Why

I love being a blogger. It gives me something to do when I wait in line at the airport. I think about what I want to blog when I get home. I'll probably miss it when I'm no longer here in Costa Rica. Maybe. Anyway, on to today's entry.

So, my family, my friends, my coworkers, everyone seems to be asking me this one question this week: why did you come back? Since I had to come home for the wedding, everyone seems to think it would have been best for me to leave CR permanently in late July instead of late August. So, why? I teasingly told my uncle, well, you see, if I show up for another month, they pay me. Which, let's face it, is a major consideration. But really, for me, it's about the committment. I made a promise to work here for a year. And I want to see it through. And despite all of the difficulties I've encountered in the place, the people here have become important to me, and I'm not ready to leave them yet.

When I arrived in the airport yesterday, I realized it was the last time before I leave CR permanently. From now on, if I ever come back, it will be as one of the carefree tourists on an exotic vacation, not as someone who needs to get home and do her laundry. From now on, it won't be easy converation with the cabbie on the way home. It will be straining to try and remember enough spanish to get the cab to my hotel. It will be craving rice and beans instead of sushi and risotto. Costa Rica will be a memory. An event, an outlier in the data of my life.

The reason I came back was that I wanted to say a proper goodbye.