The Perfect Storm
It is April 15th 2019. We are in London. It has been a gorgeous day and we've been occupying with XR in Parliament Square. Tom's sister Amaya is babysitting for Iris and we've just been to see a Huguenot House courtesy of my friend from school Sarah. We're sitting in a bar somewhere near Spitalfields with Simon -one of our best men from our wedding, and a uni friend of Tom's.
Tom is waiting to hear back from a civil service job he had an interview for. He has been 10 years at Hallam Uni and he's ready for a change. There's a lot of upheaval and he's not sure about the direction things are going in. We've also been talking about going abroad for maybe 6 months or a year before Iris starts school - she's due to start in September 2020. It feels like a long way away and too soon.
We're spit-balling. If we went away, we'd want to go somewhere Spanish speaking and hot. We haven't got much further than that. The bar man comes over and offers us free drinks, we are a bit drunk and loud and laughing, he enjoys our craic. Simon is one of our best-travelled friends and we're leaning towards the exotic rather than Spain. "Where would you go if you were travelling with a kid but wanted to be able to live with people and make friends, you know relatively safe, no compounds and minimal guns?". He says it's probably not his personal favourite, but he'd go for Costa Rica.
Costa Rica, it sounds magical. I've kind of heard of it. Tom says my friend Stephanie in the States has mentioned it too...we start researching.
***
Skip forwards a few months. Boris Johnson is Prime Minister., Brexit is looking more inevitable. Tom has applied for and got voluntary redundancy at work. It's enough money to not have to work for a wee while and would enable us to make the house rent-out-able. He's going to finish work in the autumn. Everyone we ask who has been to Costa Rica says we should go. I read some excellent blogs at 2 o'clock in the morning when the house is quiet - Two Weeks in Costa Rica, My Tan Feet - we watch You Tube videos, we send each other links to articles.
People go there with kids, have kids there. Costa Ricans - known at Ticos for adding the sweet diminuitive tico to the end of words ("momentico", "chicatico") are friendly people it seems. And there's been no army since 1949. It was the first country in the world to have mandatory and free education, it has a national health system. It's reforesting, it's an eco-haven. Their President is young and aspirational, Time magazine just put him on their 100 most influential people in the world list. It's not perfect, but it sounds pretty bloody good from where we are.
It's a perfect storm, we could actually do this, we don't want to be in the UK. I suggest we could delay Iris' school year and go for a year May 2020 to May 2021. We could rent the house out...there's a lot to do. We start telling people this is our plan, it starts to feel real.
***
It's the beginning of August, I go away with my sisters for the weekend. I've decided we should just leave, not fritter away the redundancy money. We need to just decide and go. I've been looking at Air BnB I show them a place we've been looking at.
Within a fortnight we've booked the place on a permaculture farm for a few months and Tom has booked flights to Costa Rica's capital San Jose on 14th January 2020. We don't know how long we're going to go for, but that's it, we've done it, we're going. Now all we need to do is renovate the house and pack...how hard can it be?
Tom is waiting to hear back from a civil service job he had an interview for. He has been 10 years at Hallam Uni and he's ready for a change. There's a lot of upheaval and he's not sure about the direction things are going in. We've also been talking about going abroad for maybe 6 months or a year before Iris starts school - she's due to start in September 2020. It feels like a long way away and too soon.
We're spit-balling. If we went away, we'd want to go somewhere Spanish speaking and hot. We haven't got much further than that. The bar man comes over and offers us free drinks, we are a bit drunk and loud and laughing, he enjoys our craic. Simon is one of our best-travelled friends and we're leaning towards the exotic rather than Spain. "Where would you go if you were travelling with a kid but wanted to be able to live with people and make friends, you know relatively safe, no compounds and minimal guns?". He says it's probably not his personal favourite, but he'd go for Costa Rica.
Costa Rica, it sounds magical. I've kind of heard of it. Tom says my friend Stephanie in the States has mentioned it too...we start researching.
***
Skip forwards a few months. Boris Johnson is Prime Minister., Brexit is looking more inevitable. Tom has applied for and got voluntary redundancy at work. It's enough money to not have to work for a wee while and would enable us to make the house rent-out-able. He's going to finish work in the autumn. Everyone we ask who has been to Costa Rica says we should go. I read some excellent blogs at 2 o'clock in the morning when the house is quiet - Two Weeks in Costa Rica, My Tan Feet - we watch You Tube videos, we send each other links to articles.
People go there with kids, have kids there. Costa Ricans - known at Ticos for adding the sweet diminuitive tico to the end of words ("momentico", "chicatico") are friendly people it seems. And there's been no army since 1949. It was the first country in the world to have mandatory and free education, it has a national health system. It's reforesting, it's an eco-haven. Their President is young and aspirational, Time magazine just put him on their 100 most influential people in the world list. It's not perfect, but it sounds pretty bloody good from where we are.
It's a perfect storm, we could actually do this, we don't want to be in the UK. I suggest we could delay Iris' school year and go for a year May 2020 to May 2021. We could rent the house out...there's a lot to do. We start telling people this is our plan, it starts to feel real.
***
It's the beginning of August, I go away with my sisters for the weekend. I've decided we should just leave, not fritter away the redundancy money. We need to just decide and go. I've been looking at Air BnB I show them a place we've been looking at.
Within a fortnight we've booked the place on a permaculture farm for a few months and Tom has booked flights to Costa Rica's capital San Jose on 14th January 2020. We don't know how long we're going to go for, but that's it, we've done it, we're going. Now all we need to do is renovate the house and pack...how hard can it be?
Leaving on a jet plane...
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