Knowing that I was going to skydive this year, was very terrifying for me. I wouldn’t really say I’m afraid of heights, but jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at 3 miles above the ground, definitely scared me. It’s not like Shark Diving where you could wait for hours in the cage and possibly not even see a shark. There’s no grey area about skydiving. I mean, you either jump out of an airplane or your don’t.

I DID! And it was totally amazing! It’s definitely something I hope to do again over and over, but I was SO scared to do it before hand.

When I left Santa Cruz to make the 2 and a half hour drive to Lodi. It wasn’t until I actually arrived at the Parachute Center, that I found out there’s a skydiving place here in Santa Cruz! Oh well, I’m glad I had the quite time to myself in the car to just drive, think, and remember.

Anytime somebody would ask me what I was going to be doing this day, I’d always answer “this year I’m going to go skydiving, but I’m really scared and trying not to psyche myself out about it.” That pretty much shut down any conversations about it. However, after paying my fee, and sitting down to sign the “I-promise-not-to-sue-you-if-I-die-and-my-family-promises-not-to sue-you-if-I-die” waiver, it started getting a little bit more real.

After signing the waiver I had a chance to go outside and watch some of the other skydivers land. It was such a beautiful autumn day, the sun was shinning, and the sky was blue…perfect conditions for skydiving, I was told!

Finally, my number was called and I went back to meet my Tandem Skydive instructor, Logan, and to get suited up. So, the first time you go skydiving, you get to be attached to somebody else that knows what they are doing. I paired up with Logan, and I’m really glad I was because he helped me feel really at ease and calm.

We boarded a little plane and then took off into the sky. It was pretty much like any plane ride, until the door just flew open and people “fell” out! I distinctly remember thinking, “hmmm, it’s cold, maybe I should have brought a jacket”. I also recall that that was when my palms started sweating! We flew up even hire, and the people in line in front of us jumped out. Before I even had a chance to think about it, we were up and moving to the door.

Then we jumped! Or fell…or stepped off….we were just simply in the air. It only felt like we were falling for a few seconds. You know, that “falling” feeling you get on a roller coaster, where your stomach seems to drop out from underneath you? We were falling, and spinning and rolling, and then…it was just super windy! It was like I was flying!

After about a minute of free falling we pulled the parachute and just kind of glided down. Logan pointed out some of the other people that had just jumped – they looked like dead bodies just falling. They were hurling down to the ground so fast, it kind of freaked me out, and for a second I thought they didn’t have a parachute, but then I saw that they did.

The 360 degree view is so much better than looking through an airplane window, once the chute was pulled, it was very serene and almost spiritual to just be on top of the world floating down.

But before I knew it we were coming in for landing, and the ride was over. Skydiving is definitely one way to remind yourself that you are alive! My heart was still pounding for quite a while, even after we landed!

I can’t wait to go Skydiving again! I know that Zach would have LOVED to do it. He often told me about dreams that he had where he was flying, and said that if he could choose a super power, he would choose to be able to fly. Now that I know there is a skydiving place right here in Santa Cruz, I think I’ll be skydiving again very soon! Skydiving is one very sick ride! :)

Click Here To Watch The Video.

http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/customize-teasers/

Custom Thesis teasers
This provides a teaser, with content from a custom feild, or the excerpt if no field exists. Everything except the title and edit link need to be turned off in the options.

http://snipplr.com/view/14521/custom-thesis-teasers/

http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/

http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/customize-comments-intro/

http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/change-0-comments-display/#remove_brackets

To Add a Facebook Like Button to Each Post
//Add a Facebook Like Button to Each Post//
function fb_like() {
if (is_single()) { ?>

}
//add_action('thesis_hook_after_post','fb_like');//

Step 1: Hosting

Your website has to ‘live’ somewhere, I use and recommend BlueHost. You pay for your hosting all at once, and it works out to something like $7 a month.

Step 2: WordPress

Great, now that you have hosting and a domain name, you can use SimpleScripts from within your BlueHost cPanel and install WordPress for free. Starting in your cPanel, scroll down until you find the SimpleScripts icon, this is what it looks like:

Click on the WordPress Icon, that looks like this:

And follow the prompts to install WordPress. Once your site is installed, you can go log into it. This is what the WP Dashboard looks like:

From here you can create posts, pages, change your theme and settings. For finding a theme, I recommend and use Thesis and ThemeForest. Thesis is more complex and robust, while ThemeForest has more templates that are more simple and less expensive. Both sites give detailed information on how to upload and import your theme into WordPress.

Here are a few other helpful links:
WordPress Codex

Step Three: Plugins

Plugins are little bits of code that you add on to enhance WordPress. These are the plugins I use:

• Akismet (v. 2.5.3) by Automattic.
• All in One SEO Pack (v. 1.6.13.3) by Michael Torbert.
• Jetpack by WordPress.com (v. 1.1.2) by Automattic.
• Picasa Image Express (v. 1.1) by Scrawl.
• Plugins list (v. 1.0) by Davide Benini.

You can find plugins to do pretty much anything, just google “WP [blank] plugin” (make sure to change the [blank] part to what you are looking for, of course.

Step Four: Promotion

Web site promotion is an industry in and of its self and too big for the scope of this post. The easiest and most effective way to start learning how to promote your website is to watch these free videos.

I’ve tried out tons of online marketing tools during this whole process. Here’s what I’ve found that works for me. I use and recommend all of the following:

Market Samurai is THE best all-in-one tool. I can search for keywords, track my rankings, look for content, and do any SEO research I need from this one program. I love it! It is so customizable that I can find anything I need. The knowledge base has been incredibly helpful in helping me understand the finer points of SEO.

Aweber is the application that I use to keep track of my subscribers and send out newsletters. It seamlessly integrates with WordPress, so setting it up is a snap! One of my favorite things is that it’s SO easy to create opt-in forms on the Aweber site, and then they are automatically updated on my site, so I don’t need to copy and paste code a million times.

WordTracker I do most of my keyword research in WordTracker because so fast and the user interface makes it so simple. I can save project lists and sort by the Keyword Effectiveness Index which weighs the keyword search volume to the number of competitors.

Pluggio saves my life when it comes to Twitter. I love that I can schedule tweets for later, subscribe to RSS feeds, manage lists, manage followers and friends and so much more. The friend suggester has helped me grow my Twitter followers exponentially.

SEO Scribe I didn’t even realize how much onpage SEO I wasn’t doing until I started using SEO Scribe. I put my article text in and SEO Scribe gives a grade to tell me how well or poorly I did. Not to worry, they also provide info on how to improve each article to achieve maximum SEO-ness (yes, I just made that word up).

He doesn’t have a grave, since we had his body cremated, but just visiting a grave doesn’t feel like enough for me anyway. I don’t know why, but the anniversary of his death is much harder for me, than his birthday or our anniversary. And the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary of his death are much harder for me than the actual day that he died on.

My mom says that it’s because in the weeks leading up to the anniversary of the day that he died, my subconscious sort of lives through the whole thing all over again. It’s like my subconscious is saying ‘two years ago, at this time, I had no idea that I’d only have one month left”. It’s not a day I can just overlook, nor would I want to. I have been trying to figure out a way to ‘mark’ that day, and honor his life at the same time. He wouldn’t want me or anybody else to curl into a ball and be sad for him (which, I will admit, is pretty much exactly what I felt like doing). I came to realize that that day is really about all of US…..those people that have been left behind. It’s a day we don’t look forward to – we dread it.

I started to think about what I would DO on that day each year. I wanted to do something in Zach’s name and in the spirit in which he lived his life. Anyone that knows Zach will recall the motto of his life: “Life, it’s all about the ride. If not now…when?”, But to “celebrate” that day sort of felt like celebrating the fact that he died- which, of course, I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to “celebrate” the anniversary of his death, so I choose rather celebrate my life, and how far I’ve come. I decided to do something that screams “I’M ALIVE AND LIVING – I’VE MADE IT 2 YEARS, WHEN I DIDN’T THINK I’D BE ABLE TO MAKE IT 2 DAYS!” because that is what that day is about. I chose to (as best as I can) stop dreading that day and embrace it, become better because of it. Because, really, I am proud of myself for making it this far, it hasn’t been easy.

So, from now on, every year on the anniversary of the day that Zach died, I am going to “fun nazi” myself into a once in a lifetime experience. What better way to grab life by the horns and really LIVE? I am going to push through fear and excuses and just do it! If not now…when? Right? I think Zach would like this idea, I think it’s what he would do.

This year (even though it wasn’t exactly on the 16th), I chose to dive into shark infested waters and get up close and personal with Great White Sharks. (Zach would have loved doing this, but even more so, I think he would have been tickled pink, and proud of me for doing it- he knew about my fear of the ocean).

For next year, I haven’t decided what I will do – I’m open to suggestions. I’ve started a list and it includes things like: skydiving, riding in a hot air balloon, running a marathon, running with the bulls, driving a monster truck, and heliskiing.

Some are things that he always wanted to do, and some are things I want to do. But I guess, the most important this is that I actually DO it, because life is all about the ride! :)

The answer: totally awesome! It was a long day (I had to get up at 3:30am to make it to the dock in Emeryville by 5:30), but totally worth it. I met some really great people that I hope to stay in touch with, pushed myself past my own limits, and came face to face with Great White Sharks.

Here’s how it worked, we road a boat out to the Farrallon Islands, which by the way is the most Great White Shark infested place on the planet. The only two other places that have high concentrations of Great Whites are in South Africa and Australia, but neither have as many as the Farrallons.

I, ever prone to motion sickness, was woozy the whole time! But, I didn’t let that stop me from suiting up and getting into the cage. Everybody tried to reassure me that it would be okay if I threw up into the regulator, but some how, that didn’t make me feel any better. We took turns 4 of us in the cage at a time, there were about 12 people there (plus the crew) so each group got about a half an hour at a time, and 3-4 turns each in the tank.

At first we didn’t see anything except jellyfish (I hate jellyfish…ever since I got stung in Costa Rica), but there were all kinds of jellyfish, some as small as your fist, and some as big as a steering wheel, and some that looked kind of like scrambled eggs. They are actually quite pretty to see swimming around, but I still hate them.

After an hour or so of jellyfish viewing, somebody spotted a “predation event”. That’s just a fancy way of saying that a shark was eating something. We quickly pulled the cage up and headed over. Sure enough, there was a huge pool of blood spreading out in the ocean. A HUGE pool of blood. We watched as a shark took down an elephant seal. It was pretty brutal.

The crew anchored the boat, so that we’d be inside the ‘scent stream’. They told us, that if we got lucky, the boat would drift over to the blood pool, and we could dive in the blood. Lucky? I’d say it was lucky that we ended up not in the blood pool.

This is when all the sharks came out. The guys in the tank got some amazing shots, and I saw a bunch of sharks from the deck. They were HUGE. I went in expecting them to be huge, but still I was shocked. They were so close to the boat, that I could have reached over and touched them as they swam by…if I was crazy!

There were some scientists out tagging the sharks. Apparently, they do this everyday, but the 18 foot long shark that was first to arrive at the boat wasn’t tagged, so later the scientists had to ‘bag it and tag it’. About 5 or 6 sharks came over to the boat in all. Not only were they soooo long, but wide too. They were like 3 feet wide.

I remember thinking that it was so hard to see them from the boat. They are so well camouflaged, it would have been impossible to get a picture of them. I also learned how to spot a shark. Contrary to popular belief, it’s pretty rare that they swim at you with their dorsal fin out of the water – like in Jaws. Instead, you need to watch for a ‘boil’ which is just a circular pattern of water displacement. Now that I know what to look for, you can bet any time I’m even near the ocean I’ll be watching for it.

I was really surprised how hard it was to find sharks. I mean, even in the most shark infested place on the planet, we had a hard time finding them. I used to think that if there were people or boats or anything in the water, that sharks would be drawn to it. Not so, I guess….which is reassuring!

The hardest part for me wasn’t the huge man eating fish, it was going down under the ocean. I had a hard time with the regulator and the cold! Holy Moly, it was cold! Zach would have been so proud!

All in all, it was a VERY cool experience and one that I’m very glad I did! I was the only single person there, everybody else came with a partner. I was also, by far, the youngest person there – so everybody sort of watched out for me and helped me.

I feel very lucky to have been able to do this. Not many people can say that they’ve seen a shark or dived in shark infested waters. I would do it again in a heart beat. It was very cool!

Watch On YouTube or Watched the Looped Version

I just finished importing all of the blog posts I have written from my other failed blogging attempts into this blog. Why….you ask? Well, I want to start over. Nothing I have done online has been successful. Not a one. Either I just didn’t love the topics, or the content, or I just didn’t care that much about them anyway, or I got so fed up with messing with the stupid wordpress theme that I eventually gave up all together….Whatever the case, they’ve all gone the way of the dodo bird.

Asia-Bird
Ah, my first blog. The memories….I started this blog because, I don’t know, everyone was starting blogs and it seemed like the thing to do. I think I had a blog before I had facebook. I put pictures up for my mom to see, and then she became motivated to start her won blog. I spent hours and hours learning html, php, and css so that I could make my theme look juuuuust right. When Zach died, it became my podium for which to address the sad masses. I think the sad masses watched the blog to make sure I didn’t post a suicide note. After that I stopped posting for a while, and then my mom made me promise to post more vacation pictures. It’s kind of a sad place to me now, but I can’t bring myself to take the site down.

Family sites for: brother, my sister, and my friend. I don’t think any of them logged into their brand, spanking new blogs more than once or twice. It was good practice, but at this point I was feeling a little burned out on building blogs, while at the same time, realized I could use them to make money. But how do I get a blog to make money, when the last think I want to do is build another blog? The solution, buy one on Flippa that somebody else already built!

MyBagPoint, KindlePop, and EasyGreenLivingGuide
These were all sites that I purchased off of Flippa. They seemed like they were going to be the next best thing to sliced bread. Each site, had a pretty theme, content, products, affiliates and seo. It was a complete package. So, I might as well have taken out a match and burned all those pretty green bills on fire because I didn’t do a single thing with any of them.

I don’t care about the Kindle. I don’t own a Kindle. All those Google alerts that I set up just got deleted the minute they landed in my inbox, I didn’t even care to read them, let alone write about them. Besides, I was secretly waiting for the iPad (admit it, you were too) so I don’t even think my site had any relevance.

The Green niche, overwhelmed me completely. Do I write about Green paper towels, green cars, green food, green eggs and ham? So I didn’t write anything. At least it came with an ebook for me to sell (an ebook which I never even read), which I thought was great, until I realized that every other Green Something website was selling the exact same one.

As for MyBagPoint, well, I’m about the most un-girliest girl of all the girls. I don’t think I even own more than one bag, let alone a purse! I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought that site, did I really think I was going to spend hours searching for ANYTHING relevant to bags? Really? [insert forehead slap]

AbbieWarnock
Another site I built for a friend. Ironically, this is the most successful website that I’ve ever built, except I don’t own it. Hmmm…maybe Abbie would let me put some Adsense on there! After all, I did build it for her for free.

I took a little break from blogs at this point, and I have to admit, I did not miss them. There was no love in my heart for blogging. But then I realized that I really needed to get something going with this online business idea or else, I’d have to get a …..dare I say it…..gasp…job!

I started learning more about keyword research, and micro niches, and bought a flurry of random domains.

WholeWheatHappiness and WholeGrainFoodSources
Never even put a site up, I bought the domain before my keyword research was conclusive. Smart, I know.

ArtDecoTableLamps
Another site that I bought. I thought $70 for a complete site was pretty good. Unfortunately, I think it was a scam, because I never actually received the site. Thanks WarriorForum people. I didn’t feel too bad about it though, because well, I don’t even think anybody wants an art deco table lamp. I wish I could say that I only bought that site because I was heavily sedated, or in the process of being unfrozen. But none of those things are true. I was just stupid.

Okay, well, at least I’ve learned a lesson here. I just just buy a money making machine of a website. There has to be some hands-on-ness to it.

TheSpanishFarm
This site was going to be it, the one that was both profitable and a passion of mine. I have been learning how to speak Spanish for a long time, and I can’t get enough of it. I love talking to people about learning spanish and I love speaking Spanish. I love all things Spanish. Spanish, Spanish Spanish. So because it was going to be the super, most awesome, best site ever. I had to get the theme just right. So I wrote a few articles and got some affiliate links up, and then I spent days and days and days…weeks even, messing around with the stupid wordpress theme that I was in love with. I eventually became disgusted at the sight of that website and moved on. Lesson learned here. The prettiness does’t have to be perfect. Good thing I bought up a backup domain for that website (SpanishMoo.com) – uugh.

KittyTravels
A few months later, I decided to follow along with with Caroline Middlebrook teaches, build a blog for adsense. I took my cat with me on a trip to Costa Rica, I learned a lot about flying with a cat on an airplane and taking a cat through customs, but as soon as I started article writing (which I again, hired a copywriter for) I immediately knew that I hated this project too. I didn’t care about telling people how to fly with their cat to another country. I’m not passionate about that, I can’t teach somebody that. All they have to do is type into Google: Fly with my cat to Costa Rica, and there is the answer. So, I’ve pretty much sworn off domains. I was frustrated and desperate and then Kevin told me about Eban Pagan.

Winglady
This has been my latest, and greatest project. After getting sucked into Eban Pagan’s Guru Blueprint Program, like a planet into a black hole, I took what I had learned and started to put it to practice. Don’t get me wrong here, I have a lotta love for Eban, I think he is brilliant, the material he teaches is good, but the bigger lesson has been watching him teach, and market his own products to me….which I buy, because I can’t help it. So from the nuggets I learned from Eban:

1. Pick a niche in the top 3 mega niches – check: relationships and dating

2. Refine niche – check: relationships and dating for guys

3. Refine niche further- check: dating and relationship training for guys to understand a woman from a woman’s perspective.

4. Okay, now what? WordPress or SwellCMS? Do I write blogs or do video blogs? Squeeze page or long form landing page? Ebook or training videos? Pen name or my own name – after all, I wouldn’t want my grandpa (who uses facebook daily? to read my advice for dating guys….awkward! Do I write my own content or outsource it?

So I try a little of both, find out, I don’t really want to write about all this stuff, I just know what I want it written about. Well, let’s try the copywriters….pay three for samples, pay one for a complete waste of time, aaaaand I’m back to square one, with holes in my pockets. I tell myself I can stick it out and just write one article day, but then instead spend all day researching and reading about relationships, and communication, and sociology of gender simply because I’m fascinated with it. I keep putting off writing my one blog a day, because I really do better when answering a direct question, so I clean the bathroom instead and then watch reruns of 24. This is going to take forever to get off the ground. Oh, by the way, did I mention that I paid $500 for that domain? Yeah. I know, I’m an idiot.

Saying Goodbye

And that’s where I am today. I’m not buying any more domains for a long time. If I start another website project, I’ll have to be with on of my existing domains. Probably this domain. I’ve now put all of the blog posts that I wrote myself on this site, and I’m publicly announcing the death of those other sites and starting over. I’m letting my old domains expire, except for maybe asia-bird.com and winglady.com. I’m done spending hours upon hours of theme fidgeting, and I’m done having copy written by somebody else that writes drivel. Instead I’ll write blog posts like these that really have no point, other than to get me to get in the habit of righting again. I’ll be writing the drivel thank you very much!

Goodbye failed blogs, I don’t think I’ll miss you much.

If you want a website, with a domain name that you choose (not xyz.blogspot.com), then you need WordPress! Lots of you have blogs on blogpot, which is okay, but my sites are on WordPress. And trust me, WordPress is so much better, you can do so much more! The site I built for Abbie is on WordPress, Zach’s memorial site is on wordpress. WordPress = happiness!

You’re probably thinking ‘yeah, okay, that sounds like a lot of work’, but it’s totally not! And Johnny B. Truant. will do it for only $59! It doesn’t get any better than that. Seriously you should look into this!

Want more than just a blog? Check out his Totally Cheap Website offer

Our first week in Samara was discouraging. We didn’t like the food, couldn’t sleep because of the humidity, the bugs were eating us alive, and we felt like we were unwelcome by the local ticos. We’d walk around town and wave and say the customary “buenos días” to ever human we saw. Most of the time we got a few mumbled “buenos días” back, but sometimes people wouldn’t even acknowledge that we’d spoken to them! Also, we kept hearing how dangerous Samara is, and how we have to be extremely, almost overly cautious. They told us stories about being robbed at gun point and about being chased down by robbers. Of course, this is all because of the Columbians living down at the far side of the beach, so, we were told to never walk on the beach at night.

More and more, Kevin and I started spending time at the apartment and feeling like it was the only place we could relax. We even threw around the idea of changing locations and heading to a different place in Costa Rica. We decided to try and stick it out for two weeks, and if we still were unhappy we’d go somewhere else. I’m proud of us for not giving up because as the new week started things started looking up. We realized that we’d been kind of harsh on the local ticos and acknowledged that maybe some people are just grumpy….they don’t even really say hello to each other, so it wasn’t just us! We started getting used to the humility, and started making friends.

On my first day at the Samara Language School they gave us a little booklet about the school, the town, and getting used to life abroad. I thought it was really interesting and realized that we’d been going through culture shock.

It says:

Culture shock is brought on by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols. These signs or cues include the thousand and one ways in which we orient ourselves to the situation of daily life, when to shake hands and what to say when we meet people, when and how to give tips, how to give orders in a restaurant, when to take statements seriously and when not. These cues may be words, gestures, facial expressions – all customs or norms which we aquire in the course of growing up, and are as much a part of our culture as the languages we speak or the beliefs we accept. When an individual enters a strange new culture, all or most of these familiar cues are removed. No matter how intelligent, broad-minded, or full of goodwill he or she may be, a series of props have been knocked out from under him or her. This is followed by a feeling of frustration and anxiety. All people react to this frustration in much the same ways, but in varying degrees. First, they reject the environment which causes the discomfort. The ways of the host country are bad because they make us feel badly. Another phase is regression. The home environment suddenly assumes tremendous importance. Some other symptoms of culture shock are: excessive concern over cleanliness and the feeling that what is new and strange is ‘dirty’; a feeling of helplessness; irritation over delays and other minor frustrations, out of proportion to the causes; excessive fear of being cheated, robed or injured; great concerns over minor pains.

The booklet, outlines four phases:
The honeymoon phase – I think we felt this when we were in Costa Rica before. We were with a group of friends, and every second was filled with fun and activities.

The hostile phase, the grin and bare it phase, and the effective adjustment phase. I think we are past the hostile phase, and are towards the end of the grin and bare it phase. It feels like we are getting used to being here, and are enjoying ourselves. The bugs seem to have gotten used to us, and we them. The sound of the rain lulls us to sleep, and the humidity really isn’t a problem any more. And the more we immerse ourselves in the community, the more we feel like a part of it (go figure), and find local Ticos that are warm, friendly, and inviting.

All in all, I’d definitely say we experienced some culture shock – which is a shock! :P

Kevin and I were really looking forward living in a tropical paradise, and had visions of ourselves eating all the fresh fruits and vegetables that were sure to abound everywhere. We imagined that we’d be up to our eyeballs in every exotic wonderful fruit known to mankind, grilling up steaks, and chicken and fish every night and tantalizing our taste buds like never before. We just knew that we’d stuff ourselves silly until we rolled around on the ground holding our swollen bellies with big fat smiles on our deliciously satisfied faces. After about two days we realized that this was not to be the case.

Surprisingly the only fruit in the stores that isn’t completely crawling with ants are the pineapples, bananas and apples. There are no vegetables, except maybe potatoes, that don’t look like they’ve been living in the bottom drawer of the fridge, rolling around getting bruised and age spotted and all withered looking.

hmmm…soooo…we’ve pretty much been living on eggs and popcorn. Unless we just can’t take it anymore and go out for some local cuisine. Unfortunately, the local ticos are working with the same problem. Crappy food selection. However, they’ve solved that problem, by deep frying everything. It reminds me of that episode on the Simpsons when Moe turns his bar into a restaurant and everything he serves is deep fried. Even the trays and the silverware etc.

When we finally got a grill, we were so excited to cook our own meat!

We made a trip over to the local carniceria and bought chicken and steak thinking it was going to be the best meat we’d ever eaten. Wrong. It is so tough that Kevin can’t even cut through it, and chewing it is almost as pleasurable as chewing rubber. I think it’s because the cows out here have to use their muscles! Kevin calls it ‘donkey meat’, and after an hour of lighting the grill, cooking the meat (which had been marinating all night) he threw it away because it was so bad.

So, needless to say, we were very unstoked about the food here (especially because it was the opposite in Montezuma where we were in June). But there is a silver lining. We found El Lagarto! I’m not sure if we would have survived another second if we hadn’t found this place. It’s at the furthest end of the beach, and we kept hearing how expensive it was. It was indeed expensive, but well worth it. All the food is cooked on a grill, and they buy their meat from the volcano region wherever that is. So not only is the meat quality meat, but it’s grilled to perfection on an open air grill out side on the beach. The mere site of all that grilled goodness had us salivating before we even sat down at the table. So much so that we both ordered up meat specials. I ordered the plato mixto, which included chicken, pork, and steak and Kevin got the surf and turf. The meal was served on 1 inch thick slabs of tree trunk, which Kevin appropriately responded to by saying ‘it was the manliest meal, he’d ever eaten’.

So, with bellies full, and smiles on our faces we walked home knowing that we could starve all week, as long as we knew we could go to El Lagarto once a week. In the mean time, Kevin decided that the grill will only work for fish, and I found out that we are going to learn to make empanadas tomorrow at school. We think that stewing the meat is the way to go, and just eating apples, bananas, pineapples, and eggs for the rest of the time. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I need to go console Kevin who is upstairs in the fetal position cradling his Costco card.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great things about living here, just not the food…so far!

Today was the first day I actually swam in the ocean! Kevin didn’t bring a swim suit to Costa Rica, so we had to wait for the stores to open today so that he could get some trunks! I think the best time to go swimming is in the afternoon when the heat and humidity are just too much for me to handle.