HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

Happy Independence Day! Here in Central America today is a day of celebration. We began our day in Costa Rica with a tipico dance at school. The kids were so cute, and you can see baby was having a blast. She loves to dance. After the dance and pledge we headed up to the centro for the parade. The kids walked around and did their "viva, viva, Costa Rica", cheer. It was so cute. Then off to the house to bbq and hang out, a nice day.

COSTA RICA WAR

Did you know that Costa Rica is at war? A drug war that is, and it is heating up and getting pretty nasty down here. Apparently the war in Mexico and Columbia is kind of just spreading to all Central and South America and we are smack dab in the middle.
The government here is doing what they can amid all the drug lords, cartels and just downright dirty officials, but they really can only do so much.
So last week four armed "bad guys" overpowered some guards in Golfito at a police station. In the police station there were several hundred kilos of cocaine. The bad guys took all the cocaine that the police had confiscated and vamosed!
Pretty ugly and embarrassing to say the least. So last news was they are trying to round these guys up and reconfiscate the cocaine.
Yesterday in the newspaper was the article about the fire in Puntarenus. This time it was again very well orchestrated and organized. That is when it gets scary, when they get organized. At any rate they burned 15 ships up that were in port there. They were narcotic coast guard ships and now they aren't.
Getting a little scary ha? The thing is it makes me think of another band that once they were entrenched in the land they were heck to get out. The Gadianton Robbers were very much like these drug cartels we are trying to get out of our land.
They move into a country, infest it and just basically take over. They are very powerful and very hard to get rid of. Like they told them in the BOM, it is much easier to not let them move in than it is to get rid of them once they set up.
It is just amazing how many people they have bought off, and taken control of just to sell their drugs and spread their evil over all lands. BUMMER!

LIFE

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)

This quote really gets me motivated and thinking about my life. Am I really doing what I want to do? Am I really "singing the song" I was sent here to sing? Maybe it is just my age, or maybe it is just hormones talking but these are definately questions that bear asking.

Two years ago when we cut the ties and went out on our own we felt very powerful and alive. I think it was a case of ignorance was bliss or something like that. After the realities began settling in about advertisement costs, the economy tumbling, etc. with owning your own business it was a little harder to feel quite so powerful and alive.

Lots of times in the last two years there has actually been sheer terror. When you have been employed by the government for 30 years and go out on your own there is the feeling of free falling. When you live in the States you can always rely on unemployment, the soup kitchen, or last resort door keeper at Walmart.

Living in Central America has forced us to really be creative and call on our talents and skills and even develop some new ones. When we started our massage school I did not know the first thing about computers, that one has come a very long way. We have also had to learn to deal with all sorts of people from different of walks of life all over the world.

Looking back on it as we begin our first multi student class this Monday I have to ask myself, would I do it all again? You better believe it because I fully plan to slide in laughing and screaming, " wow what a ride" when it is all over!