Hey everyone, I am in Costa Rica. More precisely, in an AirBnb next to the University of Costa Rica. In the canton of Montes de Oca!

I have been planning this for a while, and even have had my tickets for a month. The reason I didn't want to make any announcements is it is way better to announce unexpected success than to make premature announcements and then to have to tell everyone that you are not having a wild tropical adventure but are instead stuck at home after getting sick or waiting in a Motel 6 in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a flight delay/redirection.

Basically, I didn't want to jinx it by talking about it before it happened. And it must have worked, because everything went off without a hitch, except for maybe getting a gringo price on the way back from the airport. Despite waking up at 3:30 AM, I somehow managed to have the energy to non-grumpily get through all my connections. I talked for hours with a Costa Rican woman on the airplane, so my Spanish must be doing well.

Also, I am in the exact same AirBnB I was in before, from October of 2023 to March of 2024. I would think this would be somewhat surreal, but instead I really just feel like I had stepped out for a while. I wonder if this is more or less how dogs experience the world, a big whirl of unfamiliar and maybe frightening places, with basically incomprehensible differences separating things, and then suddenly you are back in somewhere nice and comfortable with familiar sights and sounds and textures.

I actually have a reason for being here. But right now, I have been up since 3:30 AM and it is probably time to sleep.