Where's John Been?

John wrote:

To start off, I am sure some of you out there have asked yourself, “Where is John?” “Is he even there in Costa Rica?” Yes, I am in Costa Rica. No, I haven't lost all my fingers in some freakish pinata accident that prevents me from pushing letters on a keyboard. We have been here for, what, 7 weeks and I have yet to post one letter on our blog. Which while I am writing this sounds funny, considering at ILC, as part of my duties on the Computer Help team, I taught a class on blogging. Also, I am the one who started our family blog and wrote the majority of the blogs while we were still in the states. For weeks now, Jessica has been asking me to post something. Anything, just so people would think she wasn’t here by herself.

So what happened? Well, a couple of reasons. The first is that for me it takes a lot of energy for a guy like me to blog. For some, and you know who you are, I have seen your kind before (in fact I live with one), writing thoughts out or producing creative writing is like breathing. It just somehow effortlessly falls onto the page. Freaks!! But for me, an Asian engineer, it’s a monumental task. Ask me to create a spreadsheet for your home budget, no problem. I mean, I will write a sentence and before I get the sentence done, I backspace through half of it and rewrite it. So something that should only take 5 minutes is a 30-minute project for me. And it wasn’t until I sat down to write this that I realized how much the transition and life here has drained me of energy. I sat down to write this, got through the first sentence, got up, went into the bedroom and told Jessica, “It justs takes too much energy to write.” Though I love life here and feel as if I am thriving, I have just enough energy to make it through the day. Not to mention the mental effort it takes to learn the language quickly. After seven weeks, I am straight up fluent. “Hola! Como esta?” and “Yo no comprendo!” just roll of my tongue. Don’t even have to think before saying it. It’s a miracle they don’t stick me on a plane and send me back to the states with how bad my Spanish is. So writing has taken a back seat.

The second reason is that the more Jessica writes, the less I want to write. Reading Jessica’s blogs and then mine, is like driving around in a Porsche and then getting out and being pushed around in our jogging stroller, complete with the broken wheel courtesy of Delta Airlines. I am back, and though they may be short and have more grammar and spelling mistakes than there are sentences, I will post my recollections of “Our Life Overseas.”