Mindfulness

Hola todo del mundo. SO I've been slow at the blog thing because I haven't been doing as much traveling. I suppose that when I'm not mobile, less crazy stories happen. But all the same I've still been meeting people from all over the world, surfing, reading, eating rice, beans & fried plaintains and enjoying the healthy lifestyle. One of the refreshing things about meeting travelers is that everyone lives on the bare minimum budget. Nobody is shopping just to shop or spending money frivolously. You buy food, you find budget accommodations, travel by bus, etc. It's good to be around that kind of financial mindset as I've been guitly of spending too much on things that I don't need. The funny thing now is I'm living on so much less than I ever have but I'm having a trip of a lifetime. I'm also reading instead of watching TV. I have no clue what's on TV, never watching any depressing news & really can't believe how many books I've read. Probably more on this trip than over the past couple of years & it's been enjoyable. What else has happened, oh I went from not eating tomatoes to eating tomotoes. When I started this trip, I didn't like tomatoes. But everytime I ordered something "sin tomate" people must have thought my spanish was wrong because they always gave it to me with tomatoes. And no matter how many times I told Fish or Ricardo on the road that I wasn't into tomatoes, when they cooked I somehow always was served tomatoes. Eventually I just gave up & started eating them and now I find myself slicing tomatoes for my sandwiches, go figure. Well since my last blog some changes, inevitably on this trip, have happened. I was suppose to start house sitting but it seems to have fallen through which I found out the day I was moving to the house. I'm quite sure what happened but something between the owner & the contractor who's getting paid to stay there so I've been in Jaco. I did do a trip down to Dominical with a friend I made who only had a few days left on her trip. It was sort of soured because the Dominical I described to her was ruined by a fiesta of sorts built in this chill town to promote a paved road being built in it. Instead of stars on the beach, it was discoteque on the beach. Plus I was again fighting kidney stone pains which I've been trying get to pass thru a variety of natural 'remedies'. However, The waves were really fun & we found a chill waterfall spot to spend a low tide morning. That and my aussie friend made me laugh a lot during my pain to help. It was interesting on this little trip because I never felt like I had such an accent until I spent time chatting with this girl from England both days in the lineup & then with my Aussie friend the rest of the time. They made me repeat what I said about as much as I make people repeat themselves who talk to me in spanish. I never thought my english was difficult to understand but apparently it is to some. Also Tania, my aussie friend, couldn't help but repeat/mock almost everything I said because of my áccent. The English surfer girl literally asked me to repeat everything I said but she was so cute it didn't bother me :) So the day before Dominical we & another girl from the school of the world did a day trip to manuel antonio national park to hike; we saw 2 types of monkeys up close, some other strange animal that is a cross between a deer & a rat and saw some really nice tropical beaches hiking along. Since then it's been back to Jaco & back to a somewhat normal routine with Ricardo. I did just got an email from an old boss who is now a VP at a nonprofit public healthcare facility. He said he has a Director position that he'd love to talk to me about. For someone jobless and being that I've never held a position quite that high up in my field, it's a great offer. But here I sit enjoying my days and thinking about jumping out of this for that is a tough thought. On one hand I could take the job, live like I live now on very little and truly save up some money. However I've yet to volunteer and I still have a long way to go on my spanish & want to travel more. Ricardo's advice today was "look you put all this effort into wrestling and you were successful at that. Then you put all this effort into this career and you made that happen successfully. Now you're putting your mind into getting better at surfing & you're improving. So don't worry about money, when you want to put your mind on making money you'll make it." I had also just read a quote from Dj's facebook that said "we do the things we HAVE to do so we can do the things we WANT to do". This made me think a little too, right now I'm not doing anything I have to really but I know at some point I will. It's strange right now, I don't have a cell phone, don't watch TV and am really leading a different healthier lifestyle and it would seem odd to get sucked back into something less natural. I've also been told by more & more people that my stories "should be a book". ~Seems to be what I've heard a lot. Maybe I should be putting energy into that or something along the lines of that with Hurley, Chevy(suggestion from someone), adventure mag, etc. A guy just left here saying he has some background & contacts in writing and gave me his card. Though it seems a bit egocentric to think that my story would be of that much interest. Quien sabe? As for now I don't know my next step since the house sitting gig seems to be just about totally under water. Salud, Yyyesssii (somehow my name is turned into yesse since Jesse is a really hard name to pronounce apparently)