http://www.halechronicle.com A Tale of Two Hales Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:59:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sadly, we have neglected the Hale Chronicle for the last few months. Hopefully we can correct that starting with this post. When January 1 came around on the calendar, we got the urge to look back at the year before, so here goes! The Hales had a big year ... http://www.halechronicle.com/uncategorized/looking-back-at-2009/ As I mentioned in the last post we've finally bought a car. A 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara. Blue book value in the US, ~$4500. Cost in Costa Rica, 5,600,000 Colones (~$9500). Car Shopping Finding a car dealer in Costa Rica is easy, they're everywhere. It's easy to find your major dealers and ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/car-shopping-in-costa-rica/ Today was a hell of a day in Costa Rica. It started off early with much promise as I had an appointment booked at 7:45 for my RTV (government car inspection, more to come in a future post). Now, I haven't written about our car buying process yet as it's ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/a-crappy-day-in-costa-rica/ Today we played tourist and made a quick trip out to Grecia and Sarchi with Mark, Denise and the other Jason & Jennifer. Jason and Jenn were super awesome and drove us around as we still can't drive our car (post coming soon). Grecia The town of Grecia is about 30 minutes ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/grecia-sarchi/ Today we celebrated Canada Day, prematurely in Costa Rica with the Sowrey clan. The Canadian Club of Costa Rica put on an event right in our neighborhood. The club they chose was so close we were able to walk to it. That's quite nice in this area as you usually ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/canada-day-in-costa-rica/ It's been over 3 weeks since my last post. Sorry for the delay but we've been quite busy settling in, moving and working. So here's what we've been up to the last few weeks. Puerto Viejo A couple of weeks ago we made our first trip to the beach. With neither of ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/our-first-month-in-costa-rica/ Now that our dog Maggie has been reunited with Jenn and I in Costa Rica I can write about our experience with getting her here. I hope this post will help others in the future who plan on bringing their dog into another country.  The Initial Booking When we were first booking ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/bringing-maggieour-dog-to-costa-rica/ We've already been in Costa Rica for 5 days. We've been pretty busy since getting here and we've already learned quite a bit about the city since arriving. Here's a small list of observations since we arrived: It's hot, hotter than I expected although I am getting used to it. I ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/observations-of-san-jose/ This morning I took an early morning trip to office to meet Marcela (our super awesome HR lady), who was going to take me to customs and help me get my computer back. Neither of us had ever dealt with customs before so it was quite the learning process. When we ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/i-got-my-mac-back/ It's now the morning after a long day of travel and all the long days of packing and prepping for the move. I would like to thank Continental Airlines for overselling the flights so there would not be enough airflow for Maggie. Knowing this more than 12 hours before our ... http://www.halechronicle.com/costa-rica/live-from-san-jose-minus-1-dog-and-1-imac/