Four Months

Wow.  Four months since my last post.  I really need to update this more often.  Too much to even remember to write about!

Since my last post, we have, yet again, adopted another animal.  So, Kurt and I were in the parking lot of a local grocery store in downtown Jaco.  We had just walked out from grocery shopping and it was dusk.  We see this adorable white and black kitten peeking out at us from around a corner.  one of the guards was playing with it as well.  He was obviously hungry but very playful and came right up to me when I tried to pet him.  My guess is a local family owned him and just got rid of him knowing someone would find him in the parking lot.  After talking to the guard & asking if anybody owned him that they knew of, and finding out, no, of course, he came home with us.  At the time we found him, the song Rivers of Babylon was playing on Kurt's iPhone, so his name is Babylon.  It took some time for him to start fitting in the household so for quite a while, we had him in a spare room.  Now, he is like a part of the family. Him and Miggy are best friends.  The only one who doesn't like him is Gretel, as she hates all cats.  All I can say though is NO MORE PETS.  We have a full household.  If we would have left Babylon there though, no doubt he would have been hit by a car as that is a very busy parking lot.

The Spanish classes I talked about in my last post lasted five weeks.  We then had to take a break as we have had a LOT of guests here in the past few months starting with my friend Jill.  Jill stayed in a guest rental across the street since she is allergic to cats.  She was here a week and we did a ton of fun things while she was here including surf lessons, yoga, Manuel Antonio, lots of fun dinners out, shopping, zip lining (my first time doing that ever).  Another friend, Dean, who is a producer on Talk Network (the radio network Kurt's show is on) was here the past month.  He had to work full time while he was here, but we had some fun nights out and beach time.

My surf lessons have continued.  I have gone seven times now and have moved down in board size.  Super exciting.  Need to plan my next lessons, however, we have more guests arriving tomorrow so I am hoping to talk them into surfing!  :).

Yoga is still going awesome and I go almost daily.  Aurora Yoga is moving to a new location soon right by our gym, so kurt is excited about that as he can go to the gym while I go to yoga, one location.

Our residency was finally approved!  Hooray!  However, It was approved with kurts coming thru first and then mine, which has required us to do the next residency steps twice, while normally married couples do them once.  His first step was going to the CAJA to obtain our family medical insurance.  We hired a lawyer to go there with us.  That was in Jaco at social security and went super smoothly.  Next step was Kurts immigration appointment in Puntarenas.  Our old lawyer went with us to that and that went super smooth as well.  8 days later, Kurt had his cedula, which is his residency card.  Next step was for me to go to the clinic in Jaco to get put on to the health insurance.  We did this last Friday.  Now, we wait to get our CAJA cards and once I have that, I can go to immigration and we will be done. We have temporary residency, and in three years can apply for permanent residency.  After that we can apply for dual citizenship and have costa rican and USA passports.  We also went and got Kurt his costa rican drivers license, which was a difficult annoying task.  Glad that's done though.

We have entered dry season, or summer.  So, not much rain until around May.  Last year, Kurt timed the rain fall and we only had about three hours from January to May.  We had a huge storm the other night for a few hours though so I think we have exceeded that already.  weirdly, at I just typed this, I looked outside and its sprinkling!

Had some fun outings with my girl friends recently as well.  A group of us went to Grecia, Costa Rica, which is a town in the mountains popular with expats.  We met up with a friend of mine Jen and her husband Greg.  Had lunch and while there they were filming a commercial and asked our group to be in it, so I am famous in Grecia!  haha.  We walked around the central park and market and little town.  Visited Jens house as well where she made us dessert.  Also had our girls Christmas gift exchange and lunch at Side Street Bistro.  My gift was this adorable coin purse that Kim got me.  I use it all the time, perfect gift.

Anyway, this is long so I shall sign off.

Pura vida and Namaste!