Mamma Ticas

Since arriving, we've been hosted by two families. Our current accommodations are great, we've got a private bedroom, bath, and even our own dining table. We've currently got 8 roommates in what resembles a hostel more than a home stay (we join the family for breakfast and dinner, but otherwise we all stay in our quarters upstairs).

Though this is all wonderful, nothing can compare to our experience with our first Mamma Tica (a term for Costa Rican women--men are Ticos. These aren't derogatory terms but are used colloquially), Maria del Rosio. She was a gracious host and has found a permanent place in both of our hearts as an adopted Mamma for life.

Despite the language barrier, we learned that she was genuine, warm, welcoming, gracious, fabulously domestic, and kinder than we could have ever dreamed. We arrived late one Thursday evening, not having a clue whether or not we were even in the right place. Maria welcomed us, showed us our room, and even gave us some cookies and crackers before we went to sleep--we were so grateful.

On our last night with Maria we (well, Justin) made dinner for Maria, her husband Fabio, and our other three roommates--some lovely college students from Indiana. It was the first time we all sat at the table together, as we students were usually served before the family ate. It was great to express our gratitude, share a recipe, drink wine, and celebrate community. Afterword Maria stayed up with us and our roommate Mollie looking at our wedding photos, sharing stories about past home stay students, trading English and Spanish lessons, and really enjoying one another's company.

We owe Maria a visit (or several!) before we leave, though I'm certain it won't repay her for our warm reception into Costa Rica. Thank you, Mamma Tica! We love you!!

And now, some pictures from the home of our first Costa Rican family:

Our room

Pita, the oldest, most crochety cat you ever saw (he was 21)

Mellie and Diana, Mamma Tica's granddaughter and daughter

Mellie showing off the living room

Chester

Mellie sharing her sunglasses

and her silly faces :)

Maria, Diana, and Mellie

Fabio, Mellie, Maria, and Diana. Fabio LOVES this picture (and for good reason, too!)

Making dinner

Fryin' up the chicken tenders (they were SO good)

Our San Jose family: Ali, me, Justin, Maria, Mollie, and Chandlar

Costa Rica, Week One

We've been in Costa Rica for just over one week. What a whirlwind its already been! We have already taken tons of pictures, met many wonderful Costa Ricans and Americans, completed a few days of Spanish lessons, retrieved both of our bags from Delta (finally! It took four days for Justin's to arrive and seven for mine to get here), spent about $450.00 USD of Delta's money buying things we needed while we waited for our bags (ok--I didn't NEED the curling iron, but Delta deserved it! I hardly bought anything before I decided to get it!), and generally had a wonderful time. So far, we've traveled to Liberia, Curabande, San Jose, San Pedro (we live here--its a suburb on San Jose) and Cartago, a beautiful little mountain town.

Costa Rica is surprisingly not as different from the US as I'd expected. Don't get me wrong, the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at for the first two nights was completely Costa Rican, all snuggled into the forest, with a cacophony of bird songs to lull us to sleep every night, but San Jose? Its a city. And with that comes fast food, consumerism, high prices (similar to the US, much to my dismay), bad traffic, lots of restaurants, and generally people everywhere. I feel like there are less tress here than back home in Seattle. We did travel to a small town called Cartago on Sunday, but other than the journey there, even that felt a lot like a regular town.

Some things I love about Costa Rica:

• Everyone is VERY patient with you when you **try** to speak Spanish
• People are so polite
• People have cell phones, but aren't constantly on them (except maybe on the bus)
• Coffee flows like water
• Speaking of water, you can drink it out of the tap here--wonderful!

Some things I didn't expect

• People are really stylish here, even in the small towns. I never expected to feel like I needed to dress UP on a backpacking trip. I hope people are more laid back at the beach, where we'll be next week.
• Its much colder here than I expected (I had to wear a sweatshirt and long pants today).
• Cell phone plans are SUPER cheap (we're getting ripped off in the states)
• For the most part, the showers are warm
• It is very clean, no one piles up on motorbikes with their whole family and their dog, people are very educated
• This is, in short, a developed country (if you ask me)

Later this week I'll write about our wonderful host mamma, Maria del Rosio, and how I wish I could pack her up and keep her in my pocket because she's just so sweet! Until then, here are some pictures:

Our "room" at the Bed and Breakfast, where we spent our first two nights.

This is Lola. She was more like a cat then any dog I've ever met. 

Justin by the pool

Cool street art in downtown San Jose

Beautiful old church in Cartago that was never finished due to earthquakes. 

The front of the church, including an odd obelisk. 

The view from my (Crystal's) classroom at Maximo Nivel in San Pedro.

We've arrived

Hello all

Our phones don't get service but we arrived this afternoon. Both of our bags got lost in the shuffle so we likely need to stay in Liberia one more night and get our bags tomorrow or the next day. We are safe, stinky, tired (20+ hours of flight/layovers), and happy. Our hostel is beautiful--they even have up Christmas lights! We have a tent with big foam mattresses and can hear dozens of birds calling from everywhere. 

We got ripped off by the taxi driver on the way over here but now we know better ;). Between or travel insurance and Delta, we will get some money to buy clothes and things for the next day or two. We have all of our shower stuff and the hostel provided cute little soaps and towels (thank god!)

The most serendipitous part of the trip so far was earlier today when our flight into Atlanta was considerably delayed. Once we landed and pulled into our gate, we had to switch because the retractible walkway was frozen. Justin and I had about 28 minutes to board our new flight and were certain we'd miss our plane. As our luck would have it, our new gate was the same gate we were departing from, so we had time to buy sandwiches and pee. The Universe is on our side!

Setting up for dinner

Settling In

That's Cookie. We hear she speaks Spanish.

During dinner Justin said he kept feeling like he should get up and help--This place reminds us both a lot of Molly Ward Gardens. Feels like a little piece of home.

We love you and miss you all

C&J

From Central America to Africa!

It's official, Justin and I have purchased our tickets through to Africa! We've got just under two months to go, and now 80% of our locations are set. We're leaving the last several months of our tickets for purchase this summer for reasons I'll lay out below.

But first, we've now got an established itinerary (rough, but a guideline) for January, 2014-September, 2014. The two must-have destinations for us were Brazil and Ghana. Justin is a soccer FANATIC (all caps intentional) so we MUST be in Brazil from at least June 12-July 13 for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. My must-go destination is Ghana, as one of my dearest childhood friend's grandmother runs a non-profit called Anansi that assists teens in getting their high school education. Check out more on this great organization at the link below.

www.anansieducation.org

2014 FIFA World Cup

That said, (drumroll, please!) the flight destinations are as follows:

• San Jose, Costa Rica--Lima, Peru: June 4, 2014
• Lima, Peru--Sao Paulo, Brazil: June 10, 2014
• Sao Paulo, Brazil--Buenos Aires, Argentina: July 16, 2014
• Buenos Aires, Argentina--Sao Paulo, Brazil (cheaper to fly to Africa from Brazil): September 17, 2014
• Sao Paulo, Brazil--Accra, Ghana: September 18, 2014

Machu Picchu, Peru

Buenos Aires, Argentina

We are also making a slight stopover in Togo on our way to Accra, but other than that, this is our flight pattern. We'll likely be visiting additional countries along this route, including (but not limited to) Nicaragua, Panama (I'm dying to see The Canal), Paraguay, Mali and Cote d'Ivoire. We also plan to travel up the coast of Brazil to Rio and Salvador, as well as follow the US team around for the World Cup.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Salvador, Brazil

We decided not to purchase tickets beyond September 2014 for a few reasons:

1) Ticket purchases are only valid for change up to one year from purchase

2) Tickets are only available for purchase up to 365 days in advance

3) Our plans/money/situation may change!

This leaves us free to stay in Africa through January, or add a leap over to Europe, India, Nepal...wherever.

We purchased our tickets through www.airtreks.com, a site highly recommended among long term travel bloggers. Our travel planner, Chris, was incredibly helpful. He worked to get us the best deals possible. For all flights, including taxes, we paid just $2,884.00 USD each. This is a pretty screaming deal, considering flights to Brazil and Ghana alone can be more than half that on their own (especially with World Cup prices, when it comes to Brazil).

Now that we've got our tickets purchased, we've started focusing more on acquiring gear, selling more of our stuff, and getting accommodations together. We've booked a hostel in Costa Rica through hostelworld.com for our first three nights, but hope to couchsurf much of that first month (and much of the trip, to be honest). During our second month there I'll be in my TESOL training course through International TESOL and TEFL Training, which includes onsite accommodation.

We're also meeting up with some friends in Costa Rica at the end of March, where we'll get wonderful condo accommodations for a week (sooo excited). 

After that, who knows. We'll go wherever the wind blows us. For now, we're just counting down: 

COUNTDOWN CLOCK WIDGETS

For help getting started on your around the world itinerary, the following sites were invaluable to us

For general know-how:

• www.indietravelpodcast.com -- my personal fave, both the podcast and the site
• www.earth2eartha.com she even emailed me about packing questions--really awesome girl!
• www.ytravelblog.com -- podcast is great as well
• www.nomadicmatt.com
• www.travelhacking.org

For flights:

• www.airtreks.com
• www.skyscanner.com -- great deals on single flights. We purchased our initial tickets to CR here
• www.staralliance.com -- good for looking at true round the world tickets. I'll put a post up about these later. 
• www.oneworld.com

For accommodations:

• www.couchsurfing.org
• www.airbnb.org
• www.hostelworld.com
• www.hostels.com

Donating our Car

In another big step toward our location independent lifestyle, we donated our car today. She has been acting up for just over a year, but finally decided to bite the dust about one month ago. Several friends had theories about what might be wrong, but in the end, we decided it was time to just get rid of her.

That all said, it was a rather bitter sweet moment for me personally. I purchased little Ronata (the Sonata--clever, I know) almost exactly 7 years ago. I'd had several duds before her, but she was the nicest car I'd ever owned. I took her for regular checkups, we went on long drives together--nearly 100,000 miles of memories she and I.

Ronata holding up my pack on my one year wedding anniversary

We had some great times, like when I drove her from Southern Oregon to Seattle in the pouring rain, all the while on the phone (via bluetooth!) with my then boyfriend, now husband, Justin. We'd only been dating for two weeks and we talked on the phone for 8 solid hours--now that's love. Or the time I was cleaning her out and found a moldy old mango under the passenger seat. I'd spilled a bag of groceries two weeks before and apparently missed one (so gross). Or, one of my very faves, the time my Uncle KC tried to re-wire the brakes as a practical joke after our wedding. He wanted the car to make an obnoxious "aaaOOOOOgaahhh" sound every time the breaks were hit, but instead shorted out all the lights in the car. Good thing we left on our honeymoon the next day. :)


There were some rough times too, like the time her front diver's side tire popped while we were rolling down the freeway. You think I would have noticed, but I was jammin' to my music and had no clue until a van next to me pulled up and mouthed while pointing "your tire went BOOM." She also ground to a screeching halt on the freeway (on the way to work, no less) one day for no reason. I towed her to the office and figured I deal with her when my shift ended. When work was over, she started right up, as if nothing had happened. Sorry to all the people on I-5: that traffic jam was caused by me (so embarrassing).

After a fender bender. (Hey, at least we got $1100 from the other guy's insurance)

With all the mixed emotions and memories behind us, we decided to donate Ronata to Wheels for Wishes, an affiliate of Make a Wish Foundation. We support the cause and found the process easiest and most painless--you schedule a pickup, they take it off your hands and give you a $500 charitable tax deduction slip. If the car sells for more, they'll send an updated tax form for the difference. Check them out at http://wheelsforwishes.org.

Other organizations that you can donate to:

http://www.kars4kids.org -- funds go toward children's education
http://www.carshelpingpets.org -- pretty sure the donation goes to help pets with this one ;)
http://www.kidscarcharity.org/seattle -- proceeds go to children

You can even donate your car to your local Public Radio Station, like KUOW here in Seattle:

http://kuow.org/car

Of course, you can also sell your car the old fashioned way. We chose a different route because, as of September, our old beauty only started about 60% of the time. Whatever works best for you, go for it. You don't need your car sitting around at home while you're off traveling the world.

If you must keep it, though, have someone drive it a few miles at least once a month. This will help ensure everything is still working properly. Also--you must maintain car insurance, even if the car isn't being driven often. If someone hits it (or worse, if it rolls and hits someone/thing) you could still be liable, even from half across the world.

Fare thee well, Ronata. May your next incarnation suit you. You will be missed.

Ronata being towed away last Friday morning. Goodbye, old girl.

The Garage Sale: More Community, Less Stuff.

A garage sale can be an exposure of your personal life via used items on display for the whole neighborhood to rummage through. As your neighbors peruse your old stuff they get a glimpse into who you are based on what items you had and are getting rid of. Every item can tell a story about your style, hobbies, work or education. And the fact that you're getting rid of those items tells another story: what are you ready to leave behind as you move forward to the next step of life? We couldn't help but feel that everyone at our sale had a close-up view into who we were without ever needing to exchange a word. We were neighbors without borders. We intended only to purge our material items and make some dough, we didn't expect the outpouring of community, stories, and kindness.

If you're planning to travel long term, selling your stuff is a step we'd seriously advise including. It's not practical to store stuff long term. A garage sale will generate some funds and is a valuable exercise in letting go of the things tying you down, allowing you to focus only on the road ahead. We expected it to be a hot, boring, end of summer sale, little did we know we'd get to know all sorts of fun characters from around the neighborhood.

Because we didn't price anything (not intentional, we just ran out of time -- in hindsight, we'd really recommend it!) we were forced to speak to everyone that walked up. This turned out to be our favorite part of the day. There was the family with an American dad and Mexican mom, who'd recently returned from visiting her family. They gave us travel advice, should we end up in Mexico. The older of their two daughters was 9 years old, with personal style to boot. She was the unlikely purchaser of Justin's old work ties: 

We're so happy that we know this person exists

There was the father and two daughters who biked from miles away, all arriving on one bicycle with dad pedaling, one daughter on the handle bars, and one standing in back. They bought too much stuff to carry home, so they came back a few hours later, this time with three bikes.

This family won the award for Best Transportation

Even the neighborhood weirdo contributed to the fun that day. He was our first customer--he could have won a Michael Jackson look-a-like contest from the "Beat it" video. We all felt a little uncomfortable around him at first (think slow speech, mumbling, odd topic choices) but after he returned for the fifth time to pick up a set of dishes he planned to give to his sister, we all had to agree--he was pretty awesome. On top of all the cool strangers we met, we got to spend the day with our dear friends Amy and Torry who hosted the sale for us. Even their neighbor, June, cleared her side of the driveway and hung out with us for the day.

In the end we purged (it's amazing how much CRAP we realized we had) AND we made a over 700 bucks! But the real successes of the day were the connections we made with everyone, and that we gained a wonderful new story to add to our Round the World experience.

Garage Sale tips and tricks we learned along the way:

• Advertise a week early on craigslist. List and picture some of the big ticket items and also state other types of things that will be for sale. Use keywords like books, DVDs, music, clothes, kitchen gadgets, camping gear, etc.
• Make fun signs to put up around the neighborhood--many customers commented that our colorful signs are what attracted them
• Don't bother pricing everything before hand. It takes a lot of time and people will barter anyway. And our favorite--it encourages interaction with people.
• Have fun setting up. For instance, our buddy Amy made a camping display, setting up the camping chairs, picnic table and Coleman stove. We didn't think we'd sell much of this stuff--but it all went first! Thanks, Ames, for the idea!

"Like camping? Buy our stuff and this could be you!" (Amy and Erin)

• We bought banquet tables, a clothes rack, and a money box for the sale and returned them the next day. This step isn't for everyone. We kept them in perfect condition and kept the tags for everything.
• At the end of the day, take everything you didn't sell and donate it.
• Use the buddy system. Odds are you have a few friends who have things they need to get rid of. Team up and spend the day helping each other.
• Have FUN! We proved that garage sales don't have to be a drag, they can actually be a day well spent. (The mimosas and beer didn't hurt, I'm sure)

The Reluctant Husband: Part 2, The Process

I was the reluctant husband, but now I'm on board for a 12 month, round the world adventure. And I'm even blogging about it.

So what has the process been like? One might say that constant droplets of Crystal's persistence slowly tapped at my will until it cracked like a water-boarded prisoner. My will is not so rigid though, and her persistence is not so torturous. Others might say that my desire to stay home propelled a propaganda campaign to black out her heralds of rebellious messages of freedom. She is not so mutinous though, and I am not so oppressive. It's been a long, evolutionary process for sure, but always more of a dance than a battle.

Crystal would speak of all the amazing things we would see while we're traveling and all the amazing people we could connect with. We would watch travel documentaries about emotional humanitarian stories like Living on One, or ones about awesome geographical or historical attractions like Rick Steve's Europe. After each (sometimes with a tear in her eye) she would say, "See?" I would rebut with with the fact that we had agreed on the current path we were on, and that interrupting it now would only set us back years and that we had mortgages and credit card balances and student loans. Or we would spend an amazing weekend with friends or family and we would both feel affirmed that those are the moments worth living for. Afterward I would look at her comfortingly and say, "See?"

So many dinner conversations turned into passionate pleas on both our accounts and they often lasted late into the night. We always were very careful to reconcile and be sure we both went to bed knowing that the most important thing was that we loved each other. I can't emphasize enough the magnitude of that act. But the conversations were still hard. It was exhausting and heart wrenching. I felt like she didn't understand or accept who I was and she felt like I wouldn't believe in her or her dreams. What we didn't realize though is that throughout all those conversations we really got to know each other. I mean really got to know each other. There's no moment more sincere and honest than when your spouse, completely emotionally beat down after hours of intense arguments, clutches her chest in front of her heart with both hands, looks you in the eye with tears on her face and says, "this is me." Wow. I didn't know I could know any person like that.

The process has been long and difficult, and I'd bet one day it will fit perfectly as just a single chapter in the story of our lives together. But through it all, Crystal and I have gained something that would have been impossible to attain if we'd just agreed with each other all along: a truer, deeper understanding of one another and synchronization what we dream for our lives together to be.

-Justin