Nowadays there are said to be approximately 400 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 500 million speakersworldwide. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.   Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations and there are more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries in the world.  Are you getting my point? Oye chicos y chicas! (Warning: Non PC/fun writing coming up) Spanish is the new black. Literally. For about a decade now, Latinos have been the largest minority group in the United States, surpassing African-Americans.

So learning Spanish is a no-brainer and literally can be with a download-able language-learning program I just tried out called Bueno, Entonces. If you’ve wanted to improve your Spanish or learn from scratch…now is really the time. Vamos!

To get a feel for the program, here is a clip for you (if you are reading this in email and the vid doesn’t come through, please go to my site to see full video clip):

Click here if video is not above:

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With the proliferation of the internet and WiFi, I have found myself sending a lot less postcards then on former trips. But when you’re on a ‘round the world’ tour like me, you will inevitably have to send some packages home from various countries. I’ve been fortunate to have a few friends visit me while I travel and not only of course is it great to see them, I also benefit by being able to shove some crap into their bag that I no longer need—like some memorabilia I’ve collected or the hiking boots I haven’t worn since the rainforests of South America or the magic walking stick from New Zealand or the conical Asian hat I got in Vietnam. This way they can cart it home for me and I save a ton on postage and mostly am saved from the stress I would suffer by worrying if my precious package would ever make it safely to the shores of ‘Amerika.’ When I could not pawn things off to friends, every few months I’d put a little care package together to send home. I’ve learned that the post offices around the world are as varied as the toilets. And some are just as stinky.

Monteverde, Costa Rica—This was a tiny post office up in the cloud forest with one window and one man. No muss no fuss. Signed, sealed, delivered.

Galapagos Islands—In the middle of an empty beach on an island only inhabited by animals three hours from mainland Ecuador is a ‘post office.’ Well, it’s actually just a wood barrel with a door cut out, but it may actually work better than some real postal systems that I have come across. Here’s the deal: You write a postcard to someone you know (or perhaps a stranger if you are feeling friendly) who lives anywhere in the world. You address it and sign it, but you DON’T put a stamp on it. You leave it there in the barrel. Then you look through the other postcards that have been left in there and take one that is supposed to be ‘sent’ to your country…or a country where you are headed. Once you get to that country you can either hand deliver it if you are near the address or just buy local postage and just send it off. It’s a postal system by the people, for the people. Sounds perfect, but, by the way, has anyone ever received my postcards from here??

Melbourne, Australia—Fairly similar to going to the post office in the US: fill out some forms, pay way too much money, stamp it with some official looking seals and away it goes—all the way around the world and up into another hemisphere. Too efficiently boring to give me anything interesting to write about.

Hong Kong—Here I remember playing ‘musical windows;’ the first window guy said to go to another window across the room. At the second window, they weighed my package and addressed it. Then I had to return to the first window with some kind of receipt which I gave window guy #1. Here I had to pay and he stamped it. Then I returned to finished package the second guy. Got it?

Hanoi, Vietnam—I think I could have sat in this tiny post office (similar to a small bar with some round stools at the windows) all day and never have been served. They certainly didn’t ask me if I needed help and when someone local came in she would literally just shove in front of me at the window and be helped before I was even acknowledged. Before I ‘went postal,’ I finally pushed my way in and was handed, I kid you not, about five different convoluted forms to fill out—each one just about the same as the last. My current address, the recipients address, the address of my second cousin once removed, several lists of what the contents of the box where, the value of each item in Vietnamese Dong, the total weight, etc. I was given two different total costs by two different people. I was not feeling confident about this one and thought I would never see my Vietnamese trinkets and souvenirs ever again…but alas it arrived weeks later intact and unharmed.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam—One of the prettiest post offices, it was in a grand old building and kind of looked like an old fashioned train terminal. I had been told ahead of time by fellow travelers that I did not need to scavenge for a box prior to my arrival here. The young man that helped me here was great—he found me a box behind the counter, we put everything in it exactly how I wanted it and he spent the next ten minutes taping it up so good—that the whole box was covered in blue tape and you could not see one speck of brown from the original box color. I filled out one form and paid in cash (only). I noticed that the ‘form process’ was much simpler than in Hanoi—kind of strange considering it is the same country, no? In the end, I made a possibly detrimental decision and chose to save money by sending it ‘sea mail’ as opposed to the modern method of ‘air mail.’ I pictured my sad little package all wet and moldy with crabs and seaweed clinging to it on the decks of some old pirate ship. Four months later it arrived in the US and apparently had no sea creatures in it. Amazing.

Istanbul, Turkey—This was a doozey. There were only five windows at this post office and yet none of them wanted my package. They actually ushered me through the ‘employees only’ door and behind the glass partition that usually must separate postal worker and postal user. I had brought my package unsealed to show its contents. Not only did they not care one iota of what was inside, they did not have me fill out one form at all. No, actually there was one form—it was practically the size of a postage stamp and had three lines on it—one for the sender’s name, one for the recipient’s name, and on the final line they scribbled the word ‘Amerika.’ Doesn’t seem like enough info for an important international parcel, does it? I already did not have a very confident feeling. After finding out my package was going to ‘Amerika’ the postman told me, like nearly every other foreigner I’ve met, ‘America? George Bush bad man.’ I agree, but it gets tiring after a while being a spokesperson for our entire nation and carrying the weight of the American government’s often bad decisions on my shoulders. Plus, at this point, I just wanted to mail my package, not be a diplomat. I actually forced the two Turkish postal workers that were helping me to just take a gander of what was inside my box, just out of habit. Then they haphazardly taped the box shut, took it away, and told me the price as if we were finished.

“What about the address??” I exclaimed.

“Oh yeah, address, address.” The two men said in unison. Then they proceeded to slap on some plain white stickers onto the top of the box where I was to write in the address.

No official stickers. No official cards. The postage meter machine apparently had a maximum of nine lire per sticker so now he had to slap about five different meter stickers all over the top of my box wherever they would fit. Lastly he licked an ‘airmail’ stamp and a “Turkey” sticker and slapped them on as well. By the end of this unofficial process I just about decided I would certainly never see this package or any of its contents again. When the nervous security-crazed U.S. Customs Department sees this crazy looking, hand scrawled box coming from 99% Muslim Turkey…they will probably just blow it up on site.

In actuality, all of my packages traveled half way around the world and have arrived safely. BUT ironically, the postcards I sent out from the most efficient, anal city in the world, Singapore, never made it. Makes you wonder. Maybe Turkey is on to something.

Here are some general tips for you if you decide to send packages from abroad:

1. Bring your passport.
2. Bring cash and lots of it. Many post offices in other parts of the world do not accept credit cards.
3. Bring your package unsealed. Oftentimes for Customs purposes, they will need to look inside (excluding Istanbul) to see what kind of contraband you are actually sending, so be prepared to explain your ‘apocalypse now’ shot glass from Vietnam or the ‘opium pipe’ you picked up for decorative purposes in Phnom Penh. Also be aware that many post offices can provide you with a box and tape it up for you.
4. Bring your patience, sense of humor, and comfortable shoes.
5. Before you go, make a list of what you are sending. This will make it easier to fill out all the forms and keep them all consistent rather than you repeatedly shuffling around the contents of your package (like most guys I know tend to do).
6. Of course, wrap everything breakable very carefully. And then you will inevitably unwrap it and wrap it again after you show it to the postal worker.
7. Don’t mail anything from Singapore.

The one constant in my life this year as I travel around the world is my big backpack. And like all other close companions, I’ve already established a love/hate relationship with it. It’s very hard to pack for one year. In fact, obviously, you really can’t technically pack for a year. I had to get it out of my head that I was packing for 365 days of travel. You really just have to pack for one week and remember there is a lot of laundry in my future and, of course, I can always buy something if I need it.

I’d only been on the road a few weeks and already sent one care package home of extra clothes that I just didn’t need and now, four months in, I’ve bought a few new shirts (re-wearing the same 6 over and over gets old real quick) and plan to give away some others and a pair of sandals in exchange. One thing you always have is a limit—there is just so much I can stuff into my backpack with out the seams starting to burst.

It’s nice to not have TOO many clothes, but I do miss having a bit more variety. But for the first time I really feel like I’m certainly getting the most out of my clothes and shoes.

Packing and unpacking my bag has become one of my new tasks in life. It’s not exactly fun, but I just need to remember it’s replacing things like working 8+ hour days, riding the train for an hour to and from work, vacuuming, unloading the dishwasher (okay, sorry, that’s a bad example since I was super lucky to even have a dishwasher in the first place), etc. The part that makes my obsessively neat side happy is the separate Ziploc-type air-releasing clothes bags I brought. Not only do they help to keep all my clothes compressed, my favorite part is how they keep my garments organized—pants in one bag, shirts in another, and the under-things in a third. This makes life a whole lot easier when you have to crash at one place for just one night. Love these.

My backpack is what they call a convertible. Oooh yeah, put the top down! No, it has wheels and an extendable handle so you can roll it, but also has a flap in back that unzips to reveal some straps and a waist belt so you can hoist it onto your back when necessary. So far, I’ve been wondering if I should’ve just bought the regulation huge backpack I see on nearly every traveler I meet. With mine it seemed more like I was strapping a huge suitcase to my back. Fortunately there have been only a few times I actually have had to wear “big red” like a backpack. Boarding a boat taxi in Costa Rica in knee deep water was one of them. Another was in Chile hobbling over a rocky road which became a rocky sidewalk which just turned into a grassy steep hill that led to my hostel with the great view, but the very sweat-inducing and nearly impossible access. Normally I have to actually sit down to strap my pack to my back. Here some old leathery Chilean woman had to help me hoist the forty pound monstrosity on to my tired disoriented body.

But, fortunately, I have already received the always welcomed approval from some fellow backpackers. A girl from Switzerland was admiring my pack in Costa Rica and loved how it opened like a suitcase instead of a rucksack like hers where she had to put everything in through the top and therefore had to dump out the contents anytime she needed to get at something and, inevitably, that ‘something’ was bound to be all the way at the bottom. Plus it is made by Victorinox—the famous Swiss Army Knife Company. It’s not exactly ‘razor-sharp,’ but the name brand also helped woo her Swiss praise.

The big red pack comes with a separate but attachable smaller day pack. This I use just as it says—on day trips to carry my camera, rain jacket and other possibly important daily necessities like ‘womanly items’ or my cool compass/flashlight/thermometer/magnifying glass tool. You never know when you will suddenly be lost in the dark and need to know the temperature and have to read some fine print!

Things I Brought that I Love:

• Packable Rain Jacket
• Laptop
• Camera
• Big hair clip
• Nylon shorts and pants with zip pockets
• Sleep Sack (only used it once so far, but it saved me from some pretty rank sheets)
• Micro Fiber Mini Towel
• Duct Tape (patched up holey screen to keep out pesky Costa Rican mosquitoes—but as most of you remember it did not help with the ant situation)
• Umbrella (this is, of course, already broken, but my next one will be just as cherished)
• Chapstick with SPF protection
• Hiking Boots & Walking Sandals

Things I don’t need:

• A full set of Encyclopedias
• My car
• My U.S. State Quarter Collection
• A beach ball
• A little, cuddly wallaby (oh, but I’d sure love to have one!)

See the “How LL” page for more details on what I brought and how a world tour is planned.

Sadly, since writing this, I lost my cool thermometer-slash-compass. Or it was stolen? I think the latter. I mean who wants a laptop when you can have a cool gizmo like that?

In Costa Rica there’s a saying that permeates everyday life. Pura Vida literally translates to ‘pure life.’ But here, it’s used in many ways to kind of mean ‘it’s all good.’ When someone asks:

“How are you?”
“Pura Vida.”

“How’s the weather?”
“Pura Vida.”

A pretty girl or cute muchacho is “pura vida.”

It’s an attitude. It’s a feeling. It’s all good. It’s laid back. In the States we don’t really have this attitude in everything we do.

It makes me think about how we say we want to live life to the fullest, but how hard it is to actually do when we are so preoccupied with working, making more money to buy more things, commuting, running on the treadmill, and falling into bed exhausted. How do we have time to really ‘live life’ or ‘pura vida?’

We say “stop and smell the roses” and “work to live, don’t live to work.” But it takes five seconds to say these words and then MAYBE we think about their meaning for another five seconds before our own daily thoughts, responsibilities, and to-do lists come crashing into our brain. We fill our lives with so much crap when we need to be focusing more energy on the most important things:

Personal Relationships with friends and family
Love
Happiness
Laughter

Believe me, I’m writing about this, but I’m no expert and no better than anyone else and certainly get caught up in the daily BS. And if I figure out how to do this thing called ‘life’ better I will let you know. And you do the same for me.

Pura Vida.

…and they’re all Gringos!

I’m back in San Jose for a few nights before my flight to Ecuador. So as I’ve traveled throughout the country I’ve noticed an amount of poverty that I’m not quite used to. And this country is nowhere near the poorest country I will visit. Again, it makes me painfully aware of all that we have in the states and more specifically all that I have.

I’ve also noticed nearly every house here has at least bars on the windows and in most cases, a gate, and a big metal fence usually topped with razor wire. Sadly, the more tourism has increased, the more crime has also increased.

For my last few nights, I decided to stay in Escazu, a well-to-do suburb up in the hills just outside of San Jose. I hadn’t seen any wealth and was curious as to what I’d find here. I knew I would find many Americanos because as my bus pulled into town we preceded to pass Denny’s, Tony Romas, and possibly our worst import—Hooters. Wow. Was I in Costa Rica or Atlanta?

After a morning of catching up on my sun at the pool and catching up on my writing, I took a walk around the ‘hood. I turned a corner and there I was in Gringoland. It looked like a wealthy suburb of Miami. Coral colored stucco mansions with tile roofs one after the other lined the streets. It was the first time I’d seen pretty streetlamps and manicured lawns the whole time I’d been here. I strolled up a block that dead-ended at a security booth. I ended up chatting with the security guard (in Spanish—so thankful for my lessons!) about the neighborhood. According to Señor Security, nearly everyone that lived here was American. And they all worked for Intel.

If you recall in an earlier blog, I mentioned technology was the number two industry in the country, thanks in large part to Intel. It was like a mini Stepford with all these American housewives whizzing by in their SUVs into their gated driveways and their hermetically sealed homes. Muy interesante. AND I bet they pay beau coup bucks on the monthly exterminator bills to keep the ants out.