The silence is broken!
Yes, it's been a long time, for sure. I guess it's possible to say that I've been consumed by a life of teaching, but that would be a lie. The problem is rather a Tica that has entered my life and made all my plans come to a screeching halt. Only this remains: The opening of a window and the defenestration of all hope. Oh well.
Since last I wrote a lot has changed. Let's start with the ESL related stuff. My schedule has been turned around and I'm now teaching a regular class every morning Monday through Thursday, which I enjoy. It's a lot easier to deal one class than three. I was recognized as "that guy from Dave's forum" by a girl who started working in my school (second time, woo). I even met a guy from the selfsame forum in San Jose and was mercilessly pumped for information. Last but not least, I had my ass kicked by one of the moderators there who didn't like my coming down on gringos. My trembling still hasn't subsided.
So it's six on a Monday afternoon and I came to the internet cafe to do some prepwork for one of my classes. As you can see, it didn't work. I dropped by CCC and saw the last entry was in ... July? Something like that. Tony and Joanne (I think her name is) simply stopped posting here, it appears. So now I'm doing something about it. It's true that I have nothing to tell you about except that (and you can be sure I'll repeat this about 30 times) I have a girlfriend. I could tell you that it's raining a bit here. Quite a bit. And that I'm getting more and more to like living in this country - the more I see of Ticos the more I like it.
One thing I will tell you is that I'm realizing more and more that surviving in this country on 400-450 bucks a month is a tall order. I've declared in the past that it's possible, and it still is - but I ran a little check on my savings account and guess what, I've been using a lot more money than I thought I had. Meaning, even though I'm trying hard to be careful, running a monthly budget of about 400 dollars minus 200 for basic living expenses is pretty damn difficult. And I'm not particularly high maintenance. My girlfriend, on the other hand...
Once upon the time I had illusions of going to the States before I went home for Christmas, but all that are now shadows and dust, memories of memories et cetera. I'll be going home for Christmas but other than that, looks like I'm stuck in Costa Rica for a while. A terrible fate, indeed, to be stuck in a wonderful country with a wonderful girlfriend. Oh, oops, did I drop the girlfriend card again?
So this is the end of a disgustingly random blog entry from the in-house Norwegian. I'm still generally clueless, but happier than before.
Yes, it's because of my girlfriend.
