alas, friends, an update is beyond overdue. my apologies for those of you who have been in the dark since our last costa rican adventure. so much has happened so quickly since then that i will certainly struggle to provide an adequate narrative account. nevertheless, the allure of a challenge still has the capacity to lure me in, so here goes...
we last met just as coy and i had decided to make the big move (literally) into the life of a wonderful costa rican family. they lavished us with delicious food, showered us with hugs and affection, and constantly encouraged our language development. it couldn't have been more perfect. only...it wasn't perfect at all.
coy and i had been discussing for quite some time how something just didn't quite feel right. not just in this household, but since we had arrived in costa rica. it was as if this big dream of ours...this perfect experience...just wasn't enough, somehow. this was a reality very hard to swallow. it simply didn't make sense: this was paradise. we were living in costa rica. the people were friendly. we were having positive social interactions regularly. our spanish skills were skyrocketing. beauty was all around us. there was exciting potential for work projects.
so what was it, exactly? well, that's hard to say. as coy described it, there seemed to be a "hole in our bucket". all the positive experiences we were having just couldn't sustain us. there was something that we both knew was missing.
perhaps that fire had gone out. that passion and drive we had both felt the first time around just wasn't there anymore...or it wasn't as intense as it had been two and a half years prior. we began to question if we really had it in us to dedicate two more years of our lives to community development work in another country.
in the end, we decided that we were both at a place in our lives where we wanted to be close to family and friends again. ironically, it was probably the close family ties we saw everyday in costa rica that made us realize how much we missed our own family.
we informed peace corps of our decision, and within 12 hours, we left the town of buenos aires and headed to san josé to complete all the necessary paperwork. we arrived in pittsburgh on august 20th to open arms and a home cooked meal. although our departure had been unfortunately hasty, everything seemed to feel right about our decision.
before we officially close out the costa rica chapter of our lives, we'd like to leave you with a few beautiful images from our trip to uvita:
my first time ever in the pacific ocean!
adiós, paraíso. no te olvidarémos.
we last met just as coy and i had decided to make the big move (literally) into the life of a wonderful costa rican family. they lavished us with delicious food, showered us with hugs and affection, and constantly encouraged our language development. it couldn't have been more perfect. only...it wasn't perfect at all.
coy and i had been discussing for quite some time how something just didn't quite feel right. not just in this household, but since we had arrived in costa rica. it was as if this big dream of ours...this perfect experience...just wasn't enough, somehow. this was a reality very hard to swallow. it simply didn't make sense: this was paradise. we were living in costa rica. the people were friendly. we were having positive social interactions regularly. our spanish skills were skyrocketing. beauty was all around us. there was exciting potential for work projects.
so what was it, exactly? well, that's hard to say. as coy described it, there seemed to be a "hole in our bucket". all the positive experiences we were having just couldn't sustain us. there was something that we both knew was missing.
perhaps that fire had gone out. that passion and drive we had both felt the first time around just wasn't there anymore...or it wasn't as intense as it had been two and a half years prior. we began to question if we really had it in us to dedicate two more years of our lives to community development work in another country.
in the end, we decided that we were both at a place in our lives where we wanted to be close to family and friends again. ironically, it was probably the close family ties we saw everyday in costa rica that made us realize how much we missed our own family.
we informed peace corps of our decision, and within 12 hours, we left the town of buenos aires and headed to san josé to complete all the necessary paperwork. we arrived in pittsburgh on august 20th to open arms and a home cooked meal. although our departure had been unfortunately hasty, everything seemed to feel right about our decision.
before we officially close out the costa rica chapter of our lives, we'd like to leave you with a few beautiful images from our trip to uvita:
my first time ever in the pacific ocean!
adiós, paraíso. no te olvidarémos.
No comments:
Post a Comment