Countdown to Retirement: 145 Days to go!

Everything for our retirement is starting to fall into place!

While on vacation in Costa Rica this past December, we got our Costa Rica Drivers Licenses and wrapped up a number of details for my Residency application. I was fingerprinted and photographed at the Fuerza Publica (National Police) for Interpol and then we meet with our immigration attorney to sign some paperwork.

All of the documents have now been certified by the Costa Rican Consulates and officially translated into Spanish. I received a confirmation this week stating my application for residency has now been submitted to Migracíon (Immigration). Once my application is approved, we will start the same process for John.

We have a number of things we need to do before we can sell the house. We need to paint a couple of bedrooms, replace some carpet and fix some minor stuff. We've started taken bids for the painting and repairs and hope to have the house ready to go on the market this Spring.

This weekend, the agent from the shipping company will come by and take a look at the furniture and personal belongings we plan to ship. He will give us a quote on the shipping cost, Costa Rica import duty and delivery to our home in Atenas.

We're hoping our kids will come soon to take away a lot of the furniture we don't want. We have way too much stuff and downsizing is a real challenge.

Hard to believe, in just 145 days John will officially retire!
Read the whole story...

Talavera Pottery

A few years ago John and I discovered a small shop in San Antonio, Texas, that imports Talavera pottery from Puebla, Mexico. Talavera is the oldest tin-glazed ceramic in America. It is still manufactured using the same age old techniques that were used back in the 16^th Century. Authentic Talavera is always signed by a master potter. When we saw the quality of the ceramic sinks, we decided, right then and there, we would install them in our home in Costa Rica when it gets built.

This past weekend we went back to San Antonio to the Old Mexico Imports shop in the Market Square and placed our order for the sinks we will install in the new house later this year. We selected the Cenefa pattern for the dual sinks in the master bath and the Calla Lily pattern for the guest bath. These are sample photos, similar to what we selected.

We also purchased a number of matching accessories; soap dispensers, towel bars, tissue roll holder, wall hooks and tiles for the back-splashes.

They estimate it will take 2-3 months for the potter to make the sinks and deliver them to Texas. We should have them in plenty of time to include them with the household goods we will be shipping to Costa Rica this summer.

Read the whole story...

Our Tropical Christmas - 2010

We just spent a wonderful Christmas vacation in Costa Rica where we ate more than our fair share of Christmas Tamales.







The garden is looking fabulous. Mario, our gardener, is doing a wonderful job. All of the trees we planted in May have doubled or tripled in size and the lawn is now well established. We didn't have a Christmas tree this year, but we did manage to string up lights on the casita.




Here is John standing next to our Cashew tree.







Mario has managed to bring this little Mango tree back to life. Jenny planted it about 3 years ago and it had been struggling.










The Almond tree is really starting to grow and should provide good shade on this side of the casita.










Our Valencia Orange has tripled in size and is already producing fruit.

We attended many holiday parties and dinners and made lots of new friends this trip. Our neighbor Max threw a party for his employees and clients. We met a couple, close to our age, and had such a good time with them, we arranged to met for lunch a few days later. We went to the Machu Picchu restaurant in San Jose. The food there is outstanding and you should try to go there if you get the chance.

One evening Mario and Dinia invited us over for homemade Chicharrones. Mario and Dinia are really great folks. They embody everything we love about the Ticos. The friendship they have extended to us is just wonderful. They provided us with transportation to and from airport. Shortly after they dropped us off at our casita, they came over with a huge basket of fresh fruit and a week later they showed up with more. They went out of their way to help us with a number of things we needed to get fixed around the casita. We are so grateful to count them among our friends.

We celebrated Maritza's and my birthday one evening with her, Vinicio and the rest of her family. It was great to see all of our extended family. Like all kids, their grandkids are growing up just too fast.
One of the best parties we went to was hosted by our friend, Eliercer, near Grecia. This is CR at its best! He and his church members put on a Christmas Fiesta for the area poor. Well over 100 kids, babies to pre-teens, waited for hours to get into the Fiesta. Once inside, they were entertained with games, a clown, "dreamsicles" hot dogs with slaw & all the dressings, ice cream, soda, piñatas full of candy. Finally, each child received a nice toy present and a bag filled with apples and grapes.

After the kids party we had "Olla de Carne" for lunch with Eliercer and his family. Then we went to see friends in Alajuela for afternoon coffee and more food.






We spent Christmas Eve with my Tico "son" and his family where we enjoyed a roasted pork leg with all the traditional trimmings. We watched the little ones pass out presents to everyone to open and then it was time to tuck them in bed so they could wait for the Niño Jesus to arrive with their "special" presents.







We had a wonderful time and we were so sad to see our vacation come to an end. We were in the midst of packing on Christmas Day for our trip home on the 26th, when Eliercer and his family surprised us. They showed up in the late afternoon with Christmas Tamales. We brewed some coffee in the chorreador and I made up a platter of cheeses and crackers. We sat outside on the casita's porch to enjoy the impromptu fest with good friends in perfect weather. ¡Pura Vida!
Read the whole story...

It's a jungle out there!

This past February I spent 6 weeks in Atenas getting work done around our casita. We built a perimeter concrete wall with chain link fencing, put in a sprinkler system, poured a driveway and added an electric gate. Then I came back with John in May, at the start of the rainy season, to plant the grass, trees and shrubs. We were really hoping to plant some sort of fast growing, climbing vine on the side of the house that bakes in the sun all day. We decided to plant Jalapa.


What a great choice! This is a photo in June, just after John planted the Jalapa. He built a framework of nylon string for the vines to attach themselves and start the climb to the top of the fence.

Here you can see how well it had grown by the end of August. Notice, you can still see through the fence.

And this is the amazing growth as of yesterday. Yea, we have shade and privacy, what more could we ask for in just 5 months.




Read the whole story...

Homemade Sausage - Part 2

The Chorizo sausage we made earlier this month turned out so good, we decided to try Italian sausage this morning. In keeping with our healthy diet objective, we made Italian Turkey sausage.

We ground about 2 parts of turkey breast meat with 1 part of pork. Then we added the spices and fried up a bit to make sure the seasonings was just right before we packed it into the casings.

Tonight we plan to cook some for dinner on the barbecue grill.
Read the whole story...

Social Security, Pension and Costa Rican Residency

It's official, I've applied for my Social Security benefits and should receive my first check beginning in 2011. As part of the process, Social Security Administration found an old pension I forgot I had.

Years ago, I worked for a division of ADP that was sold off to some investors and several years after that, it was bought by the company that eventually laid me off. It turns out I had worked at ADP long enough to qualify for a pension, albeit a small pension, it is guaranteed income for life. When I talked to the HR rep at ADP, she said they tried to contact me at the old address they had on record. I have moved 4 times since I worked for ADP, and changed my last name too. Anyway, ADP is sending me a packet of information to apply for the pension. I thank Social Security for checking their records and finding this for me.

Two years ago my half Tico (Costa Rican) son, Donald, went with me to Costa Rica to get his "Cedula", the Costa Rican national identity card. Now that he has this, I can apply for unrestricted residency as the mother of a Costa Rican citizen.

After much research, and many recommendation from other expats, we have decided to use the consulting company called "Residency in Costa Rica" (RCR) to handle our residency applications and all the supporting documentation required by the Costa Rican Government. This week I mailed RCR all of the initial documentation to get the process started. This included my birth certificate and a letter of good conduct from the local police department. All of the documents have to be authenticated by the various States where they were issued, then the Costa Rica Consulate has to authenticate the States' signatures. After that the Consulates signatures get authenticated by the officials in Costa Rica. Then, all of the documents have to be officially translated into Spanish before the application is finally submitted.

When we go back to Costa Rica later this year, I will be fingerprinted and photographed. Then RCR will be ready to submit the residency application to Immigration for approval. RCR anticipates it will take from 4 to 6 months for my residency to be approved and the government to issue me my cedula (the equivalent of a "Green Card" issued to legal immigrants to the U.S). Once I'm approved, we will start the application process for John. He will be entitled to residency as my spouse.

We'll keep you posted on the process.

Read the whole story...

Homemade Sausage

One of the things we may miss after we move to Costa Rica will be great sausage at the local supermarket. I bought a great book on sausage making and find there is no reason we can't make our own. This book has recipes from bratwurst to chorizo and everything in between.

Today, we gave it a try using the grinder attachment on my Viking mixer.

We made about 10 pounds of Chorizo and now it is hanging in our electric cooler to dry for about 24 hours.

We made some fresh pan sausage with this recipe for breakfast this morning and it was outstanding. After the stuffed sausage links have a chance to dry, we grill some tomorrow for dinner and we'll post the results.

3-Oct-10 Update: We had the chorizo with dinner tonight and it was terrific. We vacuum sealed the rest and froze it for later. Now we have to plan the recipe for our next experiment. I'm leaning toward something with gound turkey. Click on Chorizo to see our recipe.


Read the whole story...

Household Inventory

We now have less than a year to get ready to relocate to Costa Rica. So, we have finally started taking an inventory of everything we own to decide what we will take with us when we move to Costa Rica.

John found a great set of database programs which will help us compile lists of everything and determine the values for Costa Rica's custom officials. So far, I have used the Book Organizer, Music Organizer and Movie Organizer to download info on our collections. The program lets you enter the UPC barcode and then it retrieves all the information, including titles, authors, artists, actors, release dates, value, etc. It has already saved me hours of data input.

All electronics and appliances have to be listed with the brand model and serial number. This way Customs knows when they were manufactured and if they are used or fairly new. Anything less than 6 months old will be considered new and taxed accordingly. The average tax rate on new appliances and electronics is somewhere around 50%. We will probably go ahead and replace a number of our old electronics and appliances in the next few months, so we can take them into Costa Rica as "used" goods, and hopefully we will be taxed at a lower rate.
Read the whole story...