Muchacho Polaco

Working on the house today. It’s exhausting and I am no longer much interested in this line of work. There’s nothing major to be done, just a lot of little things. Repainting. Touch up. Caulking. Painting the exterior of the smaller house. Sanding and painting trim. Repainting the ceiling in the dining room. Trimming trees. Washing windows. We’re nearly done – perhaps a day or two at the most to accomplish everything we want to do before we list the house.

We both woke up this morning with no idea what day it was. Funny. Fridays used to be rather important to both of us. Now, there’s nothing to distinguish them from Mondays.

I’m looking forward to selling the house. Having no mortgage gives us the liberty to sell it for whatever we want. The sooner the better. However, the dilemma that will arise is that we will have no place of our own to stay when we visit the US. We plan on visiting at least a couple times a month. Also, we order a substantial amount of merchandise to the house. I receive anywhere from 5-10 packages a day. I have no idea what I am going to do without a physical address. I’ve thought about shipping directly to our house or business in Mexico, but the problem is twofold: 1) longer shipping times, and 2) customs charges.

We have a lot of work lined up and waiting for us down south. That’s exciting, but I really want to take a break for a while with an extended vacation. It would be good for us. My top pick right now is a 1.5-2 month long walk in Spain called the Camino de Santiago. We would start at St. Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees and travel 80okm (or 497 miles) by foot to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. I’m more sold on this than Yun, but we both love Spain. She lived in Salamanca for two years where she completed her Masters degree and she longs to return. I think it would be an incredible and memorable adventure, so hopefully this is something that happens. The concern of course is that 1.5-2 months is a substantial amount of time that takes away from other work. But personally, I think it would be worth it.

Perhaps before doing a trip like this I might be able to spend some time doing intensive Spanish study. My Spanish is laughable and that presents a problem. Our employees don’t speak a word of English and I am forced to communicate with them. Fortunately, Google translate works fine for written correspondence, but it’s generally rather awkward when trying to give direction in person. I greatly dislike having to rely upon Yun to translate everything. We’ve both thought it would be beneficial for me to take some intensive studies for 2-4 weeks, preferably sooner than later. There’s some programs in Guadalajara and Guanajuato that seem like something I would benefit from and I love those cities. There’s also an affordable option in Costa Rica. That would be fun.

We spent a week in San Carlos recently for Abe’s wedding. It was a lot of fun. My nephew Noah joined us and he seemed to have a lot of fun as well. I have a much greater appreciation for the challenges of teenagers. He can’t possibly weigh more than 140-150 pounds, but he eats twice as much as I do (and that’s impressive). Despite his apparent tape-worm, I really enjoyed the time with him. He’s a good kid and fun to spend time with. He was very popular at the wedding attracting a number of very attractive (and much older) females. Check out him out here:

Good times. The next day we woke for an after party at Abe’s house with a live band and good food. We then chartered a boat for roughly 20 people for three hours and saw pods of black dolphins swimming along with us while we watched the sunset. Here are some photos of that trip:

It was a fun week. Lots of good food and good memories. The water was relatively warm and Noah and I spent some time doing some body surfing in the decent sized-waves. The beach is always fun. Here are some pictures: