What many of you have been waiting for is the answer to a nagging question. Are they going to really go away for two whole years and leave us in the lurch? Well, the original answer was yes. And in many ways I wish that I could stick with that answer. This teaching gig has been the one I have liked the most. This community is just as great as the one we have back in Montague (heck their names even both start with Mont so I miss-write them constantly). We have played more gigs and gotten more involved with the contra dance scene here than we ever would or will in the states (because without organizing it, there wouldn't be a dance, even if we only
have three this year...). I see monkeys, tucanets, mot mots, and various and sundry other wild things on my walks home. There are almost daily rainbows...(sometimes multiples, and often more than one a day in the season we just finished). Anyway, you get the picture. If someone were advertising an amazing place to go and live while the US economy is in an uproar, this location couldn't really be beat, well, aside from the 12 or 17% cost of living increase this year.That said, we both have been struggling mightily with homesickness. Even though the community is great, it's not ours. Even though the school is great, and there is a library, I have to say confidentially that the library pretty much sucks when you want to read young adult fiction that was published within the last ten years, and that's certainly not the fault of the volunteer librarians who have no budget. It can be tedious to download anything at an average rate of 2-4 kbps. That's the rate my first dial-up connection was in high school. And, perhaps most importantly, we have come to a place of balance with where we want to be.
jordan wants to go back to her work as a librarian (though of course this is one of the hardest times to get work when libraries are often the first cut). If you have any sway in the budget process at schools, now is the time to exert your power. I am ready to be brave and try something I am not certain that I'll be good at, or even like. I am ready to not take my work home every night and that obviously means a career change. While the two possibilities remaining from my list of five possibles upon graduating from college are massage therapist or rock star, I'm not feeling quite that brave. Much thought has been going into the possibilities, and a whole lot of research on the ridiculously slow internets, and I think I might have been right when I was 3. I think, just maybe, I want to be a firefighter when I grow up. So, upon our triumphant return to the greater northeast, I plan on enrolling in the GCC (or other?) EMT course and get started with dual paramedic/firefighter career training. Of course if you have any knowledge about said career path, and no I don't think I want to do wildfires primarily, I'd love to hear it. Finally, we're experiencing a lot of baby-lust and hope that once we get settled and employed and all of that, we can finally figure out how to get that baby thing happening. I'm not holding my breath, so you shouldn't either, but just be aware we wish we were among those Montaguites who were having babies all over the place this fall...
We can't wait to be back, but if you even have the possibility of visiting, we still have room in March, most of April and all of May. Plus, if you get out of school in early June and want to go exploring in Costa Rica with us, you should let us know. Though it won't be a free place to stay, and we won't be up in Monteverde after school gets out on the 9th, we will happily include you in our plans for the Osa Peninsula and maybe some other locations equally amazing.
Your love and support has been amazing. In some ways, it has caused this perhaps unsurprising turn of events with all of the "Come home now! We miss you!" emails. As always, we skype under the pseudonyms funklera and jorjorjorjor. We are facebooking quite a bit lately if you're on that silly thing, though thanks to the aforementioned slow connection, we're not actually addicted. And gchat works when we remember to log in...
As always, we look forward to hearing from you even if it's a "wish I could visit" sort of email. If you include information about your own life, you know, that makes us feel even more connected. We miss you terribly.
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