in an apartment in the hotel.

We enjoyed instant rapport.

Not only are we both involved in website development, we are doing it in third world countries, with all the challenges that presents. But we also shared similar experiences as a result of living in Nicaragua (Sharon—for several years) and Costa Rica (me—for only a couple of months).

Resourceful Central Americans

We are both very impressed with how resourceful Central Americans are at living their daily lives.

I think this resourcefulness flows from the 'necessity is the mother of invention' way of doing things.

In this part of the world the governments seem to intervene as little as possible in the lives of their citizens.

In practice, this means that road construction is not always generously marked by warning lights, signs and flag-people. According to Sharon, when you come across road construction, more often than not you have to make your own way through it, which everyone seems to do.

In the San Jose area, I have seen traffic police use tree branches to warn of road hazards and shopping carts turned upside down to keep drivers and pedestrians off newly painted parking lot markings.

Sidewalks

Wherever I have been in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, sidewalk design, construction and maintenance has appears to have been the responsibility of the owners of adjacent property.

As a result, this means that when walking on the sidewalks, it is important to watch where you are walking to avoid holes, crack, bumps, dog droppings and who knows what else.

The good news is that there are small coins to be found by watching the sidewalk.

The bad news is that there are overhead obstacles like tree branches, awnings and signs to crack the heads of taller North Americans, like me.

Whenever I have mentioned to my Costa Rican friends the problem with the sidewalks, I get a totally blank stare, even from those who are fluent in English.

OK...I get it. The uneven sidewalks and overhanging obstacles are not the government's responsibility to standardize and regulate, as is the case in Canada. They are my issues to address and resolve.

This being the case, I think I may have a solution.

In one of the nearby restaurants, one of the waiters wears a yellow construction hard hat. I was amused when I first saw this.

But on my second visit I saw there was an solid metal structure over the waiters' station. Since Ticos tend to be short, most servers would not have a problem with this overhead structure.

But this waiter, taller than the average Tico, would be constantly banging his head on the light structure if it were not for his yellow construction hard hat, which probably now takes the impact.

I wonder where I can get a Panama hat with the same resistance strength of a yellow construction hard hat.

I Just Don't Understand

Yesterday was a very strange day. After having worked on one thing or another for the past 10 days to 2 weeks, yesterday morning around 9:30, I finished the last item on my then current to-do list.

This work-a-thon was to clear the decks in preparation for my next stint of 10 busy days.

Instant Shutdown

When I finished the last task on my list, almost immediately my brain shut down.

Even the most menial task was too much...among other things, I had forgotten how to log into Twitter.

My response was to back off and let my brain take its well deserved rest.

I napped, listened to music, went out for something to eat, watched what was happening on the street and similar challenging tasks.

Yes...a truly difficult day.

By mid-afternoon, after a fair chunk of time spent doing da nada, it was time to get ready for my 5:15 class. About the same time, glimmers of totally unrelated ideas started popping into my brain.

As I had done when my brain shut itself down, I just let it be. I had no idea what was happening or where it was heading.

On the bus ride to San Jose, these random ideas started to come together into some kind of a pattern, still totally beyond my comprehension.

By the time I had arrived in downtown San Jose, this thought pattern was in full flight, heading somewhere on its own. I was an innocent and very confused witness to what was happening.

Eureka!

It was part way through my pre-class snack of roast beef on a pannini, (I needed something familiar) that everything came together with a resounding..and mercifully silent...Eureka!

With minimal conscious input, I had come up with a new way of analyzing the traffic to my website.

The bad news was that with the next 10 days completely planned, the process would have to continue on its own.

But the strangeness does not end there.

When I met Gustavo for our class, we started as we usually do, by chatting about what each of us had done since we last met. He had spent most of the past week working. This came as no surprise because he admits to being a work-a-holic.

Tech Support

Unprompted by me, he said that first thing in the morning, he had been unable to focus on what he had to do. He had even forgotten how to log on to his company's Intranet...so had to call tech support for help.

After identifying himself, he explained his problem...with much embarrassment.

While working through the resolution, the technician commented that Gustavo was the 22nd person in Latin America...to that point in the day...to have had the same problem.

Normally, tech support receives 1-2 such requests in each 24-hour day.

There are lots of things I just don't understand.

But that's OK.

I'll just forget about them and get on with doing something I do understand.