Hola! I figured this would all feel real once I got to DIA, or when I was on the plane.  If not on the plane, then certainly when I landed.  But even as I am eating my diner of Casado (un plato tipico en Costa Rica) on an unnamed street corner, this all still feels like a dream.

In the beginning...

I would like to start by sharing an excerpt from a book I found randomly in a used book store a couple years ago... I feel it is very appropriate as we set out for the unknown...


"Travels with a Donkey" - Robert Louis Stevenson 1879


My Dear Sidney Colvin,


     The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travelers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world-- all too, travelers with a donkey; and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. they are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.
     Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud of if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours,
             R.L.S.      


..............................


So with this note we officially begin our journey. The rest is yet to come...