Again?!? Another year?? Masochistic much??

Well Hello. Yes folks, I am at it again. Another 9 month season of me traveling 6 days a week to places around the nation to give teachers the much needed CEUs, PDP, CDUs, STDs, and CDPDUs they need to keep their teaching licenses. Did ya catch it? Yea I said STDs. Im pretty immature. As a second year of doing this, I might be a little more experienced at my job and understand a lot more, but due to the pathetic economy I unfortunately have picked up ALOT more work. Some blogs might deal with weekends in the Bahamas paid for by my company.... (that request took some serious convincing and persuasion) Some weekends might include me just going home and crashing in my bed, which is just as equally as awesome after a LONG week on the road. The possibilities are endless and I look forward to it...

Alright, lets get to the bitching....

Here I am. Shit. A 2 1/2 hour layover in SeaTac. Due to "airtraffic control issues" (which gives me the mental picture of some assholes standing around in a 200 foot tall tower in Minneapolis/St. Paul airport playing with themselves instead of directing planes in....Im pretty sure its not that) my speaker and I will be residing in the Alaska Airlines Boardroom for the time being. No Worries tho. My speaker is super nice, sarcastic, funny, mid-thirties, and pretty damn cute. I think the next two days, needless to say, will be easy as pie.

So last time I posted it was a few days before I left to Costa Rica, and had a hell of a time. I flew down with my good friend Mackenzie and met up with Eric and Candice (brother and sister Gobel, once again, great friends) in San Jose. Flying into Costa Rica is amazing. Although much of the housing is a little run down, the scenery is outstanding, and getting an overview of a different society/culture is pretty interesting. Soon Lisa's plane flew in and we were on our way the next morning. We had a Rental Car a Garmin (Garmond, Lisa thought it was ACTUALLY called that, so the name stuck) We went to La Fortuna, where we stayed in a town in the shadow of a massive volcano. For some reason the Volcano name escapes me right now and it was great. Stayed in a Robinson Caruso-esque (sp?) hostel for 5 bucks a night for each of us. There we met some cool people, and one unsavory older Australian man who we have several run-ins with. We swim in the La Fortuna Waterfall.... absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life. We had some decent food and made a good friend at the lava lounge bar at the end of town. Waking up in the morning after a night of drinking, Im not sure what it was, but I never got a hangover down there. It might be the fact that during the night, the extreme humidity caused me to sweat out all the toxins I had consumed into my body. Anytime I had the chance to take a shower, the feeling of being clean and fresh would fade quickly due to the absurd temperatures and thick blanket of humidity that wrapped around me after I walked outside. I didn't care about sweating, or my clothes smelling like complete shit. I was just glad to be in a paradise with friends to enjoy the moment. You are totally thinking; "God, what a fuckin cheesedick." In all honesty, 99% of the time, I was on cloud nine. The other 1% was the confusion of having 4 other people to make decisions with and figure out plans. Even then tho, I was pretty happy to be where I was. After that we went to Montezuma which was set up as a tourist town, but was pretty dead for the time there. We had a massive private beach to ourselves. Sat, drank, watched dramatic thunderstorms in the distance at night, sat and stared at lizards fighting on the ceiling (anytime they fought we called it the "Battle of Montezuma".... just fucking dumb I know) and had awesome food. Fried plantains with guacamole on top is one of my new favorite dishes. We did canopy tours here as well. It was sooo rad. We swam in small waterfall pools with rope swings, jumped off cliffs with waterfalls and got up-close and personal with monkeys. After a few days in Montezuma and completely demolishing our hotel (clogging toilets.... a la Dessert "El bano es no bueno!"... losing 2 sets of room keys, running over a pipe in there parking lot that connected to there restaurant and causing all types of damage while managing pissing almost everyone off in town, we left) we went to a small town called Dominical. This town was my favorite. Although it was filled with gringos and we stayed at a kinda crappy hotel, waking up (super early, like around 630 or 700), getting a tall cup of coffee, I would lay in my hammock outside our place and gre

et the friends we had made next door from Florida who came to surf. They lent us their boards and Mackenzie and I surfed one day. On that same day we surfed, we did a pretty intense ocean-kayaking tour where we went to a private beach and yelled at howler monkeys, say some sloths and paddled through caves. It was great. Holy shit was a I tired and soar the next day. After our amazing day in the ocean, Lisa and Candice needed to head out to San Jose so that they could catch their flights home. Candice was shitting her pants to be traveling home after 3 months away. After that, Mackenzie and I made our way to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.

Okay so let me fill you in on Costa Rica attitudes and culture. Pura Vida....Pure Life

.... is their "saying". What I would say is a more just saying, "Tranquillo" which means "be calm"/"chillout". I have never been told in Spanish or English to chill out so much in my life. Now I understand I can sometimes be a high strung guy or a lil intense, but these people were like the most relaxed ever. On the Pacific side, people were relaxed, but on the Caribbean side, it was magnified times 3. It might be all the ganja they were inhaling into there lungs, but everyone was sooooooo laid back. so anyways....

Mackenzie and I hopped on a bus the day after Lisa left and made our way to Cahuita where there was a beautiful national park beach walk and great Argentina food. We stayed there for 3 days and walked all around Cahuita. Small town but a little too quiet and filled with a few crazies. Some quotes..... "Hey you guys want some good cocaine?? Actually its not that good, its mixed....AHAHAH" (Crazy drug dealer living out of shanty in middle of town)..... "Praise be to the Prophet, for I am him. I have never been a F@gg$t".... (crazy american who got dragged away by police and would hold a fifth in the middle of town and scream. I am so glad he

clarified he had never been gay. It made it SOOO much more believable that he was god.... that thick sarcasm for those of you who dont know me. After leaving the peaceful, interesting town of Cahuita, we headed to Puerto Viejo for a few days. Puerto Viejo seemed like it was a bit more "Americanized" than other cities and was the biggest city on the Caribbean side. It had great restaurants and awesome beaches. We had lobster and this amazing fruit bowl parfait for breakfast. It was massive. We got gifts and headed to Los Volcanes which was our "homebase" and had a NICE warm shower with pressure, awesome beds and great service. It was nice. We ended it nicely. We had the same flight up to Houston, where we split off. Mackenzie continued onto Seattle while I made my way to Austin for Austin City Limits and a fun tour of Austin with Ashley and Amie.

Well after a long post, I will save the Austin story for another time, and my delayed plane is about to board. Overall, my 2 1/2 week experience in Costa Rica was a blast. It was relaxing and helped me get ready for a long 9 months of working on the road. Hopefully this year I will work on posting more about my adventures and will take advantage of my unique employment opportunities in different cities. Deuces from the SeaTac Alaska Airlines......