Change is the only constant...

It was 1992, we were all listening to our Science teacher. He was showing us how change is the only constant while mixing different chemicals and materials. We had a divided class that stated it applied to life and the rest opposing this by stating life wasn't science. Fast forward to today and I'd say he was right, change is the only constant in life. We are always changing, evolving and growing be it physically or mentally. What we liked yesterday or since we were kids is now what we dislike and what we disliked while growing up we now like. Take for example zucchini, it was the vegetable I didn't like right along with broccoli and asparagus and now they're some of my favorite so much so that I try to incorporate them in most meals - have you ever had scrambled eggs with zucchini? delicious!

A month ago we were packing up our home in Costa Rica, preparing to leave friends that had become family to reunite with family and start a new chapter in our life back in California. We were excited for the change, because it meant we would be a 6, 8 or at the most 10 hour drive from grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and so on. We were excited because it meant we would be home. "Home is where the heart is", it's so true. Our hearts were here with our family. 

Our last day in Costa Rica came with its own set of challenges, I got food poisoning and it wasn't fun at all. The worst I've ever experienced, it was so bad I had to have 3 different medications injected into my body in addition to another 3 pills. I was determined to not be left behind to recover and so Saturday morning I woke up got ready with as little energy as I had since I hadn't eaten anything for the past 12 hours, walked into the airport and had them wheel me to the nearest red cross station explained what was going on and 2 little magical pills later we were on route home. 

We arrived to cold {I believe it was 48ºF} and rainy weather to the Bay Area, our toes were purple within a few seconds of walking under the rain in flip flops. After 2 years of living in 80ºF weather with 95% humidity,  our bodies had become accustomed to the tropics; flip flops, shorts and a tank top were all we ever wore and what we had in our suitcases. Luckily, family was there to welcome us equipped with weather appropriate clothes. Within 12 hours my body finally started feeling better from the food poisoning. 24 hours later we had finally settled into our new temporary home and had began planing for the week ahead. A week that would be packed with school registrations, doctor visits, shopping for our new car and house hunting!

Moving back home seems like an easy task, I mean it is after all where you lived most if not all of your life before. At least that was what we thought, but somehow living abroad changed us and shopping for groceries was overwhelming.... So many choices! For one item there are at least 10 different options to chose from. You need to buy milk, ok well there's rice milk, almond milk, cashew milk, coconut milk, cow's milk, goat's milk, soy milk, low fat, nonfat, whole milk and the list goes on. We at our home drink cow's milk, 1% is what we usually buy however I couldn't help but notice all the different options. 

As the guy at the local starbucks responded when I was ordering a kids' milk: "what kind of milk? almond milk, soy milk, low fat, nonfat, whole, organic? which one?" He paused as I looked like a deer in the head lights, he then said: "not enough options miss?" I smiled and just said "too many! I just want regular milk..." Now he smiled back and said in amazement: "really!? we usually get complaints that we don't have enough options! just earlier a customer over reacted because I didn't have cashew milk!" 

We take such little things for granted, I remember when there were never enough options and now I think there are way to many. These are the comforts our beautiful country offers us, you don't like something? well guess what, you don't have to settle you can always get something else. 

Change is the only constant and as such we are going through change, re-adjusting to life back home and while going into this re-adjustment period Stroller Adventures will go through changes too. This blog will reflect the changes we are going through. I will still share about Costa Rica, because I do have so much more to share about it and the beauty it has but I will also be sharing local events, occasionally I will have reviews {as always only choosing what our family likes and finds useful}, of course I will continue to talk food because I enjoy cooking and a good meal just like the next person and I have not quit my fitness/weightloss journey I did however take a break while preparing for our move and I'm ready to jump back on board. 

And there are also the small changes we will be making to make this space reflect more of me. Did you check out the new header? It was designed by my good friend Kelley from The Grant Life, she is awesome!

Saying goodbye to life as expats...

We are just a few days away from boarding our flight out of Costa Rica, leaving the expat life behind and moving onto exciting new adventures back in the Bay Area. Living in Costa Rica for the past 18 months has been an experience that has forever changed us. We are certainly not the same family that left family and friends and moved to Central America. Thinking back on these past 18 months there are several things that I'm definitely going to miss when we move back home:

1.- Listening at the crickets chirp, the frogs from the river croak and the wind rustling the leaves on the trees at nighttime. 

It's almost midnight in #CostaRica these are the sounds you hear just outside our house: the river flowing in the very background, crickets chirping and wind blowing as well as other sounds of nature. This is so soothing, I guess I will have to record these sounds for 8 hours so I can replay them at night when we move. #expats #expatlife

A video posted by Maribel R (@themaribelreyes) on Jan 12, 2015 at 9:59pm PST

2.- Radio Urbana, it's a radio station that plays reggae, calypso, roots, dancehall and more all day every single day. It's where we discovered our new favorite Spanish reggae bands and other reggae artists we hadn't heard of. In addition it's the radio station that we will be able to continue to listen online. 

3.- Our neighbors/Costa Rica family/friends, they are truly amazing! Their kindness makes me smile every day and thank the Lord we chose this house over the others. Last Saturday they surprised us with a party, everyone was there and we all had a great day making new memories and sharing our best experiences from the past 18 months.

4.- Calling something in all the different ways I've learned that it is called to see which way the person I'm talking with will understand what I'm saying. Example: The mop is in the laundry room/ the thing you use to clean the floor is in the laundry room/ what you use to clean the floor that is a stick with some textile material at the end is in the room where we wash the clothes {now picture it in Spanish but with the different words that mean the mop!} "La mopa esta en el cuarto de pilas/ el palo de piso esta en el cuarto de lavar/ el coleto se encuentra en el closet de lavado/ el gancho esta en el cuarto de pilas/ trapeador esta en el cuarto de lavadora/ la fregona esta en el cuarto de servicio".

5.-  The fruit! definitely the fruit, I am now a pineapple fan, I've developed a taste for starfruit and soursop is so delicious and has an interesting texture I can't explain. Passion Fruit is out of this world.

6.- The green lush views anywhere you go and this also includes the science class that is our backyard.

7.- The rain and I don't mean light rain, but tropical rainstorms with lightning and thunder!

Sending some rain from the rainforest in #CostaRica to you 😉 enjoy! #PuraVida #travel #expatfamily #expats

A video posted by Maribel R (@themaribelreyes) on Jan 25, 2015 at 8:24am PST

We can't wait to see our family, we are excited for this new chapter we are about to begin. Stay tuned as we continue to share our experiences in Costa Rica {oh yes, I have many more posts to share with you} mixed in with our new life experiences in the Bay Area. 

Expat life in Costa Rica, one year later.

Family, friends and even readers ask me how easy was it to make this move; I am going to be honest and tell you it wasn't an easy transition. We grew up with the privilege of having the best of two countries just a quick drive away: Mexico and United States, moving here certainly had its culture shock and not to mention location shock all at the same time. However we were always positive about our decision to move and did a great job sharing the enthusiasm with our kids. 

Before our move we had a talk with them explaining that due to work we were moving across the continent to a new country and searched online everything about Costa Rica in fact we have a pinterest board with places we wanted to visit which now also includes our adventures living here. They were so excited that our then 7 year old began planing our move:

Yes, she's something alright. She had two different routes planed out: one via NorCal directly to Costa Rica and the other making stops along the way visiting family and friends. Personally I would've loved the visits to family. 

So much has happened in this past year.

A year ago this past weekend we said our goodbyes to California, we packed up essentials for a month in one sunday afternoon and when the movers showed up at our doorstep they packed and loaded up our entire home into a container to be shipped overseas to Costa Rica. It's unbelievable that this weekend marks our first year anniversary since arriving in Costa Rica, a new life, a new home, a new chapter in our family's book.

We arrived, lived in an extended stay hotel for a month it certainly was lots of fun and though we were mostly out and about searching for the perfect new home, schools and car I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to clean and the nice breakfasts in the morning that I didn't have to cook and their warm water pool. 

After just a few days of arriving here I was already driving {something that takes lots of skill AND courage!}. We moved into our new home, slept in 4 twin sized mattresses in one bedroom and made the best of it, our belongings arrived 10 days after we moved in and we unpacked it all in just one day! 

Our new house was now a home and we were beyond happy to see the comforts of home, having a chair to sit on now or tv to watch, the kids' toys ready for them to play with them and above all I was ecstatic to sleep in my own bed. I remember the kids' faces as they came home from school and found their bedrooms setup just as they'd remembered them with all their belongings seeing pure joy in their faces. 

We learned through them that you can be anywhere in the world and adjust, accept and appreciate the differences. 

By October we were finally settled into our new lives, everything was smooth sailing until our car broke down. In Costa Rica during rain season having a car is a MUST, for me personally having a car was my way to escape when my feelings would try to come out and I would feel homesick. I would just jump in the car and drive off to explore while everyone was in school or at work. 

The holidays came and with them our first guests arrived, my family visited for 3 weeks and at the end of their visit we had the worst that's happened to us as a family happen: my husband was admitted into the hospital and underwent life threatening surgery, 9 procedures later he was recovering wonderfully. His parents visited and we had all the love and support from all our new friends and neighbors. We also felt all the love from back home. 

Trying times for sure! I felt like I was going to break down, but as the saying goes "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" and that was true. With the love and support of family and friends I overcame a nervous breakdown and stress. I learned that I am stronger than I give myself credit, I have so much strength in me. I kept it together and 1 month later life was getting back into its new normal. 

Who would've thought I would celebrate my 35th and 36th birthday living in Costa Rica? 

We've been through a lot, fun times and not so fun times but still I wouldn't change any of it. Today as I sit here writing I realize how much I've changed, we are just a few weeks away from our first trip outside of Costa Rica and back home and yes I'm beyond excited but my long shopping list from the US has been significantly reduced. Remember all those things I said I couldn't live without? Well guess what, I've been living without them for a year now even the ones my family brought me when I asked them they are still in their original closed package. 

This past week as I was talking with a friend who just arrived 5 months ago, she was distressed over the cultural differences and I was just smiling and saying what another friend had told me last October: "Relax and enjoy life, you can't change the way it is and you won't change it". Funny that was me just a few months ago, trying to adjust and understand the culture. 

As my own mother says: "you're the outsider, you're the odd one out here and it's ok because you are just temporarily here so just enjoy the ride and adapt to change". Well mom, you were right {as always} I have to embrace my cultural differences and sometimes our language barrier and accept it for what it is. Even our kids have, so why wouldn't I? 

Here we are a year later happy, healthy and rediscovering ourselves. 

Here's to another year in Costa Rica and living the "Pura Vida" lifestyle. 

Here's to continuing to enjoy our adventures and learning about life. 

Here's to enjoying all the green scenery, the rain, the thunder, the lightning and power outages.

Here's to one year down, two to go. 

Looking back...

It's hard to believe that a year ago this week we were traveling for the last time in a while to SoCal and Baja Mexico. We traveled to visit family, friends and enjoy each second spent with all of them. 

It's almost been a year since the last time we saw 95% of our loved ones and today is proving to be a bit challenging, I'm emotional looking at pictures of our trip and thinking of each and everyone of them. Everything we did on that last trip was so soak up new memories and have them last us a long time, a year ago we didn't know when we'd travel back to visit. 

We still don't know when we will travel to visit family and friends. I still log on weekly and quote flights and make lists of what we want to do once we visit. Decisions like do we want to go visit here or see this friend or eat at our favorite restaurants or go to a theme park, how much time would we have on our first trip and will we have enough time to do it all? How will we make our 3-5 weeks long trip work so we can see everyone? We still don't know how it will work out when we finally get there but we will certainly make the most out of our trip. 

Picking up and moving to a different country is fun, adventurous and some may say brave but it's also bittersweet when you think of it. You leave everything you know, your comforts, your culture, everyone you love and even though technology makes it possible each and everyday for us to be in contact with our loved ones it just isn't the same as seeing them in person and giving them a hug.

We do love our life here, we have experienced different and new adventures. We've learned so much in the past 10 months, we've seen many new sights and grown so much. We have also have had our share of challenges like when our car broke down and we were car less in the rainiest month of the season or when my husband fell gravely ill and most recently our son got to ride in ambulance to the ER {something he is happy about, just not the IV they had to put in his arm}. 

Yes 10 months and counting, as I look out our window and see the winds of change are here we don't know what the future holds just like everyone else but we do know we are loving the memories we are making and the challenges we've endured? well we'll just have to file those in lessons of life because after each detour on our life we've learned we are stronger than we thought we were. Next June we celebrate our first anniversary in Costa Rica and I'm kind of looking forward to it, it is a big milestone for the 4 of us and we shall celebrate it after all I am where I was destined to be. ;)

As Costa Ricans say "Pura Vida"...