All the things that I initially found interesting about Monteverde still exist and I continue to discover and to be impressed with the natural world and community. Being settled in for eight months, there is now a different sense of ‘amazement’ as all the surprises, challenges, relationships have become part of daily life. Visiting or moving into a new place or culture can stimulate a variety of emotions and comparisons between what we know about our own life and how we see others live theirs. We compare landscape, structures, infrastructure, behaviors, language, nature and peer especially deeper into home and work life. After all, we can be obsessed with quality of life comparisons and possibly believe that others ‘have it better’ or that we ‘have it better.’ When vacationing, or vacating from our own daily grind, perspectives often become dreamy, idealistic, simplistic due to minimal understanding of the local home/work experience.
I think I can speak for Sally as well as myself, we accept challenges as they arise and appreciate the good qualities of living here. The ‘honeymoon’ period of the first few months, when everything was something to compare or share has ended. We live here and our reality right now is living in a brown wooden house, loving our children, and both working very hard to support the local Gringo/Tico community. Our personalities remain as they were, Sally applies her type ‘A’ drive to advance projects at the school, as I apply my curiosities in my work with students. Regarding parenting, the boys benefit from her structure and from my explorative tendencies. Our professional and personal habits, responsibilities, hopes and dreams have not changed all that much, but the environment in which we apply ourselves, or our ‘reality’ has changed tremendously from living in Chicago.
Signed, M.
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