No, you cannot.

Being here in Costa Rica has involved a lot of running around dealing with incompetent people, people who lie just to make life difficult, and trying not to lose patience. Immigrating into a foreign country can be hard enough when you have a job lined up and the company has a vested interest in hiring you. It is an entirely different beast when the comany could care less and it is I who is interested in working for the company.

People say it takes a year or two of difficult, depressing, frustrating, inconceivable bullshit before life starts to turn around. A year or two of beuarocracy, uncertainty, instability, and struggle. But then one day everything is finished and life can go on, uninterrupted and unburdened by the exhausting efforts of others trying to make life more difficult than it needs to be.

I am near the peak. For me, it has been 1 year and 10 months. I have been jobless, I have taught English in schools that went out of business and in schools that had me detained in immigration for hours, I have worked in a hostel for a warm bed to sleep in and a free breakfast in the morning, and I have lived off of $18 or less per week.

I found the University of Costa Rica, was hired as a research professor, and was given promises that were not kept. I did other peoples' jobs to ensure myself of my own and have spent my life's savings just trying to get by.

In all of this, the only person who knows anything is my advisor. When people at immigration do not know what forms I need to fill out or where to go, I talk to my advisor. When people in the phsyics department cannot give me a straight answer about my salary, contract, or future, I talk to my advisor. When people lie to me because they are too lazy to do their job or do not want to admit that they do not know, I talk to my advisor. Why? Because she had to go through all the bullshit too. She immigrated as a refugee with two kids and no money and had to deal with the same stuff. She has the answers that the others should have.

So, on the brink of being moneyless, homeless, jobless, and having to leave the country, I went to talk with her to see what else I could do. Unfortunately, when I entered her office, the life-slug was there. The life-slug is a creature that has attached herself to my advisor, agreeing with everything she says, doting over her, being obsessed with everything she does, and, essentially, draining the life out of her via ever-present exasperation.

Ignoring the presence of the life-slug, I embark upon my tale and the options that I have. Understanding, my advisor relates her story to mine, gives me advice, and tells me where I can go and who I can talk to. She says that I should think about everything extra hard because the fight is long and hard and is for less than what I can get somewhere else.

Then the life-slug chimes in. The 30 year old life-slug that lives at home with her parents, has no repsonsibilities, and has not had to worry about anything except getting more bottles for her bottle collection. She chimes in and says,

"The truth is, we both can relate."