Bye America, see you in 8 months…
It has been two weeks since we packed up our house, packed
our bags, and left Brooklyn. That last
month was ridden with more anxiety than I ever expected. While we had planned for this trip for the
last year or so, we were hustling to prepare right up until we went to sleep
the night before our 7 AM flight. Jacob
and I were preparing to leave positions we have held for years (seven for Yonit
and eleven for Jacob), preparing our house for tenants, saying goodbye to
friends, family, and a community we adored, all while trying to plan out our
next eight months. I was an emotional jumble. And our being perfectionists
didn’t help. When a high school friend of mine learned that we still hadn’t
nailed down our plans, she exclaimed “Look at this, type A Yonit choosing to
fly by the seat of her pants! I love it!”
Our plans had been go to Costa Rica- mostly because it
checked the boxes, has many schools that fit our desire to get the kids outside
and learning from experience rather than sitting in a classroom all day, and
because when I googled around “kibbutz outside of israel” there was a
burgeoning movement of intentional communities growing in CR- the oldest being
La Ecovilla. But when J and I went to
check out where to live in late November our CR trip was filled with more
anxious thoughts and nerves that this may not be the place with ample space for
our kids to frolic and run to friends homes as we hoped- most houses were
perched on hillsides up steep windy roads and Adira gets so car sick the 30
minute drive from my parents home in the Upper West Side to Park Slope made her
puke all over. So we decided to think of
alternatives and landed on the Canary Islands in Spain- we thought I would get
a digital nomad visa to allow us to stay there 6 months, however after a few meetings
with lawyers, we realized this process was more arduous than we realized and
wasn’t guaranteed given some details of my new contract to free lance on a
grant I received. So one week out and we
had some goodbye drinks with a bunch of friends and still when a friend texted
a few days before our departure asking where we would be I responded with “time
will tell”.
On December 21st we left with two carry on bags each and two checked suitcases for the family that we hoped was the right balance of enough stuff to not too much stuff for 8 months and joined a planned family vacation. At 4 am we flew to Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands- and 12 hours later we were in the most beautiful place we had ever been. The water was clear, the island was remote and had only 40 people on it, and our days were spent hiking the paths, stand up paddle boarding (which Shiloh not surprisingly, did for hours with great balance and poise), swimming in the calm waters, and playing games with the family. Our kids were in heaven having the entire family of cousins, aunts, uncle and grandparents there, and as our days came to a close a week later they were very sad to leave. “why cant they all come with us on our trip?”
It was the second to last day of the trip, and J and I decided yes we were
going to CR, we would go there for 3 months and then head to Europe for 3
months, and then Israel for a month or so and our last month we would leave
open. But we couldn’t decide where in CR
to go, we had wanted to be near the beach and found a waldorf school near
tamarindo willing to take the kids, however housing was hard to find. We wanted a community, we wanted to be near
the beach, and we had a hard time finding something that didn’t cost an arm and
a leg. The communities around there
didn’t feel like I found one with the vibe that jived, and so we shifted gears. When we had gone to CR in November, we toured
La Ecovilla and the Real World School- we met one of the founders of La
Ecovilla by chance- actually it was the only person we met in our 24 hours
there- and he offered to rent his house out to us while he started a new
Ecovilla community in Nosara on the beach.
I contacted him and indeed the house was available, and yes the school
could take us for 3 months, and it all started coming together. So we made the plan, put a deposit down on
the house, and I booked some places to stay at another beach town I had been
wanting to check out Samara, starting a month or two later in case this didn’t
pan out well (yes the perfectionist in me needed a back up plan).
On December 27th, with many tears and hugs, we bid my family bye and flew to florida to meet up with Jacob’s parents and his brother’s family. I started running on the beach in the mornings, we lounged by the pool and by our last day there Adira’s floaties fell off and she realized she could swim! This had been a goal of ours for the trip- 1- teach adira to swim, 2- teach adira to bike ride, 3- improve all of our Spanish, 4- be more present parents, and 5-take in some of the Pura Vida mentality and go with the flow without planning all details (this last one will be a work in progress the whole trip). But the kids favorite part of our time in Hollywood Florida was being able to run down the hall of our hotel in and out of Grandma's room- they loved the independence, the ability to float in and out of their grandparents home, and it reasserted my prior thoughts that multigenerational living in close proximity such as this is how we are meant to raise children. Saying goodbye to Jacob’s family came again with tears and some heaviness, as we didn’t know if or when we might see them in the coming months. But while in Florida we had the opportunity to see some friends- our dear friends Sara and Ari from DC drove an hour with their kids to visit us and it felt like such a great way to round out our goodbyes as they are more like family than friends. I was able to catch college friends Josh and Sharona- who I hadn’t seen since 2007- and we ended our time in Florida with a day on Fisher Island with our dear friends Aaron and Katherine and their daughter. The kids loved seeing all of these friends, meeting their children and discovering new places.
I started to recognize some growth already with Shiloh helping to carry our excessive amount of bags ( packing is not my forte) up 3 flights of stairs to our Airbnb in south beach, walking half a mile along the highway to find a playground in aventura and finding friends despite many kids not speaking english to play with regardless of where we were hanging. At one point in the airport I was reveling in their autonomy as I got on the escalator and adira trailed behind, only to find that she was distracted by Shiloh and fell backwards onto her head cutting it on the sharp edge of the escalator- and it was then that I reminded myself that Adira is in fact 4 and despite her independence, I had to be more aware of hazards that might arise such as moving escalators. Thankfully, she was ok, although I am pretty sure she had a minor concussion with some headaches and dizziness that pursued in the week to come.
And on we were to start our adventure in Costa Rica...
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