Greetings again, finally, from Mal Pais, Costa Rica! Tourist season is in full swing, although a little bit slow this week, for whatever reason. The festival at Christmas time didn't attract nearly as many people as was predicted, so who knows if there will be any further road improvements made in its wake. Although the paving they did, in some parts of town, before Christmas holiday, has made it a lot easier for people to drive way too quickly through town. I just recently found a bike and got it all fixed up, though, so now I'll be able to cruise through town, one step away from a motorcycle.

I have gotten into kind of a routine here, which I guess happens to a certain extent any time you are living and working some where for a certain amount of time. I'm afraid to say I've also probably started to take for granted some things here, or maybe that's just a natural progression of how you evolve as you learn more about other places.

I often forget how isolated this town is, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. At times I feel like I am so far away from everyone and it's frustrating when, in order to get anything or anywhere, I have to take a whole day to go to another town and get it. Everything in the states is so close, in the U.S. we complain if we have to drive 30 minutes to get to a store, well, maybe younger generations do more of that, I hardly ever hear my parents complaining about things not being easy enough or close enough. And you know, it's so unnecessary. There's no reason to have three WalMarts in the same town, maybe not even reason enough to have one, but I'm still on the fence about how I feel about WalMart, that's another topic, though.

Another thing I have definitely taken for granted here is the lack of news I read. This is in contrast to how I used to like to read the NYT every day, and love to get up and read the news with my coffee. However, I have barely read any news from the U.S. in the fourth months I've been here. When I left, the only thing the papers talked about anymore were health care, the increasingly depressing lack of jobs in the states, and the war in Afghanistan. Now those are some pretty bleak topics that I don't miss being tuned into. The other day, Dave and I watched a clip of American news, something about Sarah Palin becoming a new contributor to Fox News. I've always been of the camp that I could give or take Fox News, I don't watch it, and I don't really care if it leans one way or another, but I was a little picky about which TV news I would watch, if I watched it. And after not seeing it all for so long, they're all out of whack! I'm starting to feel that maybe my dad was right the whole time (right wing, maybe) in that they're all clearly biased, and so full of nothingness that it's not even newsworthy. The only way to really be sure you're not falling for any of the stories in the news is to not watch any of it, something that I won't do forever, but it's nice to take a hiatus from it, just to get a new perspective.

Well, this turned into more of a blog than a rant, but it's been a while and I don't have a lot of new events to report!