I grew up in “Smalltown” in the Carolinas.  Yes for those of you geography experts I know there are two “Carolinas.”  But I grew up in both of them, having spent my early childhood and adolescence in North and my early adulthood in South.  There are positives and negatives to living in a small town where everyone knows everyone, like the fact that everyone knows everyone (which works great for weddings, funerals and the like).  But sometimes you just want to be anonymous.  To be able to go to dinner without having to engage in small talk with half of the people in the restaurant.  I am not much of a small-talker.  I guess I could never be a politician.  Costa Rica is a small country, basically with the same land mass as a small state such as West Virginia.  You can travel to almost anywhere in the country in just a few hours drive from the capital, San Jose.  That is really cool.  Everywhere is inherently accessible, even with the infamously bad roads we are supposed to have.  I live in San Jose and San Jose is not a small town.  Half the population lives here, or in the GAM (Gran Area Metropolitana).  It is kind of nice to live in a place that seems large because of its diversity, but where all is so easily accessible.  I mean we have two oceans that both can be seen in the course of a day’s driving.  We have several mountain ranges and even mountains that if you can make it to the top, you can see (on a clear day) both of those oceans.  We have diverse cultures.  We have jungles and plains and cloud forests and we have the “big city.”  San Jose is a great place to get lost in the crowd.  Here you can break up with your girlfriend and never see her again over the course of several years, unless you try real hard. So what is the point of this rambling and somewhat incoherent post?  I am not real sure.  I guess what I am trying to say is that here in Costa Rica, you find a bit of it all.  It is a small country packed tight with diversity in its land, creatures and folks.  It is a country where, despite the overwhelming diversity, all can be accessed within a day’s drive. It is a country with a big apple type cosmopolitan city like San Jose, or the GAM (but without the sky-line).  It is also a place that is “big” enough for both me and my ex-girlfriend.  Yea, that’s the point of this post.  Hasta la proxima!

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