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A Very Costa Rican Day.
Today we received our Cedulas in the mail, the ID cards that designate us as Costa Rican permanent residents. Today the Costa Rican bureaucracy, rightly earning its legendary reputation, spent an hour and a half stonewalling me over the legibility of an unnecessary stamp on a translation of my marriage certificate. Today I spent an hour lounging by the pool, doing yoga in the sunshine, listening to the toucans over the sound of the river thats twenty yards away. It's [...]
Costa Rican Permanent Residents.
We went to San Jose last week to finalize the paperwork for our Residency status. In 2011, we came to Costa Rica while Johanna was five months pregnant. Because we were having a baby in Costa Rica, all first-level relatives (parents and siblings) of a Costa Rican citizen are eligible to apply for Permanent Residency. We needed a lot of paperwork. We never would have been able to manage the paperwork maze without the right lawyers for residency in Costa [...]
Increase Email Newsletter Subscribers with a Free PDF
You're setup with an email newsletter, but nobody is subscribing. Dangle the carrot, or I'll give you the stick. People are already dealing with information overload in their email inboxes. In order to overcome someone's reluctance to add to their inbox problem, you have to solve a different problem for them. Offer to solve a problem, for free, in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. The best incentive you can offer is a free PDF download. People Love Free PDFs [...]
“Daddy, what’s a gun?”
My 6-year-old girl really didn't know. While discussing the differences between policemen and firefighters, I used a word Indilea had never heard before. She has acquired the excellent habit of asking for the meaning of any word she doesn't understand. "What's a gun?" she asked. "You know," I said as I mimed a gun. "Kapow." "I don't get it," she said. Of course she doesn't get it. She doesn't watch anything more violent than Thomas the Train. While she might [...]
Finally! Back online.
There are some things Costa Rica does really, really well. Beaches. Palm trees. Friendly strangers. Crazy animals and fruits. But the internet? That's a problem. There's a maxim here that goes, "Costa Rica is ten years behind the United States." With fashion, with technology, with any advancement that happened in the United States ten (or more) years ago, they are just now becoming adopted in this small Central American piece of paradise. Ten years ago, I was making the transition [...]
For the next week, I’m going to bed early.
This is a pretty heavy commitment for me. I generally work 4-5 nights a week, after the kids are off to bed, from 7:30 to 10 or 11. Many Saturdays I work in the afternoon, as well. Once or twice a week, I stay up late with my wife and we watch movies, or take a bath, luxuriating in the absence of the pervasive volume of children. We rise between 4 and 6 in the morning, depending on when the [...]