May 4, 2006 | Amistad Institute, Culture Shock, Spanish
We are losing Esther. Life happened – all good life, just unexpected. Crazy. La vida loca. We have that in common, Esther and I. Yesterday, I was reading a passage from The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk: "In Chinese thought, events and phenomena...
Apr 27, 2006 | Culture Shock, Moving-To, Spanish
This morning, I had my second private Spanish lesson with Esther at the Amistad Institute. Esther is our beauty queen profesora de Español. She is charged with teaching me to speak the language!!! Which I am going to learn come hell or high water. I confess to being...
Apr 11, 2006 | Communications, Culture Shock, Living-In, Moving-To, Real Estate, Skype, Utilities
Guess what? There is NO DSL at the new house. Notice I’m not calling it "our" new house anymore, am I? In my conversation with I.C.E. (Eee-say, the government monopoly that controls ALL the phone lines and ALL related services), when the Customer...
Apr 8, 2006 | Culture Shock, Expat, Moving-To
This from my friend, Marie: “I hope your immersion in Costa Rica is going well. I’ve enjoyed your early adventures through your blog. It made me think of my years living in Rio. First, there was the absolute fascination with everything exotic and...
Apr 2, 2006 | Communications, Culture Shock, Living-In, Moving-To, Utilities
THE PLAYERS The Type A is played by me. Mañana Land is personified exquisitely by I.C.E. (eee-say), the government monopoly that controls the phone lines and – tears are streaming down my face – access to the World Wide Web. THE PROBLEM ...
Mar 30, 2006 | Bush, Culture Shock, God, what a world!, Political Blah-Blah, Teenagers, War
This from Dave Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy that I stumbled across roaming the blogosphere:Iranian teenager to be executed for self-defense against a rapist. Amnesty International reports this case from Iran: On 3 January [2006], 18-year-old Nazanin was...
Mar 16, 2006 | Cost of Living, Culture Shock, Moving-To, Political Blah-Blah
PHOTO BLURB FROM AM Costa Rica: "The magistrates of the Sala IV constitutional court have a little light reading. The judiciary released this photo Wednesday showing the documents associated with the new tax plan that is being evaluated for constitutionality by...
Mar 10, 2006 | Amistad Institute, Culture Shock, Spanish
We had high hopes. High in the sky apple pie hopes. Just before leaving Key West, we’d searched the net and found a Spanish language school, Amistad Instutitue, that uses the immersion technique to teach Spanish, along with a thousand other techniques. There are...
