Meeting new friends and getting our CR driver's licenses!

Jerry enjoying a beer on our Patio

 Here, finally are some pictures. They are from the house we are staying at in Grecia. Very lovely one bed/one bath with a beautiful yard and surrounded by coffee! We have all the conveniences of home including a washer and dryer (doing laundry today!). We are on the side of a hill and it goes down very steeply and then up again on the other side. We can hear a waterfall across the way, but can't quite see it because of all the trees. We're paying $750 a month and it includes electricity, satellite TV and really fast wi-fi (better than we had in Lake Geneva!).

So hopefully the pictures will make this more interesting!  The past couple of days have been busy ones. Yesterday we drove to a town west of here called San Ramon. We met Gloria and Paul who have been living in a casita (small house) near San Ramon for just over 2 years. Gloria and I met online while I was doing research for the trip. They showed us around San Ramon. There is a beautiful church there and I think the park is a bit bigger than the one in Grecia.  The streets are wide compared to Grecia and although the populations are about the same, it didn't seem as bustling. We had a wonderful lunch in town and then they took us to see their casita. It is about 5km from San Ramon right off of the autopista and is situated in the woods on the mountainside along with 6 other casitas. It was adorable! They have been here 2 years and have had it recently painted and it looked very homey. Like our Grecia home, it has neither air conditioning or heat. They have a living room, kitchen, bath and 2 bedrooms. Their rent is $700/month and includes electricity, satellite TV and wi-fi. The best part was the lovely front porch where they eat most of their meals when it's not raining. It was cloudy yesterday, and raining, but they said they can see the Gulf of Nicoya on a clear day~that's quite a distance! We then headed to the rancho and met some of the other ex-pats living there. (A rancho is a covered, but open area, where you can meet, cook and eat, or just hang out). We met 6 others and found out that they all enjoy the area and have actually started an alliance that helps out local organizations in whatever way that group needs the help. It was wonderful hearing them tell of the projects they are working on, like tutoring in schools and eco-projects. It is great to know that there are people here from the US helping to make a difference in the lives of their new neighbors. Gloria and Paul then took us back to our car and we made our way home. We stopped for pizza in Grecia~not exactly up to Chicago standards, but passable!

We wanted to get our Costa Rican driver's licenses and part of the driver's licensing process is to see a doctor to make sure you're okay to drive. So, Tuesday we went to see a doctor in Grecia. We just walked in his office and told him what we needed. No appointment, no wait, he saw us immediately. The doctor examined us and filled out the paperwork we needed. We also had our blood drawn because in CR they put your blood type on your license.  Today we were up and out early. By 7 am, we were on the road to San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, to get our driver's licenses. We took the paperwork the doctor filled out plus the lab results, along with a copy of our current WI driver's licenses and copies of our passports, plus the original licenses and passports and drove about an hour to San Jose. We took along our Tico neighbor, Juan Carlos, to help guide us through the process. Between his English and my Spanish we did just fine! First we got to go to the front of the line (not 'cuz we're gringos but because it was our first time getting a CR license!). Then we sat for about 45 minutes. We were then taken upstairs and a women wrote down information from our passports and licenses in a notebook. We waited some more and then got to see a guy who entered some more information into the computer. Then he sent us out with a piece of paper so we could go to the bank to pay for the licenses. The bank just so happens to be in the same complex, about a block away. We then returned to see him and he took our pictures, we had our one fingerprint taken and we put our signatures on an electronic device so it would show up on the licenses. We waited about 5 minutes and they handed us our brand spanking new Costa Rican licenses! We celebrated by going to lunch in Grecia at this really good restaurant our neighbors told us about. As we were waiting for our food, I took a look at my license and it says I'm 10 years younger than I am!! I was sooooo excited.  I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!!

Next week we'll stay in a hotel in San Jose for 3 days. We will do some sightseeing, see the city, and go to a two day seminar about living in CR as an ex-pat. Supposed to be all kinds of good information at the seminar, so we'll see. We have a couple other towns to check out while we're still in the Central Valley, then we will head north to the city of Nuevo Arenal, near the Arenal volcano and Lake Arenal. We want to check that area out because of the lake and because we visited there on our last trip and really liked it, but didn't have time to stay and explore. Thanks to internet friends, we've found a house to rent that sounds wonderful and is in a great location with a lake view. It's got 2 bedrooms, living room, dining room and bathroom for $210 a week. I'll add some pictures once we get there. We've really enjoyed our time so far and are looking forward to what the future holds for us on our journey.

Hasta luego,
Tina and Jerry

Our kitchen in our new house

This is our current home in Grecia

See how the hill goes STRAIGHT UP
behind the house!

Juan Carlos who helped us get our DLs

View from our patio looking to the west