My Decade in Review
Wow! Has it really been that long?!? Ten years ago, 2006, we had researched like crazy, and determined that we could retire, as long as it was not in the USA. We could live well enough and indulge ourselves occasionally as long as we could find medical insurance. And that is what we couldn't get in the states. So, we had a list of countries to explore! At the top was Costa Rica, so we went to check it out. And, despite our cautious approach, we fell in love! We spent the rest of the year getting our residency from afar. This took several trips and a lot of paperwork, but we had help wading through the bureaucracy.
I also started to wind things up at work, and quit early in 2007. I left the question of "what will I do?" open; I wanted to see what I was capable of and interested in outside of the technical world. Of course, living in a different country meant figuring out how to do things a different way, in a different language - I learned Spanish! I learned bus routes! I figured out how to find unusual things in unusual-to-me places! I greeted neighbors in the street, and I made panhandlers laugh. I discovered new foods, and invented recipes (and almost all of them were really good). I started painting, and found the same sort of zone I enjoyed as an engineer. I went to parades and fiestas, and watched fireworks set off for "ordinary" neighborhood celebrations. We downsized, upsized, and downsized again. I started writing about life as well as living it!
We both discovered we were ultimately city people - we like the press of people in the streets and parks, and the constant flow of events. We lived in the capital city of the most stable country in the area - we got truly spoiled by all the embassies and their associated cultural centers. We listened to music from around the world. Our news was world-wide instead of country-centric. We saw how another political system worked. We saw how another medical system worked. We lived without a car.
We saw a lot of our new country - rainforests, cloud forests, volcanoes, Pacific and Caribbean beaches. We loved spending so much time together! We had occasional visitors, and got to show them around as well!
After a while, I learned French, and we traveled to France. We visited friends and family in California and on the East coast.
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| Santa Fe (road trip) |
At first, it was hard not thinking about work. I would get job notices, and think "Oh! That sounds fun!" But I wanted to give "the other side" a real chance, so I waited. Well eventually, I got the itch again and took a few contracts in the states.
It was after the last of these contracts that we looked for a new apartment in Costa Rica, and realized that costs had skyrocketed! While the exchange rate had stayed flat, the usual 10+% inflation rate had continued - our rent would now be 50% more than just a few years before. We checked a few other markers - groceries, taxis, restaurants, medications - all had gone up, with no slowing in sight! We had a serious discussion about what to do next. We could go back to our list, try some new countries, or hang on for a few more years and see. As it happened, the USA medical situation had improved during our time away - the Affordable Care Act had passed, and we could get insurance! AND it was not only affordable, it would also cover any pre-existing conditions (face it, at our age, life is a pre-existing condition)! Well, to be honest, we weren't really looking forward to more bureaucracy in another new country - it felt good to think about moving back.
So we did! There were definitely surprises, unpleasant as well as pleasant. But after 10 years of "different," we know how to handle those ;-)
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| Albuquerque Cactus Flower |
My Decade in Review: It was a time of learning about and growing the other me. And I think I like her!
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| Me and Marianne in Costa Rica :-) |
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