I got here on Feb 15^th and met Susy at the airport, packed stuff up at our friend Cyril’s house, and headed here to Samara.

There are now eight of us living in a beautiful, very large house that overlooks a horse field then the ocean.

We are:

• 3 developers
• 1 sys-admin
• 1 tech lead/dev/sys-admin
• 1 house manager
• 1 cook
• Me – UI and Design Team lead

Life moves slowly, and it is great. My bathroom is open to the air and a bird lives in the potted tree that sits at the end of my open floor shower. We have made good friends in the town, within the international school, at the bars, and among the local surf shops. Some romances with other people living here have developed, some persist and others ran their course.

We play with fire poi and drink guaro by our pool side in the evenings before we go out, and spend our Sundays lazing on the beach in hammocks among the locals. Surfing is good and fun, and several times a week we make it out on the boards, while some of us do yoga in the mornings or work out in the beach side gym.

The only negative point was last Sunday night, when we suffered a home invasion. At about 3:15am two masked men jumped our front gate and entered our home armed with a knife and a revolver. Our sys-admin was the only person awake at this time, and he was working on the roof alone. Seeing a head look through the window, he got up to see who it was, thinking it was one of us still awake. He turned the corner and was confronted by the two men, who pushed him back, speaking to him in spanish. They put him on his face on the ground and went through his pockets, taking his iPhone. Then they hog tied him (hands and feet tied to each other behind the back) with the extension cords that were on the roof. After taking his laptop and one of the developer’s laptops off the table on the roof and putting them in their bag, they told him to wait five minutes and they left.

He hopped/rolled down the stairs to my room where he pounded on the door, waking me and my roommate up. I got up, untied him, and then we woke up the rest of the house. After a thorough check of the house we established that around $10,000 of electronic equipment had been stolen. Four laptops, two dSLR cameras, two an iPhones and an iPod Touch, along with some other miscellaneous electronic equipment.

Everyone was alright and no permanent damage occurred, but the experience was jarring and we are now working on implementing better security around the house.

Other than that unique experience, everything has been great here in CR. This is Easter week and the whole country goes on a holiday. I will be traveling to the Caribbean side for a long weekend via motorcycle and am really looking forward to it. I have been told it is like going to Jamaica.