Most people think that moving abroad is just a change of scenery.
But for our guest today, it becomes a story about identity, belonging, and finding a simpler life in the countryside.
In this episode, she shares how Costa Rica shaped her writing, her community, and her view of home,
before eventually taking that same adventurous spirit to Ireland.
In Costa Rica, my identity was the sister of Mary Ramona who owns the Pato Loco. That was my name.
Willa, the sister of Mary Ramona who owns the Pato Loco. So, bar tales were fair game.
From bar stories and local customs to unexpected ways community forms in small towns,
our guest's journey shows how place can change the way we see ourselves.
The best is waking up in the morning to Bird's Song with the windows open because they don't have air conditioning,
and breathing clean air or not necessarily cleansed. Being able to walk down the street, have interactions with people,
buy my fruit at a stand where the vendor will be laughing at me when I come back later in the afternoon,
because once again I've left my bank card on his desk. It's a simple life.
If you ever wondered what it really means to build a life abroad and to do it with curiosity, humor, and heart,
this conversation is for you. Today on Almost Local, the living abroad story of Willa Goodfellow.
[Music]
Who is Willa Goodfellow?
Yes. Well, I am a citizen of the United States. That's where I grew up, raised in Colorado, lived on both coasts, most of my life in Iowa,
and most recently in central Oregon. But most recently, I've moved to Ireland. I'm an Episcopal priest.
And so, I serve the Church of Ireland here. I've been here for two years. In the middle of that, I spent a lot of time in Costa Rica,
and that's where I became an author and wrote two books. I think the living on the, what's it called, the Ring of Fire,
this line of volcanoes that run north-south. It's a very fertile time. It's very fertile.
Interesting. So, it's also bringing it from the place perspective that it triggered. I wanted to ask you also that, like, I mean, it is your first book, I'm assuming?
How does it come to the passion for writing?
Right. Well, I refer to myself as an accidental memoirist. My first book, I wrote about a half of it in one week in Costa Rica.
I was having a hypomanic episode. I didn't realize that at the time. And the book is half of how I was experiencing Costa Rica and the other half a later kind of psychiatric perspective of what was really going on in my head.
The second book, and the one that's come out just recently, is A Gritty Little Tourist Town, Bar Tales from Costa Rica.
I spent eight, four to six weeks at a time, once or twice a year in that Gritty Little Tourist Town. And as I got better, I became more able to pay attention to my surroundings.
And so, that's the external view of what it's like to live in Costa Rica.
Interesting. Before we go to that back and forward between the U.S. and Costa Rica, how was your childhood? How did you grow up in the U.S.?
It was something that traveling was in the interest all your life, was in your perspective of, I mean, at the end, living in Ireland.
Right, right. How did that happen? So, I grew up in a small town in Colorado, and we did summer vacations to California. But I never really traveled, other than that.
Then got to college, just answered an ad in my college paper, and got a job cleaning rooms in a motel in Liechtenstein.
I'd never heard of Liechtenstein before. And I discovered, I mean, once I got the invitation, I went to look for it in the atlas.
And I realized the reason I'd never heard of it was because it was in the fold between Switzerland and Austria. That's where Liechtenstein is.
And then that just kind of one thing led to another. Spent some time in Australia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Italy, and a lot of time visiting Ireland before we decided to move here.
So, yes, I got, I guess, bit by the travel bug. So you were traveling, but was it ever like a consideration of like, or I don't know if calling it a consideration, but an objective of yours to live abroad? To move?
Yes. Yes. Well, when my wife and I bought the house in Costa Rica, we thought we were going to be there long term. My family's there, or my mother who is now deceased.
And my sister bought a hotel restaurant in Playa del Coco. We thought we were going to move there. Helen wanted to open a retreat center.
It turned out that Costa Rica is a very dynamic environment, at least the cities and the towns are. There are more rural places, but the place is just too loud and too exciting to work for a retreat center.
But I loved it. And I found I, I ended up spending a lot of time writing there. So anyway, eventually we did not stay.
In the meantime, we had been going back and forth every year to Ireland and exploring that possibility. We finally found a way which to stay, which is, I'm an Episcopal priest.
And so I discovered I could work for the Church of Ireland part-time because I'm at retirement age and I didn't want to work in a parish full time. So here we are for the last two years.
How is the difference? Because one thing is like going, as you said, like six, 10 weeks per year, which doing that over 18 years, it's a lot of time.
So I suppose you ended learning a lot about that country anyway, although it's more like temporary back and forward.
But it's, I suppose, a completely different move than the one that you did now to Ireland where you really took your things and move more as a permanent thing.
Yeah. Yeah. We shared a lot of belongings, put some in storage for later, but came over each of us with two big suitcases and backpacks and a carry-on. And here we are.
Let's see. So that is very different. In some ways, the two places where we've lived, Costa Rica and Ireland are similar. They both are villages. We are small town people.
So we got a lot of advice about it's so hard to, you know, it's a different culture. Anticipate that it'll take a long time to fit in.
Because of our experience while living in Iowa as well in rural, we knew how country people behave.
And we just naturally started doing things like what's called the one finger and the two finger wave and the nod of recognition and just those automatic, you know, we know how to be polite.
It's, I think city people often are more abrupt. And we already knew that you don't just walk into a place and state your business. You walk in and you say good morning and how are you?
When how was, how was your daughter's communion, first communion service and have a little conversation? People thought we lived here a lot longer than we had.
So you, you adapted relatively easy because the experiences in your life were a little bit similar. Costa Rica, easy in that sense also to connect with the people back then.
I mean, you said you have your family more or less there. So already you have like a kind of a small circle, which normally makes things easier. But with the local communities and the connections with the people around there.
Well, there were two, really two communities within Playa del Coco and one is the non native people and my sister's bar was like a community center.
And so we met a lot of people there and things happened besides drinking beer. I mean, people organized community events and service projects.
And then once you start doing that, you get to know other people and kind of web out.
As far as the local community is concerned, we had two things going for us. Unlike most North Americans, we walked everywhere. I mean, we didn't. You know, people would offer us rides and no, no, no, we're walking. We're walking.
So when you're walking, you have interactions with other people who are walking. And that was important to us. It was a. We originally are.
Our, what you might call it, our real estate agent was show when we were looking for a house. She was showing us places where gringos live, gated communities. And we didn't want that.
We wanted to live with chickens for our neighbors and horses and the lady down the street who makes tortillas. So that was our focus to begin with.
So we walk around around the neighborhood and just talk with people and become friends.
For me, it makes a lot of sense. Like it's the matter of integration on it's what real life abroad. It should be about probably. It's interesting also that you put it like in the book, you put it from the perspective of a bar, no?
Like, because it's in a lot of places, that's the central part of the community. What you were saying that people doesn't go there only to just have a beer or like have a drink in there. But like things develop around there.
No, I loved the name of the bar was Patoloco. That was another. Yes. Yes. I love that. The name Patoloco came from the person who built it first. He was an Italian baseball player and not a very good one, but that's that's what they called him because of his running style.
And he looks like a Patoloco. He looks like a crazy duck. Then my sister comes along and buys it and she laughs like a crazy duck. So it always fit. So there was a continuation into the name. Lovely. Incredible.
I wanted to ask you actually, like, because you said you sit on that bar and then you start like a creative flow. Like how a place like that in another country influenced you personally, like in your personality, or did it trigger this artistic mood or like writer approach into life? How was this relationship with the place itself?
Well, like I said, I both of these books happened accidentally. I just, like I said, I had undiagnosed bipolar two and I was having a hyper manic episode and I just started writing and there was so much to write about. So I was about halfway through that when I thought, am I writing a book? And then the second book I was most of the stories are gathered at the bar itself. This one, that was the first chapter of the book. My neighbor, Ferry, hung over and I think probably still in Ibril, I think.
created. One morning, got into an argument with a mina bird. And it struck me as so funny,
I had to go tell the story at my sister's bar. And the friend I told it to really appreciated
it. And I thought, I need to write this down so I remember it. And I just got into the
habit of writing down things that I wanted to remember. And at some point, I said, I
think this might become a book. But yeah, there's something about volcanoes. I had
a therapist who said, chaos precedes creation. And a volcano is chaos. It's primeval chaos.
And so that stirs things up and then that gets turned into something creative. Nice.
It's a nice metaphor. Although with that, with your life, how do you manage these identity
shifts, these culture shifts, like with being there for some months, a year, but then coming
back to the US, different routines. It's like a back and forward constantly. Eighteen years
doing that, it's a lot of time. How does that work internally for you? Yeah. It wasn't always
easy. I never knew what time of year it was. Well, in Costa Rica, the morning and the sunrise
and the sunset are always 6 am, 6 pm, consisted throughout the year. That actually was very
good for my health. And I tried to go to Costa Rica at the most extreme times, like near
the winter and summer solstice so that I could mellow out that change in the light. But I
would come home from Costa Rica and for the first three days, I'd be burning my hands
because there was hot water in the faucets and I didn't anticipate hot water. I once
wrote a little note to my feet. We would go, when we were leaving, we would spend the first
night at the Hilton right by the airport when we were leaving Costa Rica. And we referred
to that as our Ben's Chamber, a place where we hadn't left Costa Rica, but we were now
living the way North Americans live with carpet and just very clean environment and northern
furnishings. I once wrote a note that introduced my feet to shoes that said, "No, really, they're
called shoes. When we get up North, you will appreciate them. You'll wear them again."
So you were resigned to certain things, I suppose. Yes, of course. It's readapting and
whatever. I think you said the sentence that it's very interesting. Why are you considering
home? Do you have this feeling of like when you were in Costa Rica, I belong here or you
still were calling home what it was the U.S. back then?
I didn't ever call Costa Rica home, though I had an interesting experience. As I said,
I'm a priest and I would say my prayers and I would use a Spanish prayer book when I was
in Costa Rica. And there is something in morning prayer. It's a little prayer for guide the
leaders of this nation into the ways of justice and peace. And at some point I realized I'm
praying for the leaders of Costa Rica, this nation. I'm praying for the leaders here.
So it was a little awkward, but it gave me a different perspective. And when I say that
prayer here, I've been in Ireland for two years and I intend to stay and I'm on social
media a lot. And so it's just filled with what's going on in the United States. And it's really
hard to cut that tie intellectually and emotionally. It still is a struggle. But we do refer to
this as home. We refer to Ireland as home. Now you did the change there, okay. I actually
also read in your sub stack about Ireland, like this moment in your life of aging with
adventure, no? Like the fact of like continue your life, even you're aging and pushing for
this lifestyle. What does it mean in practice? Another way I put that was now in American
football, it has four quarters and there's a phrase called leaving it on the field in
the fourth quarter, whatever's happened before you have to give, you have to just not leave
anything undone. So that's what I'm here for is to leave it on the field. Can I answer
your question? Yeah, yeah. It's like living with the greatest, the best show that you can.
Okay. Showing the best version of yourself. I have a couple of questions. One, it's related
to you being a priest. Like how has this modeled your life abroad and how has this affected
the fact of living abroad? Because I assume that it's also has been a way of connecting
with local people and with the local communities in a way that a lot of us foreigners living
abroad might not really connect, which is the religious one. And I'm curious to see
what is your perspective on that. Well, I've got a couple of things. In Costa Rica, it
was not possible for me to function within the church. I was not able to make that connection
with the bishop there. However, the English speaking community occasionally did want a
spiritual experience and certainly my family did. So church, the book does describe about
four or five liturgies that took place there. In Ireland, of course, I'm functioning as
a priest. There's a great shortage of priests, both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland.
While Roman Catholic is the vast, vast majority, there is no priest living in our little village.
And the people here miss that. And from their perspective, I am the priest in camp, which
is the name of my village. And I really appreciate that. And I honor that. It means I can't write
pub tales of Ireland because when I'm in the pub, I'm always, you know, I don't always
wear my, I very seldom wear my collar, but people think of me as a priest and I can't
always tell when people are telling me stories. I don't think I expect to find them read in
a book. In Costa Rica, my identity was the sister of Mary Ramona who owns the Pato Loco.
That was my name. Willa, the sister of Mary Ramona who owns the Pato Loco. So bar tales
were fair game. Interesting. It's different people. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I would
say about that is I know a lot of people aren't religious or don't even have a church background,
but a lot of community things happen in churches. And for somebody who is moving to another
country, attending a church, even if you're not a believer and you're not really committed
to it, but attending a church is a really good way of saying to people that you share their
values and you value what's important to them. And it's also a great way to meet people and
get invited to community events. So even when I have a Sunday off, I'll go up to the Catholic
church where there isn't a priest on a Sunday morning, but I will say the rosary with the
ladies who have gathered there to do that. Interesting. So you give that, you give more
value to the fact of giving religious support, let's say like these, and these kind of like
moments of communion for everyone, religious background, which is very, very appreciated,
I suppose in small communities where that figure it's missing or it's lacking. The question
that I had also, it's also related to these in the conversations that we had for preparing
this interview, you said something like being received as a lesbian couple in different
places in different ways. That phrase stuck me a little bit with the received part of
it. I assume that it was different in all the places where you were in your life, has
it affected your experience abroad, the fact of being a lesbian couple moving together?
Hmm. Yeah. Well, my experience, my experience in Costa Rica, and for lesbian and gay people
who are listening to this, it was extraordinary. I mean, we thought of Costa Rica as this Catholic
community and conservative. What actually happened when we were looking for our house
and we found something we were interested in in a Tico neighborhood, and we asked a
friend, "How would we be received?" She said, "What's the problem?" Yes, as lesbians, there's
no problem with your being lesbians here. We couldn't quite believe that, and so we
said, "But what if we were two men?" Angela, at that point, got a little irritated with
us. She started speaking very deliberately, "En mi vecino, in my neighborhood, there are
two men. He gets up every morning and goes fishing, and she stays in the house and cleans."
So we said, "Okay, then we're alright." She said, "Costa Rica is a free country, and having
grown up in the United States where we just always are hypervigilant about that, and even
when we were in friendly situations, I mean, you go to a new doctor and you look for what's
the expression that crosses their face before they get professional or whatever, to hear
Costa Rica is a free country gave us freedom just to be who we are. In Ireland, the North
is much more conservative than the South. I live on the Dingle Peninsula in the West,
at the Southwest, and I have a lot of support within the church. And among Catholics, it
just, there are people who will refer to Helen as my friend, as many times as I say she's
my wife. And I just let that go. But no, it's been no issue at all, which is nice.
Great to hear. Yeah.
It's also because, of course, from an external perspective, from an unrelicious person who
lives in and lived all my life in big cities also, you kind of have this probably also
biased approach on things and visions on things. And you see like small towns and moving in
small communities and in the religious environments, it's not that common. Or you perceive it as
not that common that there is LGBTQ environments all surrounded. So that's why I was asking,
because I was curious to see what's your experience in that. I'm happy and wonderful that you
find it good. Yes. I don't know. I mean, I can't speak
for every, I certainly can't speak for every small town and every religious perspective.
But non-religious people often make that assumption when it's not true that Ireland passed gay
marriage by a referendum and an overwhelming referendum. Because in Ireland, it became
an issue of family. And by that, they meant the whole family. They didn't want their young
people going off to Australia and the United States and France and wherever. They wanted
their family, their whole family to be comfortable in their home.
Hmm. Makes sense. Nice. I would say we jumped to the fast reply questions and we go a little
bit more deep into this life in Costa Rica, this back and forward, but especially what
was it for you in Costa Rica itself. The first question that I have here, it's the cultural
adjustment. So one thing that took you a while or the coastal art adjustment that it took
in Costa Rica sometime. What took me a while to adjust to was how loud it was. The windows
are open. The building materials are concrete. Noise bounces around. There's always music.
So that took some getting used to. When I come back to the streets, I'd like to moderate
it. When I came back to the United States, everything was silent and it was freaky. There
is a middle point, I suppose. The second one that I have, it's social life. How did you
meet local people? How did you make friends while being in Costa Rica? What was your way?
Right. We talked about that a little bit at the bar and I already had kind of an entree
into the expat community and the other was simply walking around, starting conversations
with my neighbors. Related to that one, starting conversations, language. How did you manage?
Did you speak Spanish? I had studied Spanish in high school and of course, probably forgotten
it all. But there's nothing like immersion to teach a language. And that really is the
best way to learn, I think. I would go to the hardware store. I think they just looked
at us for entertainment when we'd come in and look for something and try so hard to
buy this little thing and I'd have to describe it and mime it and got back. It works. Got
by. Eventually I could have conversations. I pick up accents easily. So sometimes that
was a problem because people would assume that I was more fluent than I was. And I could
say things, but I couldn't necessarily understand the response. Yeah. I've been there.
The next one is cost of living. I think there is also this idea that Costa Rica is cheap
compared to the US. Is it really like that? Is the cost of living low in general?
It depends. People who come to Costa Rica and want to live in the same lifestyle as
they have in the United States and buy the same products as they have in the United States,
they complain a lot about the cost of living. Now, if you're buying fruit from the fruit
vendors and fish from the fish vendors. And we lived in a little house, 550 square feet.
We didn't have a car. We had air conditioning in just two rooms, no television. We walked
everywhere. And we got by on about at most $500 a month. Today I would budget maybe a
thousand. Now this is after we had purchased a house, but that budget includes the repairs.
And they're always repairs and replacement of appliances. We called it camping without
appliances and we found it very affordable. So people who want to live like Tico's do
find it inexpensive. People who want to live like North Americans find it expensive.
You touched upon these also about finding a home. And I'm referring from your perspective
on not going to these condos, gated kind of approach, but how do you find a house like
the one that you bought in a real environment, in a local neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera?
Right. Most people find a house by walking through a neighborhood or even driving through
a neighborhood and looking for signs. People will put up a sign that says "se vende", which
means for sale or "se aquila", which means for rent and a phone number. And you call
them up and there you go.
So it's very much following signs. It's easy to do.
Yes, it's very easy to do.
The next one, it's living like a local, like a thing that helps you feel or this tip that
you would give anyone to integrate or to become more close to the local people.
Right. Well, I was never going to entirely blend in just because of my complexion, but
there were little... Yeah, there were a lot of little things to do. And one is to be polite
to everybody when you walk up to the bank. And once I did this, I don't know where my...
I had something else on my mind. I walked in and I just said, "I'd like to deposit" or whatever.
And halfway through, I said, "Wait a minute. Let me begin again." Good morning. How are
you? And then conduct my business. That kind of thing. Again, I'm living in a village.
And as I'm walking down the street and passing people who I don't necessarily know, but you
always say either "Good morning" or "Adiós," "Goodbye." For some reason they say "Adiós"
even in place of "Goodbye," in place of "Hello." You just say that to everybody, just everybody.
Sounds illogical.
So the one thing you don't do is say, "Why don't they do it the way we do it wherever
we come from?"
So putting your perspective on top of that. Yeah. Makes sense. Avoid it everywhere, I
would say that. What about work life? I know that you didn't really work there, but your
sister did. So how was the perspective of having a work relationship, life balance, etc.?
Sure, sure. Well, in Costa Rica, I think as in most countries, a foreigner could not take
a job from a local. If you have tech skills or teaching, it's quite possible to get a
salary job. Most people either work remotely or start a business. And that might be a restaurant,
it might be a service like Exterminator. My mother's dentist was from Fifth Avenue in
New York City and he came south to start a business. Interesting. You touched upon the
next one a couple of times getting around, like you said that you walked everywhere,
you didn't have a car, which is wonderful. Is there public transport to go around? Is
there an option to visit the country? Yes, yes. There are buses, it's something of a
coin toss whether you get a modern, new air conditioned bus with comfortable seats or
you get a bus that came from the... it's a used bus from... that used to be a school
bus in the US. But there's our bus services across the country. People use cabs a lot.
I don't know if they have Uber where I lived, I imagine they do, in the cities. But people,
there are lots of cabs and people get a card from a cabbie and then they just call that
particular cabbie. The tourist buses are wonderfully comfortable. There are two international airports,
Liberia, which was near where I lived in the north and San Jose, which is the capital in
the center. And there are planes available, private planes available as well. A lot of
people in where I lived used golf carts, electrical power. Yeah, just it got them around town.
Interesting. The next one, I don't know if you touched it. Hopefully not, but probably
you did at some point, health care. How does the health care system work?
Right. It's a mixture of public and private. There are local clinics for urgent care. A
private office call is very affordable. If it's something that requires more extensive
care, a private doctor can transfer you into the public system and you can still have the
same doctor. People traveling from the United States do need to know that Medicare does
not cover outside of the United States. Tricare, which is for veterans, does cover. There are
hospitals frankly, if you have a serious condition, I would try to get to a private hospital in
San Jose. If you're really sick, you don't want to be, if you're not used to it, you
don't want to be in a dormitory, it's gender, and eating beans and rice while you're sick.
So yes, health care is just fine. Also dentistry. Dentistry is a tourism industry in Costa Rica.
People find if they have a really expensive thing they need done on their mouth, they
can come to Costa Rica, get it done by somebody who probably is from the United States or
trained there and the cost savings will pay for the vacation.
Okay, so clinical tourism. Next one, I don't know if you dealt a lot with it, but bureaucracy
and paperwork, like how the administration works.
There are a lot of things, in the middle of trying to do something and suddenly the interaction
comes to a halt because you need a stamp. And I'm not talking about a postage stamp,
but some official piece of, some little stamp on a piece of paper that says something, I
was never clear what it said. I think that I had a corporation or something like that.
So you'd have to go off to the post office to get that done. There, you know, often there
would be three employees to accomplish the purchase of an O-ring at the hardware store,
where you'd think it would take one. On the other hand, if you need health care, you just
walk into the doctor's office.
People from North America, people from the United States can never complain about the
bureaucracy of any country, anywhere, from my perspective. I mean, it's a trade off.
Every country has bureaucracy. They just put it in different places.
Next one, it's the best and the worst, like the best moment or the best thing about living
in Costa Rica and the worst thing about living in Costa Rica.
Okay, well, I want to talk about the first, the worst first, because honestly, the worst
is North Americans moving to Costa Rica and trying to make it like North America. When
we bought our little house, we could walk home at night by the light of the stars. And
as more Europeans and North Americans moved into the neighborhood, they put up security
lights so that the, we used to see the Milky way, but with all the security lights, the
only way we could see the stars was when the power went out. Then we'd run outside and,
and, and, oh my gosh, they're back. They're back.
The best, notwithstanding irritation at my compatriots, the best is waking up in the
morning to the, to Birdsong with the windows open, because they don't have air conditioning
and breathing clean air or not necessarily clean. Sometimes it's smoky because they're
burning the cane, smelling the odors of the country and being able to walk down the street,
have interactions with people, buy my fruit at a stand where the vendor will be laughing
at me when I come back later in the afternoon, because once again, I've left my bank card
on his desk. It's a simple life. It's a simple life. And if you choose to, if you choose
that way.
Last one that I have for this section, it's the top tip. If you would need to know somebody
that wants to move to Costa Rica, what would be the top advice that you would give to that
person?
My top advice, Costa Rica, the motto of Costa Rica is pura vida, pure life. Don't consume
this beautiful place. Just open yourself to it and join it.
Cool. Wonderful. So we finished with pura vida, this section. I just jumped to the mini
game quickly. Oh yeah. I call this one Barstool Translator. Basically what I'm going to give
you it's a situation that normally would happen in a bar and you can compare how the situation
translates between Costa Rica and Ireland. So what would happen in what's place and the
other. The first scenario that I have, it's that you walk into a small bar or local pub.
And what is the unspoken rule that you need to do yes or yes in a local bar in Costa Rica
and in Ireland?
Well, in Costa Rica, count your drinks carefully. And when you leave, you need to ask for the
check because they're such polite people. They will never bring you a check. If you're
not asking for it, they just assume you still want to stay. In Ireland, and this is very
important, Guinness is the major beer and you never drink a Guinness until it's ready.
It comes out of the tap, they hand it to you and it takes about 82 seconds for all the
bubbles to rise to the top and become not cloudy. And people who drink their beer before
it's ready, it is the big offense.
I mean, respect Guinness. It's a national sign. So...
Yes it is.
The second scenario that I have is somebody invites you for a drink. How literal is the
invitation in each place? Is it a real plan or is it just friendliness? There is an intention
behind it or it's just...
In both places, it's not... you have to go through several steps before it's a real plan.
I see. I mean, it's not that common in a lot of places. I don't know, here in Mediterranean,
the countries in Spain or Italy, if somebody buys you a drink, normally there is a plan
behind. I know that, for example, in Ireland, UK, in other places, it's kind of, "Okay,
I just buy a beer for this person and that's it." I was curious about Costa Rica, if it's
something that it happens or not at all.
Yeah. I think... let's see. I would say a lot of plans get made. Let's meet at such
and such. Let's have a beer together or something that never materialize.
I see. You want to join a conversation with the locals. What is the best move to start
a conversation with a group of local people in Costa Rica and the best move in Ireland?
In Costa Rica, it's to ask a question. When I was doing the research, my last draft of
a pretty little tourist town, I did that all day long. I walked around with a phone making
memos, and I would just... Can you tell me the name of that tree? Can you tell me...
That was my most frequent question. What is that fruit? How do you prepare this at a grocery
store? That's at a market. In Ireland, what's the name of your dog? There are so many dogs.
There are so many dogs. Yeah. Or make a comment about the weather. That also, we talk about
it incessantly in Ireland.
It unifies. Complaining about it, probably. Yes. Even when it's good. Even when it's good.
Tomorrow it will be bad.
You always talk about when it will be bad. Yes. Yes.
I have two scenarios more. The next one is when a newcomer arrives in town and you have
this impression that it's a fresh off the plane energy. What do locals notice of that
person immediately in Costa Rica and in Ireland?
I see. In Costa Rica, what they notice immediately is whether they're polite, whether they're
loud, whether they... People come to... Tourists come to Costa Rica and it is the trip of a
lifetime and they expect everybody to be working in Disneyland and to be there to serve them.
So, that's something that locals are looking for right away with the very first interaction,
is, are they... Well, they assume that they're not going to be treated with respect, but
that's what they're looking for. In Ireland, there's a little bit of that, but I'd say
it's more open. It's more curious about your accent, where you're from, where you're headed.
This one for this section, I have it's if Costa Rica had the bar's lesson and Ireland had
the pub lesson, which one would it be for you?
It's a toughie. Well, in Costa Rica, it's a great place to find out just... People love
to give advice. So, whatever it is that you're curious about, you'll get advice. Where to
buy something, who's a good doctor, anything like that. In Ireland, it's a good place to
ask a question about sport. Sport is major. In Ireland, there are... There's hurling,
there's Irish football, there's soccer, just football. There's camochi, which is what they
call hurling when it's played by women. There's rugby. So, people are all... But they're also
enthusiastic about horse racing and dog racing. Anything. Ask anything about sport.
Nice. Perfect. Before we wrap up the episode, Willa, I want to give you a little bit more
space to talk about the book, but maybe a little bit summary of what it is about. What do you
try to explain in it? But also, of course, where can listeners find it? And if they are
interested in buying it, reading it, where... Well, as I said, I wrote two Prozac monologues,
came out in 2020, and it is a lot about what was happening inside my mind. Both of these
books are comedies, by the way. The second "Griddy Little Tourist Town" bar tales from
Costa Rica. That also is funny because bar tales are often funny. It gives a lot of details
about the sights and smells and sounds and tastes and textures of the place. People who
read it tell me that they feel like they know the people at the table at Pato Loco. It tells
the story of my family, my blind 72-year-old mother, Mary, my sister, who is the business
partner, the bartender and installation artist, Richie, her husband, a very wise, aging, hippie,
humor, adventurer, pathos family. Becoming a community by telling one story at a time,
it answers books like "What It's Like to Live in Another Country." It also gets into the
local community. What's the impact of expats on small village, the pressures of development?
Can you survive dengue? Do you want to survive dengue? The answer to that one is no. How
do you perform CPR on a fish? It's published by Shirek, distributed by Simon & Schuster.
You can get it wherever you get books. It's also available in Kindle and eventually will
be an audiobook as well.
Nice. Perfect. If there is the links to Kindle and eventually the audiobook, whenever it
comes out, the listeners will always find it in the description of the episode we like.
It has been an immense pleasure having you in the show, giving your perspective in both
Costa Rica and Ireland life and your book. I think the listeners will enjoy reading it
if they want to check it out. I think it's a funny way of discovering a country, which
is always a little bit more easy than just reading a little book planet or anything a
little bit more tourist oriented. Thank you so much for joining us today. It has been
an immense pleasure.
Thank you, Marc. It has been a pleasure.
Thanks again. Again, for the listeners, if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to give
some love to the channel, subscribe, follow us in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, social media,
et cetera, et cetera. Also check out the links from Willa and give some love to her book,
but also her socials and websites. Until the next time, keep exploring, stay curious and
see you in the next episode.
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