A Broad In Costa Rica

Himno Nacional de Costa Rica

We have one and a half years to learn the National Hymn of Costa Rica. If I listen to this everyday, I'm sure I can master it. I will also know how to spell National Hymn of Costa Rica in several languages:

Lyrics so you can sing along:

Noble patria, tu hermosa bandera
expresión de tu vida nos da;
bajo el límpido azul de tu cielo
blanca y pura descansa la paz.

En la lucha tenaz,
de fecunda labor
que enrojece del hombre la faz,
conquistaron tus hijos
labriegos sencillos
eterno prestigio, estima y honor,
eterno prestigio, estima y honor.

¡Salve, o tierra gentil!
¡Salve, o madre de amor!
Cuando alguno pretenda tu gloria manchar,
verás a tu pueblo valiente y viril,
la tosca herramienta en arma trocar.

Salve oh Patria tú pródigo suelo,
dulce abrigo y sustento nos da;
bajo el límpido azul de tu cielo
¡vivan siempre el trabajo y la paz!

In English:

Noble homeland, your beautiful flag
Express for us your life:
Under the limpid blue of your skies,
Peace reigns, white and pure.

In the tenacious battle of fruitful toil,
That brings a glow to men's faces,
Your sons, simple farm hands,
Gained eternal renown, esteem and honour,

Hail, gentle country!
Hail, loving mother!
If anyone should attempt to besmirch your glory,
You will see your people, valiant and virile,
Exchange their rustic tools for weapons.

Hail, O homeland! Your prodigal soil
Gives us sweet sustenance and shelter.
Under the limpid blue of your sky,
May peaceful labour ever continue.

Filas, Firmas y Fechas

Translation: Lines, Signatures and Dates. Or Things a Costa Rican Bureaucracy Can't Do Without. I left out estampilla [s-tom-PEE-jah, stamp] because it doesn't start with an f. But this is actually the critical item. If at least one (and usually all) of your Important Documents don't get pounded by a rubber stamp, you aren't done. Wait for further instructions. The Stamp of the Final Bureaucrat is Costa Rica's Holy Grail.

Last month we got a double dose of CRB (Costa Rican Bureaucracy). First, we renewed our passports at the American Embassy, as entrenched in CRB as any CRB. Then we received our cedulas [SAY-do-loss, i.d. cards] identifying us as rentistas [wren-TEE-stahce]. It doesn't have an actual definition but it means we are officially renting residency from the Costa Rica government. Mainly this gives us the right to not have to leave every 90 days for 72 hours, like those on a tourist visa have to do. We still can't work, can't vote, some say we can't even whine, but you know what I think about that policy.

The entire cedula process is chock-a-block full of filas, firmas, fechas y estampillas. After, of course, getting a number. If you speak Spanish, you could try to get your residency without paid assistance. If you don't speak Spanish, forget that. Eventually, you will beg for someone to help you and the cost will seem pitiful compared to the detail required.

When the guidebooks say, "You can get around fine in Costa Rica without knowing Spanish," they mean while visiting, doing things visitors do. Like paying entry fees in tourist attractions, finding out where the bathroom is, ordering a coke. They don't mean doing anything requiring a fila, firma, fecha y/o una estampilla. Nobody speaks English inside those damp gray buildings. Nobody that we ever heard anyway and we've been in them all.

My advice is to hire someone (this is a link to the service I wish I'd hired) and git 'er done. For the four of us, it cost $1,600 in fees. Plus $1,300 on deposit at Migración to pay for one-way tickets outta here if we are deported. Plus $600 to have the required documents overnighted from various bureaucracies in the states (marriage/birth certificates, letters from local police, Interpol fingerprint cards) to the state's Secretary of State, then to that state's Costa Rican consulate, then back to Costa Rica.

At each stop, our identifying documents received numerous firmas, fechas y estampillas all verifying we are who we say we are. Even though we weren't there to eyeball. I could've just told them and saved $600, but that wasn't good enough. What do those bureaucrats know about me I don't know? Today's question: what do they know about me I don't know they know?

Once your basic paperwork has made the rounds, been submitted to Migración and you have the famous en trámite letter, all stamped, saying you've applied and giving you permission not to leave the country every 90 days, forget you applied. You will hear nothing for months. Six months after we applied, Costa Rica said it would keep us and to expect a cedula cita [SEE-tah, appointment] momentito. A year later, we actually had that appointment. In the meantime, we carried our en trámite letters and copies of our passports to prove we were legally here.

Gotcha Day (this time) was a Friday. I was afraid Fridays at Migración would be a nightmare, but au contraire, everyone is itching to get to the beach so no one was slacking. We were told to be prepared for at least a six hours wait. It was three! Lucky us. To while away your hours, you sit in a soda on the premises, drink coffee, eat comida tipica, and read or play games. In our case, hangman in Spanish. We play the Everyone Wins version where you just keep adding clothing, hair, plants and accessories until the word is discovered. Our hangpersons are pretty and smiling, hanging there in the sunshine.

When we tired of hangman, the three little boys tried to think of all the words they know for penis in Spanish. They could only come up with two: pene [PAY-nay, like the pasta] and some other word I've blocked out. So they took all the English slang words for penis, like One Eyed Trouser Snake, and translated those to Spanish. The raucous laughter and using-the-word-in-a-sentence exercise took up quite a bit of wait time. They are so easily amused.

When I went to pay for the food, the soda clerk tried to rob me. She's used to gringos in there all day everyday who speak little to no Spanish. I'm not one of 'em. She looked at all the items on my tray, added them up and said, in español muy rapido, "Dos mil quinientos." That's two thousand 500 colones.

When anyone says a money figure to me, I repeat it to myself, sometimes out loud. And I don't give my payment until I know what I heard. Not because I think I'll be cheated; that's only happened once (now twice) in over two years. But so I get used to hearing and understanding the numbers. I gave her a 5,000 colon note. She gave me change, I start to walk away without counting. But my inside voice demands a re-count. I find I'm short a mil. I go back and ask her, "Cuanto cuesta?" and show her my change. She doesn't miss a beat: does a "hmmm" (which is the same in Spanish), asks to see my tray again. I show it, she makes a big deal recounting my items, looks quizzical, states that she overcharged me a mil and hands me one. OK, however she gets there, I don't care. I got my $2, I walk.

Just before I do, we exchange looks. I try to keep mine neutral - I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, I got my money, no need to be righteous. But hers is respectful. Like I passed a test. I probably imagined this but now I feel like I really belong.

Renewing passports was uneventful, except for two events. First, when we arrived at the room where you wait in line, we sat in the available chairs. Which were red. The guard, who is armed, marches over and demands we move from the sillas rojas [SEE-jahce ROW-hahce, red chairs] and sit in the sillas azules [ah-ZOOL-ace, blues]. Of which there are none empty. I point that out, he shrugs and demands we get up. All the blue chairs are full, most of the red ones are empty, they are inches from each other, but we can't sit there. THIS is perfect Costa Rican bureaucratic hoo-ha. He's got the gun, we stand.

The other event was when the Embassy worker, a U.S. citizen, demanded to see Ryan's birth certificate. He's 15 and to renew his passport, you have to present his birth certificate. This requires a trip home. OK. I go, get it, come back the next day, get a number, sit in the blue chairs until my turn and hand it over. But she doesn't want to accept the one I have because it's not official enough. This is the birth certificate from the hospital with his baby footprints on it signed by the doctor with a solid gold raised seal on it and it's not official enough? THIS is perfect U.S. bureaucratic hoo-ha. I do not raise hell because I know better and she does eventually take it, bless her bureaucratic heart.

So here we are. All legal, signed in, carrying cards and booklets to prove we exist. In only 1.5 years, we can get permanent residency which will allow us to work. Can't vote until we become citizens which requires a high degree of fluency and the ability to sing the Costa Rican national anthem. Since Hal is not going to let me marry a tico, I better get to working on that.

Depressingly Deplorable Dogs

Not my dogs. My dogs are delightful and, although somewhat malodorous, devoted to me. Follow me everywhere, gazing up at me, longingly, hoping I have chicken in my pocket... but even when I don't, they are on me like white on rice. Here they are napping by my desk. If you want unconditional love, get a dog.

The deplorable dogs are three of the movies I rented last week: Untraceable, The Brave One, and The Flock. Depressingly deplorable AND disturbing. The Brave One was just boring: predictable girl-with-a-gun. Waste of time. Can Jodie Foster get more boring?

TBO was violent, but the other two were disturbingly so. Not car-wreck shoot-the-bad-guy violent, but human beings doing very bad things to other human beings. Are there really such bad people in the world who do this kind of stuff to each other? I guess... probably on an SSRI. I can't think about it.

And is this entertainment? Not for me. "A pornography of violence," Hal called it. For once, I'm glad the boys were not watching the movies with us but glued to their computer screens in their imaginery worlds where you can get banned for saying "hell."

Dogville, on the other hand, was fascinating. A play in a movie. Very slow moving, unfolding inch by inch, brilliant acting, a stellar cast. But I have no idea what it was about. Something about morality, no doubt... I couldn't quite grasp it. My Key West friend and fellow movie buff Maureen wrote this to me:

"Can't wait to discuss Dogville with you - watched it twice; wanted to understand it better so rounded up three very heady intellectual friends and enticed them over with free pizza dinner so they could explain it to me."

Maureen says one of her intellectual friends nailed it. I need to find out what it's about, then watch it again...

Squatters

A woman wrote to me recently about buying a house in Key West. Once she found out I live in Costa Rica, she wrote this:

I have a question since you are living in Costa Rica. This is where my husband originally wanted to get a home. We had even started to look when we were told there is a really bad problem with people stealing and/or homesteading your property if you left it to go anywhere. Have you found this to be true? Linda

Hi Linda,

That is all true. When we leave to go anywhere, we hire a person to stay in our home, about $300/month. Right now, my mom lives with us so when she goes on a trip, we are here. When we go on a trip, she is here. We also have three dogs, so we'd have to hire someone anyway if mom weren't here.

If you leave your property alone for any length of time with no one checking on it occasionally, squatters will move in. There is a way to protect yourself from this - you put a lien on your property yourself so no one would bother; I can tell you who to talk to about this [Garland Baker]. But squatters have rights here and you have to be on guard.

Petty theft is rampant in Costa Rica. At our house, we have a monitored alarm system, bars on the windows and razor wire on our fence. We keep our doors locked and are very aware of the problem. As gringos (native speakers of English), we are targets. No matter how poor we really are, we will never be as poor as the poor here.

That said, this is the worst thing about life here. As a wise woman told me (over and over again because I never hear anything the first time it's said), "Everything has a price. Ask yourself are you willing to pay it?" Living with the threat of petty thievery, for us, is far better than living in the U.S., especially right now. Costa Rica is peaceful and beautiful, no terror alerts, no para-military police. The market is soft, but they just don't have the problems here they are having in the U.S.

Costa Rica is worth investigating, but petty theft aside, the culture is very different. We came here for a year planning to go home at the end of it. But we fell in love with living here so decided to stay. I strongly suggest renting here first for six months to a year, then make the decision. You will love it or hate it; you want to find out before you buy. In the big picture, life here is definitely worth considering.

--

Squatters are a huge problem* here. If you own property and leave it, you could lose your right to it or to parts of it. The vaquero [va-CARE-oh, cowboy] who lives around the corner from us wanted to hook up a hose to our outside faucet. He lives in a house with no running water... I can't even begin to describe the house. We said yes; he hooked up a long hose and had running water for awhile. I mentioned this to a friend and she said unhook that immediately. After three months, he can earn the right to use the water and you will be obligated to supply his water for life.

Is this true? Seems outrageous, but, after everything I've read and heard and learned, I think there is some truth to it. For now, I can't begin to decipher the laws here. And in other situations, like with squatters and employees, ticos can earn the right to all kinds of things you never meant to promise. You need a very good advisor here.

*Clarification: When I say squatters are a "huge" problem, I mean huge as in if it happens to you it's quite the struggle. Not huge as in it happens to everyone once... I have no idea what the statistic would be on how many people per year have a problem with squatters. If it happens to you, you will understand what I mean by "huge" problem.

Into The Wild

Almost every weekend, we rent six or seven movies for the week (1200 colones, about $2.50, per movie for 7 days) and watch all of 'em. Occasionally there is a dog, but we are mostly deliciously entertained, especially by the indies. Like Once. Once you get your ear trained to the brogue, you hang on every word. And the music - we downloaded the soundtrack. Here's a taste:

Loved Juno which I was prepared to hate because of all the hype, but fell in love with her anyway. And Across the Universe. If you've ever listened to a Beatles song staring at the album cover, see this. The story is ok, but the music, the style, the choreography, the colors, the guest artists alone make it a treat. Couldn't live without this soundtrack either... So inspiring, the geezer band is adding a Beatles set. I got dibs on this:

In last week's batch was Into the Wild. I didn't really want to see it but I thought I should see it. Being a movie buff, a die-hard Sean Penn fan, and mother to teen boys 'n all. I knew the basic story and the ending... why go out of your way to be sad? But the boys had a friend over, it was the last movie left, the visiting boy's mother had requested a limit on computer time. So we watched it.

And loved it. Everything about it was right on the money: the acting, the script, the directing. Sean Penn did an amazing job telling such a complex story, telling it fairly and beautifully. I loved the acting; how could you go wrong? Hal Holbrook, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Catherine Keener. Even enjoyed Vince Vaughn, who has never interested me. Okay, he was funny in Wedding Crashers... but you forget he's VV in this one. Emile Hirsch, who I've never seen before, as Chris McCandless... they all blew me away. Even the bear was great.

Who blow me away most are Chris' parents, Mr. and Mrs. McCandless, who were courageous enough to tell the whole story. The message is powerful. I'm so glad we didn't skip this one and especially glad the boys watched it, too.

This week's movies include Gone with the Wind - the boys have never seen it. How did they get so old never having seen GWTW??? Here's how: Hal has been in charge of the schooling up to now. They spent all their time doing math. Life is not all math. So I'm making them watch it as part of school. Hey, they made me watch Wedding Crashers. Besides, GWTW is covered in the SATs, right? This is an epic movie about the Civil War, told from a slightly different point of view. That is NOT a lie.

Despite whining terribly, they got into it, laughing at Scarlett and Mammy and Prissy and Aunt Pittypat. They have certainly never seen a hero like Rhett Butler before. When Clark Gable is on the screen, there is no one else on the planet. Part II this afternoon. The boys are actually looking forward to that. It has nothing to do with getting to watch a movie instead of having to write a 250 word essay...

The rest of the week's movies include: The Savages, Untraceable, The Brave One, Epic Movie (I did not pick this), The Flock and Dogville. What can I say, I had a serious chick flick attack at the video store. Happily, all promise gratuitous guns, car chases and intrigue. Something for everyone.

Here's today's 3M (Memorable Movie Moment). Provided by Rhett, of course: "With enough courage, you can do without a reputation." Of course, a woman really said that...

Our Daily Grind

Which is soooooo hard.

A word about the most critical daily grind: coffee. Day 1 in Florida, we bought the brand of coffee we drank for probably 10 years. After living la pura vida drinking Costa Rican coffee, that coffee was SOOOOOO bad. We dumped it and raced out for café con leche, cubano style.

I am no coffee connoisseur. As long as it's not old, I like it. But this... how did we drink that stuff for a decade???? Day 1 back here, we ran to our favorite feria in Hatillo where we buy kilos of fresh-ground locally-grown coffee for 1400 colones ($1.50/pound). Sooooo good!

6am: to the gym with my friend, Barbara, girl singer in my geezer band, massage therapist to the stars and all around gal pal. I'm up at 5am... being up before anyone else is a gift. The house is silent, even the dogs are sleeping. Watching the sun come up over the mountains, slowly drowning out the city lights, hearing the birds... perfect beginning.

Next week, gym is at 7am so blogging and writing can be squeezed in there between coffee and gym. I can at least get the first draft online. Lately, I'm back on the book idea. We'll see... I think I jinxed it talking about it. So forget I said anything.

Breakfast is Hal's Zen Aplausos: ah-PLOW-sewce. We call them applauses and clap as they come to the table. Yeah, we know how to have a good time.

Traditional aplausos start with two flat tortillas, some grated cheese and a griddle. Lay a tortilla face-up on the griddle (ok, that's a joke, I'm not such a terrible cook I don't know every tortilla has two faces), grate some cheese onto it, sprinkle some red pepper flakes on there for spice and really anything else you want like chopped ham or lightly cooked veggies. Last night's leftovers. You can even pour a little scrambled egg on there. It runs a little over the side, but you just scrape it back on there with your spatula. Top with the second tortilla, brown on one side, then flip and brown on the other. Voilà!

Zen Aplausos require only one tortilla, folded over. So ONE tortilla. Like the sound of ONE hand clapping? Get it? Yeah. Whoa.

Then comes the really fun part: class with Jorge, our profesor de Español [pro-fey-SORE day ā-spawn-YOLE. Jorge has been coming to our house three mornings a week, two hours each time, for about six months now ($300 a month, worth every penny). I haven't been taking the class because... it makes me crazy. Seriously, this is why I'm so sane.

Only now everyone in the house speaks WAY better Spanish than me, so I gotta sit in. If only for one of the hours. Besides, there are constant eruptions of raucous laughter... I gotta find out what's so funny.

The boys are practically fluent. Even the campo guys - the plumber, the gardener, the guys who speak country Spanish really really rapido [RAP-ee-dough] - Mo and Ryan understand them. Ryan's accent is killer - he has a knack. His accent got good before he really understood, though. Made for some pretty comical moments...

Morgan has actually started speaking it. When we first came, he shut down completely in Spanish class. Nothing penetrated. Now he speaks like a pro. An expat pro, but he's good and no longer self-conscious. In fact, I think he's pleased he can speak another language.

Hal has the best intellectual command of the language, but he still occasionally gets the deer-in-the-headlights look. The panic fades quickly though and he can formulate, then offer the correct response before the other party has walked away. This is progress. He is determined to master the language and the accent, and he goes at it. He reads La Nación every morning, listens to Spanish radio in the car. Starting next week, he's going to teach English to ticos at a volunteer school in Santa Ana. The boys are going to help him which will be good for all of them.

And I'll have the house to myself. Heheheh.

The rest of the day, we school. I manage most of it. The boys are in Algebra II (which is still mostly basic math, just more complex formulas), they write a 250 word essay everyday, they read for at least an hour a day or 50 pages, whichever comes first, from our master reading list. Ryan reads voraciously. I have to chain Morgan to the bed and watch the clock. But Morgan will sit at the piano for two hours all on his own and pick out the theme song to the last movie we saw. Both hands. So he doesn't like to read...

Their essays are on a variety of topics, some creative, some journal, some researched. We discuss history, watch documentaries, talk politics. Somewhere along the line here in Costa Rica, Hal and I lost complete interest in the "what college are the boys going to?" question. The college thing used to hang over us because "everyone knows" college graduates do better than non. We've come to believe that is propaganda. If they want to go to college, great. If they don't, great. If they find contentment somewhere, somehow, that would do very nicely. Somehow, they are turning out so beautifully. Smart, funny, well-mannered (in public, at least.) You would like them. Everyone does.

Hal works while I school. He works on the websites and various other possible money making schemes. Er, projects. No runaway successes so far, but it all looks positive. We are doing a little real estate here, a little real estate in Key West. There are good deals to be had in both places. I wrote two offers on property in Key West and another buyer is looking now. It's fun to shop with savvy buyers who can afford it. You know they are not going to get hurt and they enjoy the process. Plus, in Key West at least, the heads are out of the sand and the bright lights are on. Reality bites, but things are getting done.

Evenings at home, we attach ourselves to appliances: computers, TV, ipods, DVDs. We read, we talk, we eat, we hang-out, till we crash around 10pm. Sleep, then repeat. Does it sound boring? There are some variations on the theme, of course. Like we occasionally leave the house... and we often have people over for potluck dinner. That is really fun. It's a good life today. A very good life. I'm thinking it will still be good tomorrow. I'll keep you posted!

One of the Greatest Links of All Time

Here: CLICK!

(And don't miss the comments - more suggestions and opinions... you could be here all day.)

Follow The Bouncing Ball

We are home again, back at my desk next to my bed wearing my sheets (the bed, not me). So happy to be in my house with my stuff. Overlooking my valley. Through my razor wire. Which seems to have lost its lustre. Sigh.

I have to tell you: I came back a tad confused. That's how good a time I had in Key West. The bouncer is me: here? There? WHERE? In limbo which is not a happy place.

Like when I first stopped drinking, there was a period of time where I wasn't really "in" with my new buddies who didn't drink, yet I no longer felt comfortable with my old buddies who still did. It was a lonely, scary time. Like when you first become parents. You have to make friends with people who are also parents because your old friends who don't have kids have no idea what the heck you are talking about.

Like the summer after my first year in college, I had a mini-nervous breakdown. My summer of madness. College was a huge culture shock to me. You've heard it before: from tiny town in KY to Indian guys in dresses, Jews, Catholics, virgins, people from Boston who talked funny, people all manner of color and eye shape and accent. Turned me upside down. It was exciting and dramatic to have this world unfold before me, like being turned loose in Disneyland with free tickets and all the strange and exotic characters were my friends. Then I went home for the summer and a strangeness took hold.

Plopped right back into my old Kentucky home exactly as I'd left it, everything seemed different, out of reach. I couldn't connect to the people I'd connected to all my life - they had changed. Like we no longer spoke the same language. Suddenly, I was isolated from the people and situations I'd known all my life. Right next to them but out of reach.

That scared the very breath out of me. Within a month of being home, I was having five and six panic attacks a day. I was afraid I was going stark raving mad and was powerless to stop it. I stopped eating, stopped drinking, melted down to almost nothing (madness is very thinning.) And all I could think about was getting back to Disneyland. To real life.

As obvious as it is to everyone now, it was years before I realized it was me who had changed. Everyone in KY was exactly the same; I was different. The panic attacks subsided just before going back to school. Part of it was being really sick of them. And I'd read a self-help book that suggested, when I felt an attack coming on, to touch my wall, touch my chair, name the physical pieces of my universe as I touched them. An amazing little trick that brought me right back down to earth.

Thank God I didn't go to a therapist who would have put me on drugs. I'd probably still be on them today.

That's what it was like going back this time: no panic attacks (too bad, I could stand to lose a few pounds) and I connected fine to my really close friends. But the whole scene felt different. I'm different. I bounce slower and at different stimuli. I was a professional Type A when we left Key West. I'm practically a B now. By the end of our three weeks there, I could feel the frenzy trying to worm its way back into my system. No thank you.

For now, I can't talk about the pros and cons of here vs. there. Keeps me in limbo and I can't live like that. It doesn't matter anyway. We considered going back, but nah. We are here, this is home. Maybe not forever, but for 2008, Costa Rica gets to keep us. If I keep comparing, I'll be really grumpy. There is at least as much to love about Costa Rica as there is about Key West. And we've only scratched the surface.

The world is in limbo right now. So much is changing: a new President, the housing market thing, a global correction, rampant inflation, a dollar in trouble... too much goin' on, too much movin' and shakin' for me to be changing my life, too. We have a sane, comfortable space here on the planet. I think we'll enjoy this for awhile longer, keep the world's insanity at bay for a few more minutes.

You know, I would buy a property here: like five hectares (10 acres more or less). Raise goats and make goat cheese (don't ask me how I, city girl, latched onto this idea.) It would be nice to spread out a little, grow herbs and tomatoes and chickens. Chickens for eggs. I don't think I'm up to killing my own pot pie. Although who knows? I've done a ton of stuff in the last couple of years I didn't think I was up to.

In America

"In America, you'll get food to eat. Don't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet. You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day. It's great to be an American."
                      - from Sail Away, Randy Newman's clever slave-trade ditty

All true, so far. We're here in the good ole U.S. of A. Hal's mom was not well (she's better now), Spirit Air had tickets for $250 each = a good time to see what's up here. I guess the USA is still the same... but a few things struck me right off. Like:

• Once the shock of Naples' grandiosity subsided, it feels like we never left (Hal's mom lives in Naples)
• Cottage cheese is the best thing since sliced bread. We've eaten at least one large container a day.
• We are doing all day here what we do all day there: sit in front of our computers for work and play. Does it matter where we are?
• For all my whining about missing my buddies, we've seen and actually talked to those buddies more during our visits in the last two years than we did the 25 years before that. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration, but not far off...
• There are fewer people here who are really important to me than I thought. The really important people are in my radar no matter where I am in the world.
• Everything in Florida is flat, not a hill in sight. Except for the...
• Convoluted highways with overpasses three and four deep
• Drivers know how to merge
• Going 80mph
• Girls as tall as Morgan (6' 1")
• $2.50 tolls
• Too much English spoken
• Everybody comes to a complete stop at stoplights, then they wait till it turns green to go. What a concept.
• Country music on the radio
• All the roads have names. In Naples, they all have two-word names, like Rattlesnake Hammock Drive and Imperial Wilderness Way.
• I have not seen one guy peeing on the side of the road
• No farm animals tied up to people's houses
• No farm animals being herded through town
• No farm animals grazing along the road
• No farm animal poop anywhere
• If you don't jam on the gas pedal the second the light turns green, no one honks their horn
• Restaurants are EXPENSIVE. I will never not complain about Costa Rica's restaurants.
• Even though we constantly chat amongst our expat selves over there about how civil liberties are being sacrificed right and left over here, when you are here, you don't even notice. Which is, of course, how they get away with it.
• Everyone says "cahstah" Rica, even after hearing us say "coast-ah" Rica.

Have we really been gone two years? I feel like I stepped through a wormhole. The only way I know it's been so long is that I'm different: calmer, happier. And the boys have doubled in size. Otherwise, it seems so regular to be here.

I admit it: I love Key West. I love seeing my girlfriends, I love seeing Key West so green and lush - it's finally recovered from Wilma. The houses are so pretty, the streets so whole. The town maintains a prosperous air (even though it is most decidedly not.) A pretty, sunny, familiar face.

I spent last week running around, doing unexpected business. Like I got a new property management customer, wrote an offer for a buyer on a foreclosure (plenty of those around), joined forces with a long-time REALTOR® here, met with a REALTOR® up the keys who's had an office in Heredia for 25 years. Perhaps I will do some referral work with her.

From here on out, it's playtime. Like there is some very fine music to be enjoyed. Photo left: Skipper Kripitz, Leanna Collins and Gordy Michaels make the jazz at The Gardens Hotel on Sunday Afternoons.

I saw a local dance company's beautiful production at the Waterfront Playhouse, one of the three busy theatres here. Starting top left in the photo is Kyra and Andres (oh my God, you cannot take your eyes off Andres), then Leigh, Denis (ditto Denis) and Mary Kay. Real honest-to-God dancers.

The Robert Frost Festival starts next week. Key West is famous for its talent. I'm suddenly very aware of it and determined to enjoy as much as possible. Because, you know, I'm a singer in a geezer band now. Gotta stay up with my people.

Key West's real estate market is suffering badly and the worst is yet to come. Like a house I sold (not pictured) for $850,000 the winter of '05 is now going for $350,000. I've heard of others. "Deals" like this are just now making the Coconut Telegraph. Countrywide has $500M in loans here in Key West; $90M are in foreclosure. The snowball is at the top of the mountain. Once all these foreclosures hit the local MSM, it's all she wrote. I'm thinking the bottom will appear in the next year to two years. Unless you are a savvy real estate buyer, save your money.

"Ain't no lions or tigers, ain't no mamba snake. Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake. Ev'rybody is as happy as a man can be. Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me."

After being stateside these past few days, a Deep Thought crystallized. I've circled this bridge before and nobody wants to hear me say it out loud, least of all my husband. It's practically blasphemy in the expat world. But here it is: Costa Rica is not cheap enough to justify how hard the day-to-day life is. Hard being mostly culture shock, roads and crime. Feeling like a target all the time is wearing on a body. As is being jostled around in your car practically every minute you are in it.

It's not all bad: I love the life there. I'm looking forward to going back. We've made excellent friends. Nothing would have forced us to think outside the income box except living where that's the only option. Besides, what would my geezer band do without me?

If I were rich, where would I live right now? I'd live in Costa Rica and travel on a whim, no contest. But we're not rich and cost of living is key: it was a major consideration when choosing Costa Rica. Yes, there are places in the U.S. cheaper than Costa Rica. Not that I want to actually live any of those places, but at this point in my life, I'll consider anything. Necessity and all that.

In a year, Key West will be affordable. The really critical thing is: I can work here. I've LOVED working the past few days. I like earning money, I like dressing up and doing my thing. I spent twelve years building a business, then just walked out. I could still walk back in - that is compelling. I guess I miss that more than I thought.

Here's something else that been eating at me lately: the boys can get jobs here. They are ready and it's not possible in Costa Rica. Probably seems like a little thing to you, but niggling at me...

Plus there's Hansa's cooking. Oh my goodness. Spicy, delicious vegetarian food. Hansa can cook and I'm always welcome at her table. Like tonight. She told me I can go on YouTube and find videos for making her recipes. While her dishes are so exotic to me, I guess they are "everyday" in India... if I cooked in Costa Rica like Hansa cooks in Key West, I'll bet our food bill would be way cheaper!

For now, I'll keep pretending I'm rich: living in Costa Rica, traveling on a whim. One day at a time. This sure seems to be working for us. Funny, every time I think this issue is settled, something comes along to rattle that cage.

"In America every man is free to take care of his home and his family. You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree. You're all gonna be an American."

Job Market 2009

The Job was created by the creative people over at Screaming Frog Productions:

www.JonathanBrowning.com
www.ScreamingFrog.com
www.TheJobTheShort.com

Reader Question: Transferring Money, Taxes

I got this email a couple of days ago. Since these are common questions - in fact, we had most of them - I'm answering on the blog.

"I have enjoyed reading your info on the net. We are thinking of buying a small condo and living in Costa Rica in the winter. If we rented the condo out the other months, how do you get your monies back to your country of origin (home)?"

You wire it. When we first got here, wiring money was unbelievably complicated, expensive and time-consuming. Over the past two years, it's gotten much easier. Although still complicated... we've yet to do a transfer that completes with only one trip to the bank. Very frustrating. And it's just now gotten to be reasonably priced. But it is do-able.

"Is this legal?"

Making money here? Or transferring money to and fro? It's legal to rent out property for money. The work question is fairly complicated. You can't work for a salary unless you are a permanent resident which takes at least three years. But if you have rental income, I guess you aren't really working, you are investing. In fact, you will need someone locally to manage your property (or you are insane) so you are providing work for locals. That's a good thing!

And it must be legal to wire money from Costa Rica internationally... Costa Rican banks do it all the time.

"Do you pay tax?"

If you deposit money into a bank in a country with a government, somebody in that government is going to tax that money sometime. If you have two governments involved, brace yourself. Money you put in a bank will probably be assumed guilty as taxable income until proven otherwise. Get your ducks in a row.

"They tell us taxes on homes there are so cheap, but it sounds like this is all changing."

Yes, things are changing here very fast. I don't know that Costa Rica's property tax rate has gone up - I don't own any real estate so I only know what I read... It's more that authorities are assessing properties on real values, rather than on the amount the buyer reported. Said reported amount being historically and ridiculously less than the actual sale price.

"We're nervous to make the move, then find out its more expensive than we thought."

It will be. Last night, a friend told me they did the math on staying in Boulder or moving to San José. All things considered, it was cheaper to stay in Boulder. I concur. Once you are here, the cost of living is not appreciably less. Obviously, they did move here. But not because their money goes further. For us, quality of life is so much better, it's worth the effort.

One caveat: if you moved here several years ago and bought property when it was really cheap, your cost of living would be much more appealing than for those of us who moved here in the last two years. But inflation still takes its toll. Chicken breasts (boneless, skinless), one of our markers, was 2,000 colones a kilo (about $2/lb) when we arrived. It's now 3,250/kilo ($3.25/lb). That's quite a jump. Other food has gone up proportionately. The price of eggs has doubled. I understand prices are taking similar leaps everywhere.

"If we rented out our place for awhile, that offsets costs. But we don't know if that's a no-no to have this money coming back home and don't know who to contact about the proper way of doing it. Do you?"

You can have your money go home or stay here, whatever you want. To find out exactly how, where, when, how much tax liability you may incur, you need to ask your attorney/accountant in your home country as well as your attorney/accountant in Costa Rica.

If you want a referral for an attorney, join the Costa Rica Living group (free) and search for attorney recommendations on there. HINT: make sure the person whose recommendation you are taking has been a CRL member for awhile and has LOTS of posts.

Don't rely solely on a real estate salesperson's advice. Please. And don't just take my word for it, either. I'm a singer in a geezer band and an unpaid blogger. Who has been known to exaggerate from time to time.

"Thanks."

You're welcome.

PayPal's Thuggery

All in the name of security, of course. We used to be big PayPal fans. Not anymore.

Be careful using PayPal (PP) from Costa Rica. After our recent experiences, I'd be careful using PP anywhere. We have had business/personal PP accounts since 2000. We'd bought and sold coins on ebay, some other stuff. Never big money, but the account was very useful.

When we got to Costa Rica, it was a great way to get cash from the states using our debit card, fee only $1.

When my mom moved here, she had a Netbank account. Then Netbank went under and, 2 Nov 07, we opened a PP account for mom, transferring her $3,000 from Netbank to PP.

All these accounts - mom's and ours - were verified with bank accounts and credit cards. Our business account has all the bells and whistles, good long time buyer/seller stars and comments... the whole nine yards.

Last fall/winter sometime (and this is a guess because PP won't tell you anything), we are presuming PP started monitoring IP addresses when accessing accounts.

Three times in the last four months, PP has frozen my mom's account, for over two weeks each time, this last time for almost a month. When they freeze your account, you cannot get your money out.

You'll also never know why they did it. They just take your money and hang onto it. You can't even transfer your own money into your own bank account that has been verified by them!

To unfreeze your account, they request you re-verify yourself by sending in copies of your passport, changing your password, your security question, copies of your D.L., they make a charge on your cc with a code, you have to enter that code when you get the statement. They deposit pennies in your bank account with a code and you have to enter that code when it shows up on your statement. They want you to call from your phone, but if that phone doesn't have a U.S. address with your name attached - dong: invalid. They mail something to your credit card address with a secret code... I can't remember now all the things we had to do.

We jumped through all hoops, calling on the ones that were impossible to complete. For instance, Vonage doesn't provide a U.S. address listed in the yellow pages... This is all news to PP, they don't know how to process this information. "Someone can have a U.S. phone number without having a U.S. address in the yellow pages?"

I explained that we were living in Costa Rica, blah blah blah. They would NEVER tell me why they froze our accounts. Unfreezing them took more than just jumping through the hoops in their resolution center; I had to spend a couple of hours on the phone each time, not all at once.

Since my mom's account was first frozen last December - just before Christmas, BTW, so she could not shop for grandchildren - all our other accounts have been frozen at least once. We've unfrozen them by jumping through numerous hoops, but when a company can freeze your assets over and over again, without telling you why, even after you call and tell them where you are...

We access our bank accounts online all the time and have never had a bank account frozen.

After this last time mom's account was unfrozen, just last week, after a month of being frozen, we transferred every penny from PP to her bank account quicker than you can say "security issue." Or "Security issue that we are not going to reveal to you. Ever." Freezing my mom's money like that, over and over again, has been very stressful for her, and for us.

We are looking for another option for our accounts. We'll keep using bank accounts and those debit cards, but if anyone knows of another service like PP, please share it. Preferably one not centered in the U.S. where nothing is too great an inconvenience, nothing too much to ask, nothing too much to relinquish in the name of security. National or not.

Happy Belated Pi Day

Yesterday was Pi Day. As in the number you get when you divide the distance around a circle (its circumference) by the distance across (the diameter). Or 3.14159265358979323846 26433832795028841971. For starters. Apparently, in 2002, a Japanese computer scientist found 1.24 trillion digits of pi. That calls for a mighty big calculator.

Math was my first love: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, beginning calculus. Always my best subject, right after chatting. Math homework made me giddy with joy, to sit down with a page of numbers, sort through them, watch them go from unconnected, meaningless numbers to relationship, resolution. A right answer is a thing of beauty. Not only is there is always a right answer, it's always the same right answer. Even if I got a problem wrong, I loved the explanation of the problem. I loved having the light-bulb go off, to see the magic revealed. I am practically misty-eyed writing about the beauty of mathematics. No joke.

"One of the most endearing and enduring qualities of humans is that we're so often sure that we can find the answer to any problem if we just try hard enough..."

Because, no matter what else is going on in the world, no matter who is president, no matter if I'm a tad pudgy, no matter if the sun refused to shine, even if Oprah got canceled, 2 + 2 always = 4. Always. If you need to count on something, count on arithmetic.

I loved math so much, it was my first major in college. Imagine my huge disappointment to discover they don't offer fun high school calculus in college. No. They offer a form of calculus that doesn't have any math in it at all!!! Someone should warn people about this. It knocked me unconscious. The teacher's lips were moving, sounds were emanating, but I didn't understand any of it. You couldn't find 2 + 2 in that room anywhere. Theorems and abstract quantum thingies had me in a fetal position in no time. My brain don't work like that.

That first year in college was completely overwhelming anyway. First time away from Winchester, everything was outside the box. Discovering there were people in the world who were neither black nor white, that men wore dresses in other parts of the world, that there were a whole bunch of people called Jews who didn't - you'd better sit down for this - believe that Jesus was the son of God... The list of new ideas presented to me outside the classroom goes on and on. To have math, my safe haven, so utterly destroyed for me was icing on the cake. By happy coincidence, that was the year I first felt the heat of a spotlight and heard applause. Leaving calculus for the stage was a no-brainer.

Math still holds a hot place in my heart. Because no matter how confusing the world gets, I can always ground myself with 2 + 2. It's like touching my wall, confirming my reality. The mysteries of pi, like Fibonacci's sequence and his golden ratio, phi, give me hope. Even though I can't figure them out, someone did. Someone saw.

"Pi Day is a time to honour not just a number and our fascination with it, but also the essential truth that there are some things we simply cannot know... pi is an ever-present, sometimes grating reminder that there are puzzles that can be solved and there are mysteries that, perhaps, can not."

Tips On Buying A Website

Of course, what we (as in all of you and me) should really do is pool our resources and create a bank. Then you can create money out of thin air and keep some of it. For instance, HSBC posted a $17,000,000,000 (Billion) loss and still made a profit. Of course, banks have all those pesky paperwork requirements, whereas websites have NONE. Small comfort, but I'm clinging to it.

Buying a business is buying a business, whether on the web or on the ground. Pretty much the same rules apply. You are buying an income. We did plenty of business brokerage during our wild and crazy Key West real estate period. If you are shopping for a business, there are some things you need to know.

And some things you need to have. You need time to shop and some money, of course. But to be really successful, the two critical items are patience and a sense of humor. Because when people are selling a business - brace yourself - THEY LIE about the value. They lie BIG. HUGE. Way bigger than home sellers. Most of them actually believe their lies. But there's no getting around it and there is no reasoning with an overpriced seller. You can only offer what you think it's worth, then walk away, ignoring the insults and tears being hurled at your back.

FACT: Four out of five businesses listed for sale never sell. Ever. And half the ones that do are because the seller found a buyer with more money than brains. This is proven by the FACT that most businesses don't survive their first year, few survive their first five years because the buyer overpaid. If they started the business, they overpaid in bricks and mortar. If they buy the business, they overpay across the board. Mostly in bricks and mortar, but also in value.

Why do sellers ask so much? Because:

    A. Sellers always, always, always think their idea, their baby, that they've nurtured and watched grow up, watched come to fruition and produce seedlings of its own, is worth way more than the math says it is. And,

    B. The #1 thing sellers want you to pay for is their business' POTENTIAL. A sane business buyer - that would be you - wants to buy the income stream the business is now producing. Today's income. The seller wants you to pay for today's income stream, plus some amount to account for all the money the business COULD be making with a little more time and effort. Your time and effort. Be prepared for this. I guarantee 90% of all business sellers expect you to pre-pay them for your future time and effort. Like that makes any sense.

Luckily, there are tried-n-true...

Formulas For Buying A Business
For a micro-businesses (those netting less than $50,000/year)

• If you are paying all cash, pay 1x annual net income. So if the business brings in $10,000/year, you'll pay $10,000 cash. You want to make your cash back in the first year.
• If the seller is financing, expect to pay up to 2x net spread out over maybe two years.
• The more you put down, the less you'll pay. So if you put down 50% and finance the rest, you might negotiate a sales price of 1.5x net income.
• We would never pay more than 2x net for any micro-business. For that top dollar, the numbers better be solid and the potential compelling.

For a business netting up to $500,000

• If you are paying all cash, pay 1x annual net.
• If you are putting down around 50%, expect to pay around 2x net.
• If you are putting down less than 50%, expect to pay up to 3x net.
• We would never pay more than 3x net for any business. Again, for that top dollar, the numbers better be solid and the potential compelling.

For businesses netting over $500,000, the rules change. You need a good buyer broker and a really smart accountant.

Hal, my personal biz brokerage guru, recommends this book. It's an investment at $80, but if you are serious about buying a business, this information is invaluable.

If you stick to our formulas, you won't go wrong, I promise. Just remember you are going to kiss a lot of frogs and some of them spit back in your face. Try offering a seller $10,000 cash for his business that is netting $10,000 but for which he is asking $50,000. People get offended, then mean. You need patience and a sense of humor. And you can't take anything personally.

What Business?
Buy a business you know something about. You don't have to be a great chef to own a restaurant. You'll want to know that the chef is the most important person in the room. Next to the person operating the register. You need to know your way around a kitchen. You need to know what good food tastes like. And that knives have to be sharpened everyday. You need to know the devil is in the details.

If you've always wanted to be/own a     (Insert Dream Business Idea Here)    , at least get a sense of reality about it. Read books, take seminars, visit like businesses and talk to the owners. For instance, people move to exotic locales (Key West, Costa Rica, San Francisco, Rehoboth Beach) with dreams of owning a guest house. We did that. It ain't all a bed of roses. There are 24/7 "the customer is always right" dilemmas. Like at 2am when said customer is drunk and can't find his room key. Or at 5:30am when you are making coffee and muffins, and Ms. Grouchy Guest is hovering, complaining to you about everything under the sun. Oh: and you need to not need to be alone. Ever. If you had a smile surgically implanted on your face, it would not be money wasted.

If you are buying an online business, you gotta be geeky because you are going to learn a whole new language. You need to know what a CPanel is, the basics of SEO marketing, you'll learn the software that drives the website, you have to know basic html. The words admin, affiliate, hoplink, keywords, pay-per-click, traffic stats, viral marketing, php, ftp uploading, domain registration, yahoo credits, auto responders, opt-in... these all become part of your everyday language.

You can do it if you want to badly enough. It's taken us two years of study to get far enough along we could even think about buying an online business. To make sense of the jargon, then believe we could make money. You could do it in a year if you really put your mind to it. Definitely worth the effort because you can work from home in your skivvies at your computer drinking sloe gin fizzes listening to Billy Joel. But, like learning a new foreign language, you have days (and days) when you think, "This ain't ever going to happen."

The biggest roadblock is getting past all the people out there selling you their ebook or website or information and expertise on how to make money online. No mystery here: they make money selling information to you. Their Big Idea, the one you just paid for, is for you to make money selling that very same information to the next guy. Think Amway online.

What to Sell Online?

Your choice is Product (t-shirts or air-guns or books or software) or Information. Or some combination, either products with informational articles* to generate traffic. Or information that leads to product sales like the affiliate links I have on this site, or the products at the Dog Problems site.

*Your informational articles need to offer quality content. Useful content. You can't just slam up any old paragraph filled with keywords hoping visitors find you from search engines. Well, you can. But if your content isn't useful, those visitors will never come back and will never link to you from their website. And that's where the gold is: thousands of visitors who've all told their friends how great your website is and who all link to you from their websites. They will only do that if the information is useful.

I generate very little (like $0) with my affiliate links here at Abroad. My traffic is pretty good, sometimes up to 300 visitors per day. But you need Big Traffic, in the 1000s per day, to generate sales from affiliate products. My topic, Costa Rica, is not broad enough (get it: "broad" enough?) to ever generate enough traffic to make money. I'll just have to keep doing it for love and fame.

Summary

The same How Much formulas above apply to online or earth-bound businesses. If you are geeky and want to shop for an online business, there are a ton of places to shop. Start slow. Talk to the sellers.

Remember that if the seller is talking, he's very very likely stretching the truth. Usually in a BIG way. And that he wants you to pre-pay for potential, for your time and effort. And that he thinks his idea is the best thing since sliced bread and you should pay dearly for the privilege of getting to own it.

Check the website's traffic - there is no one way to do this. You have to check a bunch of places (I've put some suggestions below) and try to get the big picture.

To make any money online, you have to have either a killer product targeted to a broad audience (so that everyone who gets to your site buys at least one) or traffic in the thousands per day (so even if only one in a 1000 visitors buys, that's enough to generate stable income for you).

You want verification of income figures. There will be an element of trust here, but if you check the traffic and can confirm to the best of your ability that they are indeed getting thousands of hits a day, if you check their WhoIs page and see that they've owned the website name for at least a couple of years, you'll know they've been at it awhile. Or not.

Get geeky. Every website we've considered required having a clue about websites and how they operate.

These here tips are the veritable tip of the iceberg. If you have specific questions, please ask in the comments below. There is a lot to know, there are a ton of pitfalls and stumbling blocks. We never learned an inexpensive lesson. If we could save you from making one, that would be some gratification.

We aren't raking in the big bucks. Yet. We bought two sites. One is not making anything, the other is bringing in coffee money. Both have good potential, all of which will go in our pockets if we work hard. We bought a website building package that so far seems good - excellent training if nothing else. And there are two other web projects in the works. As things "come to fruition," when we have something to show, you'll see it here. More to be revealed...

Places to check a website's traffic:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php This is the Internet Wayback Machine. You can get a good idea of how long a website has been online. And what it's been doing.

Check their pagerank: Download the Google toolbar - get it from Google.com. Then when you visit a website, you'll see its pagerank. It shows up as PR4 or PR5, some number after PR. The higher the number, the better the ranking.

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ Check a website's link popularity.

http://mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/ Check a website's search engine ranking.

http://www.virtualpet.com/industry/howto/wsreview.htm Excellent article on website review and evaluation tips.