Finding your tribe and learning to let go

Find your place. Seek your tribe.

Last week marks eleven months since I moved abroad. For some people, that’s bastante – quite a long time. For others, it’s nothing. In general, when people here ask me, “¿Cuánto tiempo tiene en Costa Rica?” (How long have you been in Costa Rica, or literally, how much time do you have here?) My response is usually, “Ah, sólo tengo 11 meses.” (I ONLY have 11 months, with stress on how little time it is.)

However you define 11 months, it has been long enough for me to encounter some very strong feelings of otherness.

I have a theory that, when a person decides to travel long-term, she does so because she is looking for her tribe. She is seeking other people who “speak her language.” She may not think of it this way or consciously seek this. But many times, a traveler will discover that the people who best “speak her language” don’t even speak the traveler’s native tongue. I have found this to be true for myself.

A friend shared with me this letter. It’s beautifully written, especially this part: “How do I find the right words to tell you, to confess that it has been easier to pour my heart out to new friends on the road than to you in the many years I’ve known you? There are no right words to tell you that although they’re all a thousand miles away, they know me better than you do.” It was written from a woman to her lover, but I feel like it could be written from me to many of the people in my “former life.”

Change and evolution gives you wings.

One of the most incredible friendships I have ever had was found here in Costa Rica. This person launched rapidly into my heart. I have never been able to talk to anyone, ever, as well as I have him. He speaks my language. He is part of my tribe.

This is no comment on the quality of the friendships I had before, or the amazing people I used to hang around. They’re still wonderful, and I love them to death. This is not a rebuff of their worth. They shaped me, changed me, and our spirits danced together for a while, or for a long time. They were part of my tribe and they continue to mean a lot to me. They helped me through the hardest times I have ever gone through and I will never forget that. But as it turns out, they speak English, but in many cases now, they don’t speak my language. At least, not as well as they used to.

The truth is, after almost a year abroad, we don’t have as much in common anymore. Their lives have carried on, and my life has pirouetted and danced along its own path as well. The things that matter to us now are very, very different. I can’t talk about what is important to me, my dreams, my thoughts, my burning questions about life, my experiences, my observations, my SOUL, without sounding insincere.

The path is not always easy.

Other than my ex, there have been three people whom I have made a conscious choice to walk away from. For one reason or another, they are not good people to continue to be in my life, so I stopped interacting with them. It’s tough. Each time I made this choice, I questioned myself, worried that it was my fault, overanalyzed every interaction, even cried. Ultimately, though, it was the right decision. As someone who has struggled mightily with depression all my life, I can tell you with certitude that my life minus the most negative person I know equals about 80% less depression. Subtract the other three, and make that 90% less depression.

Be open to changing course. In fact, embrace it.

But what about the others? With a couple special people, nothing at all has changed. That’s great. But with the majority, I am generally less important to them. I am no longer their best friend (in some cases I never was), and I should not pretend to be. I still love and care about them and hope the best for them, but I can do that from this new distance that has nothing to do with terrestrial mileage. I can appreciate what we had, and what remains. I don’t have to pine away for what has changed. I chose this path, after all.

If you are human, you will evolve over time. If you are actively trying to change your life, like I am, this should happen rapidly. Often, this happens separately from the people around you. And that’s okay. You can still care and it doesn’t have to be the same as it was.

Even as you evolve and seek your tribe, even as you seek the people who sing to your soul, you can gently let go of the ones who sang to you previously, and always treasure their song in your memory. Their specialness does not fade as your paths diverge, even when others take up a more prominent residence in your heart.

Never stop moving forward along your road, whatever it may be and wherever it may lead.

El Salto

When I moved to Costa Rica, it was a conscious decision to change my life.

A lot of expats I meet got here almost by accident. They came for something finite, short-term. They came for vacation, or to volunteer, or to learn Spanish. They came, they fell in love with the country, and they decided to stay.

I’m the weird one who knew I was moving here long-term from the beginning.

I finalized my divorce and changed my name with all the various government agencies. I quit a job I had held for seven long years. I sold my half of my mortgage. I sold my car. I kissed two of my amazing dogs goodbye forever, and the other two I snuggled close, not having any clue when I would see them again. I put my remaining belongings in storage. My friends threw me a farewell party. I packed my suitcase. And I LEFT.

I knew not one single person in Costa Rica. I did not speak Spanish. I had zero job leads. No idea what city I’d settle in. I just… moved.

The first ten days, my mom joined me. We traveled around doing the touristy stuff. Ziplining, horseback riding, swimming in waterfalls, getting massages, that kind of thing. About nine days later, though, I dropped her off at the airport, and my new life really began. Although I had already made a couple of Tico friends, for this next stage, I was utterly alone.

I took a shuttle down to Quepos. It was supposed to pick me up at 9:00 AM. I waited until 9:30 before calling. They told me my school had forgotten to pay for my shuttle. So I waited at a Denny’s in Alajuela for four hours for the next shuttle. It sucked. I was anxious, and uncomfortable, and a little sad from watching my mom walk into the airport with tears in her eyes. It was a very long four hours.

Finally the shuttle arrived and I sat next to a charming girl from Canada with roots in India. Her name was Alisha and she was going on a yoga retreat. We were both quiet for the first hour, but soon became chatty. We exchanged information when she got out an hour before my stop. The road got darker and darker, and I was the only one in the shuttle. The road climbed a hill and then BOOM. Pacific Ocean to the right, glowing with all the colors of a blood orange in a spectacular sunset. The driver asked if I’d like a photo. I grinned and said, “¡Por favor!”

Standing there looking at the Pacific Ocean for the first time since I was 13 years old, I suddenly realized why my shuttle was late. It had been late so I could experience this one perfect, breathless moment. I snapped a photo with my camera, and it promptly broke.

When I arrived in Quepos and got out, a smiling lady and muscle-tee-clad gentleman were waiting for me. Oh, god, it was so hot. I wilted within 30 seconds. The lady said my name, “Jessie?” with a question mark on it. “Sí,” I said, and with that almost exhausted my conversational ability. This was my host family for the next four weeks, then.

The man, Rolvin, took my suitcase and the lady, Mileidy, began chattering happily in Spanish as they led me through the deepening gloom. I looked around with trepidation. Quepos is, at a cursory glance, a little ugly. Rusty corrugated tin roofs are tossed together over piecework construction. The roads are pitted and the ocean isn’t visible from town even though it’s on the water. We crossed over a smelly creek choked with plastic bags and styrofoam cups, and turned down a nondescript road to arrive at a house locked tight with metal bars and barbed wire (this is typical all over Costa Rica, to keep out burglars). She handed me a set of keys, led me up a very narrow staircase, and showed me my room. It was one of 5 doors off a balcony, but there was no one else around. The room contained a desk, a chair, a floor fan, a bed, and a shelf. That’s all. Rolvin deposited my suitcase and they told me what time breakfast would be. They left, shutting the door behind them.

I stood still, holding my arms and legs apart so they wouldn’t touch. It was so HOT. I was completely drenched in sweat and had only walked five minutes. There was no air conditioner. I locked the door, turned on the floor fan, stripped down to my panties, and stood in front of the fan. I was completely alone. I may have hyperventilated a little, standing there and letting the insanity of what I had done with my life finally drizzle down my skin along with the never-ending sweat.

By morning, I was less panicked, but only somewhat. I took a cold shower in a shared bathroom, dressed, and went down to breakfast. There, I met two of the other boarders, a girl from Germany and a girl from Switzerland. Mileidy served a lovely breakfast of fresh pineapple, papaya, eggs, toast, and gallo pinto, along with coffee. She sat at the table with us and talked pleasantly. She was remarkably easy to converse with despite never saying a word in English. The girls were friendly, and I overheard them mention a waterfall.

Let me be clear. In the States, I was a very shy person. Not among friends, but I was paralyzed when it came to introducing myself or trying to meet new people. It was agony. I was married to an extrovert who loved attention, so I was never challenged in this. I was allowed to wallow in my shyness.

I asked the girls, “Did you say you were going to a waterfall today?”

“Yes,” they said. “We’ve never been there but just heard about it.”

I steeled myself and just came out with it. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Of course! Just grab your things and meet us in the street in fifteen minutes!” They both smiled, and we exchanged names--they were Chrissy and Daniela. We put away our dishes together.

Elated, I rushed upstairs and packed a daybag and put on a swimsuit. I had ASKED! And they said YES! This was HUGE. The old Jessie I left behind in the States would have never done that. Never.

At the bus terminal, we met up with more of their friends, a guy from Germany and another girl, I think also from Germany. They were all studying together at a local Spanish school. (Bonus side note: I am now a Director at the headquarters for that school.) Everyone introduced themselves to me and tried to remember to talk in English for my sake instead of German, which they all knew. We grabbed a bus and paid 375 colones to ride. We got off just five minutes later at an unmarked bus stop.

It was only 9:00 in the morning and already blistering. None of us had any idea where we were going. We walked down the steep hill for a while, looking for a trail, then back up. Finally we asked a shirtless man hammering away on a roof, “¿Dónde está la cascada?” He pointed vaguely back the way we had come. We were pouring sweat. God, it was hot here.

Finally we found the trailhead and entered the blessed shade of the jungle. It was forest that quickly melted into jungle, no slow petering out of civilization, no neat trail maintenance, just a footpath through the jungle. The sound of rushing water was near.

It became apparent that my newfound companions were not big-time hikers. After twenty minutes, they started wondering if they had it right, and were debating turning around. And I, the shy girl, took to cajoling them, saying, “I’m sure it’s just around the next bend. Just a little farther.”

The trail abruptly ended at a river, where there was a guy sitting on the bank messing with his walking stick. We introduced ourselves around. His name was Dago, and he was from New York with Cuban roots. “Do you know where this place is?”

“No,” I said before anyone else could. “But it can’t be far now.”

We left him there and started walking in the riverbed itself, calf-high in water. My broken camera chafed at me. I ached to capture this glorious rainforest in a photo or two hundred. The bright morning sunlight streamed in perfect golden beams through the thick, verdant canopy, and the water was oh-so-clear. My new friends were laughing and joking and we were all asking each other questions about who we were, where we came from, why we were here. It was amiable and easy. Not at all awkward or stilted for having just met each other.

And all of a sudden we came upon the waterfall. It wasn’t much, really, a fifteen foot drop off a cliff into a clear blue pool. Dago caught up with us then, and together we discovered the only way down to the swimming hole was a ratty nylon rope tied to the cliff. One by one, we rappelled down and stripped to our swimsuits and delved into the icy pool.

I'm happy to say I've lost about 15 pounds since this photo was taken.

So refreshing! Soon the area rang with our shrieks and laughter. We explored the pool carefully, deemed it safe enough, rock climbed back up the rope, and leapt repeatedly off the waterfall into the pool. When it got too cold, I slithered up onto a rock in the sun and rested, surveying the scene. Dago climbed up next to me and we began chatting. It was real talk, about how different it was here, and how no one back home really understood what life was really about, and how much we appreciated paradise, and how paradise was not just a bunch of stuff. By noon, we were fast friends.

We had the place to ourselves; not a single other hiker interrupted us all day. We all laughed together when the ants attacked our backpacks—and my unfortunate flatmate Chrissy. We all shared snacks when we got hungry. We all cheered each other for giant leaps off the waterfall. One of my jumps ended poorly and for the next week, I had a massive black bruise on my inner thigh from my knee allllll the way up.

I pushed into the water and employed a dead man’s float. The water in my ears silenced the world save for my steady breath, and I stared at a sky so blue it made my heart hurt. Exotic birds occasionally flitted across my field of vision. In less than twenty-four hours, I had gone from blind panic to the deepest, most serene, most content peace I have ever felt.

That feeling has never really left me henceforth. Oh, I’ve had bad days, faltered, felt lonely or lost sometimes. But really all it took was one perfect day at the waterfall (“El Salto”) with five people I had never met before, and the knowledge, sure and unshakable, that I was capable of doing this crazy thing. Everything was going to be all right.

Everyone in that picture but me has since left Costa Rica. But they left behind a shimmering memory that will never fade.

All photos except the sunset and the homestay taken by my friend Dago.

Stuff

Ever since I moved to Costa Rica, I’ve caught myself bragging… yes, BRAGGING about how little I have.

I boasted about the time I made a cake with no measuring cups, mixing bowls, and whisks. I called it “adventures in minimalist cooking.”

I babble about the stuff I DON’T have in my house. I proudly list them off: no table (kitchen or coffee), no microwave, no screens in my windows, no countertop kitchen appliances of any kind (other than a coffee maker, which I broke down and bought), no heater, no air conditioner, no bathtub, no television, no car, no dishwasher, no radio, no mobile device with internet capability, and only enough clothes to fit in a suitcase.

I joked about the fact that I started a running routine with no running shoes (I used my hiking boots instead).

I gloated over the night I had company over to my house and we all had a “picnic” on my living room floor because I didn’t have table or chairs for them to use.

Costa Rica isn’t a third world country in the middle of some desert somewhere. I live in San José, a city with 2 million people. Things are available. Granted, imported items are extremely expensive. To give you an idea, I went and bought a pair of workout pants and a tank top on clearance plus two 6-pound dumbbells for working out. Just that cost the equivalent of $75. And not at the fancy store, either. Terrain in Costa Rica is very difficult to navigate, with crazy steep mountain gravel roads, driving up the price of imported goods. But they are available if I wanted them.

The big lesson I’ve learned, though, is that I don’t NEED things. And that’s why I catch myself bragging. Really the only thing about it that’s NOT worth bragging about is how long it took me to realize this.

I did everything right. I did the stereotypical American dream. I graduated college. I got married. I bought a house, owned property, worked a long-term cushy office job, drove a decent car. I had a pool. Twenty one hundred square feet, every inch polished and perfected. I planted roses and had the neighbor’s son mow my lawn. I bought art, knickknacks, kitchen gadgets, furniture, jewelry, clothes. STUFF. I was well on my way to middling mediocrity.

That path? Yeah, it wasn’t for me.

I came here with a suitcase—okay, a massive suitcase, but still—and I haven’t acquired much more along the way, except a coffee maker and some dumbbells, and having my scuba gear brought down, oh, and all those vitamins from that time I visited Texas for work.

My house here is pretty great. Those few who are invited in say it’s nice. It has lots of windows and good light, it’s roomy for one person, and there’s even a little paint on the walls. So my landlady plays pop music… on repeat… right next to my bedroom… for hours (so much so that I once threatened to move out). So my “green space” is about one foot by three feet square. So I kill a cockroach at least once a day. So I had to plug the wall with cement because of the rats. So my curtain is held up by push pins. So my headboard is just leaning against the wall and makes a terrible clatter if it shifts. It’s all I need. I don’t want more. I get stressed out just thinking about having more.

I have learned to have a little and delight in it. My quilt I bought in Guatemala is my prized possession. Partly because it keeps me warm. I recognize things like floor fans and clothes dryers and ovens as the great luxuries they really are. I appreciate things a little more.

Quality of life, I’ve learned, is your reaction, not the stuff you surround yourself with.

People ask me about my long-term plans. This is it, baby. I already did the “right” thing. I already lived someone else’s dream. It wasn’t a good fit. For now I’ll stick to my tiny, ill-equipped, but good-enough apartment and listen to the house gecko sing by candlelight.

Oh, I’m sure I’ll evolve again, do something else, live somewhere else, maybe even acquire more stuff. But this? For now, this is the good life. And I’m proud of it, because I built it. Not the house, but the life. And the minimal amount of stuff I put in it.

Recognizing beauty... EVERYWHERE

I’ve always been someone who finds beauty in unexpected places, but that part of me has been amplified since I moved to Costa Rica. I’m not trying; it just happens. I approach every new day with an unfailing sense of wonderment. I’m far from being jaded to the point that small things that others don’t notice fill me with childlike delight.

I wax poetic when the thunderstorms roll in and a hard rain settles in for the afternoon and night—despite the fact that I have to walk home through running water and sideways rain and I’m completely bedraggled by the time I get there.

I am enchanted by things others find ugly. Rusted tin roofs and graffiti and volunteer tomato plants growing randomly in the sewers. Leaf cutters walking across the sidewalk and hunched little old ladies who wish me buenos días on my morning run.

I appreciate all types of people I encounter even if they aren’t my favorite personality type. I love meeting people and I also love being alone. If I go downtown and walk among the jam-packed Avenida Central on a weekend, I can’t stop grinning over the raucous, teeming crowd.

Cloudy skies make me cry out with joy over how they resemble watercolor paintings. I exclaim over blue skies. Pink sunsets and slow gray dusks make me point upward and talk about the beauty there.

I recently spent a month with a roommate from a different culture. Several weeks into living with him, he mentioned he had never seen a Cheshire moon before and was surprised at how often that happened in Costa Rica. As far as I am aware, Cheshire moons are common everywhere, not just here. I was confused until I realized that he had simply never made a habit of looking up. But he lived with me, who said, “Oh, look at that amazing moon,” so many times, it opened his eyes to all the different moons there are.

Instead of engaging people who bring me down, I simply walk away. I don’t have time for their dramas and I refuse to be subjected to their negativity.

And THAT, my friends, is what has really changed in me. I spent over ten years loving someone who was negative at least 5 minutes out of every day –and sometimes 24 hours out of the day. I engaged it. I tried to help. When that didn’t work, I was sucked into the negativity. I was hurt. I was angry. I cried a lot. I never got real apologies and I had to be fine with weathering it until it passed.

How liberating it is to remove myself from other people’s crap. And of course, Costa Rica is very pura vida and most people don’t walk around upset and grumpy and nasty. I had a person tell me the other day it was beautiful how I laughed, beautiful how I even laughed at my own expense, beautiful how I found joy and humor in little things. I had another person say she craved my positive energy. I’ve also been teased for finding simple things extraordinary, but I am proud of this part of me.

My secret? Love yourself first. Take care of yourself, honor yourself. Put yourself in an environment that makes you happy. Back away from melodrama. And look around at how much beauty there is.

Cultural fetishism - the sexualization of white skin

I often laugh and joke about how “well appreciated” I am in Latin America. But really, cultural fetishism is no laughing matter.

The last few weeks, I have been running every morning. I get catcalls, whistles, and honks. You can follow my progress through my barrio by listening for cries of “guapa” and “la princesa.” It’s so extreme, once I caught a man behind the wheel of a moving pickup truck taking a photo of me.

I'm a young white woman who is often alone. I have naturally blond hair that is only getting blonder from the Costa Rican sun and the slightly chlorinated tap water coming out of my shower head.

Apparently, I'm just the right type.

One of the things I love about Costa Rica is the women. Ticas are proud of being women. They dress how they want and carry their heads high. This is not a culture where women are suppressed and hidden and expected to fade into the background. These ladies are tough and strong, or at least they outwardly project an illusion of strength. I think part of the reason is because they have to be. They’ve grown up in a machismo culture and instead of bowing to it, they stood up even taller. They are bright and smart and interesting and funny and kind. Not to mention how many are drop-dead gorgeous.

So why do men here desire extranjeras, foreigners, instead of these awesome women who are right in front of them?

Cultural fetishism is harmful not only to the people being fetishized, but also to the group being ignored.

Costa Rica is not as jammed and littered with billboards and advertisements as the United States, but where you do see ads, if a woman is pictured, she is almost always light-skinned or white, with light colored hair. These ads set up a cultural standard for beauty that is unachievable, because the majority of women here are born with lush, beautiful black hair and lovely complexion in various shades of light tan to brown. These advertisements encourage the fetishism of light-skinned women and send a message to the others that they are not desirable.

I want to rip down those billboards every time I see them.

This cultural trend (perpetuated by beauty and personal product corporate conglomerates which are usually foreign-owned themselves) is extremely unhealthy to the women and girls who live here. I went to a cosmetics store the other day and bought mascara and soap. My purchase qualified me for a free gift and I hardly paid attention to what it was until I got home. Then I realized I had been given skin whitener. I was horrified. Why does skin whitener even exist? Because we make women with dark skin feel they are not beautiful.

Fetishism also hurts the person being fetishized—in this case, people who look like me. I cannot go a single day without at least one person leering and catcalling. I am openly and brazenly objectified. I changed my walking route to work because of a creepy security guard who absolutely will not shut up when I walk by him, the entire time I am within sight. When I was visiting Nicaragua, men literally barked like dogs at me as I walked down the street. I am called out, hypersexualized, and constantly have to deal with unwanted attention.

I usually laugh it off and try to take it as a compliment. But it would be nice to be genuinely complimented rather than shouted or honked at. It would be even nicer to have someone interested in my mind rather than my physical appearance.

I wish marketers would present women of all shapes and sizes and colors as beautiful. And I wish men wouldn’t be so stupid as to swallow the current messaging out there.

Come on, guys. You’re getting egg on the faces of good Latin American men.

Life in the big (Latin American) city

I grew up in two places, one in Ohio and one in Tennessee.

My childhood home in Ohio was a farmhouse built in the late 1800s, with flawed lead windows and woodwork and floors constructed with wooden pegs instead of metal nails. We had a wood-burning stove and five acres of farmland with hundred-year-old weeping willows and a large garden.

My home in Tennessee was on a 60-acre farm with expansive pastures, a huge garden, a flowing creek to catch crayfish in, and brambly juniper woods with rock formations for pretend castles. The house had a quarter mile long driveway.

In both homes, I had 4-5 horses, sheep, birds, 4-8 dogs, and assorted barn cats… a veritable zoo. When I was bored, I would climb on my white horse bareback and read a book lying backward on her back while she grazed.

When I bought my own house after college, I moved to the suburbs. But still, I had an open view of the sky, an acre yard with a small vegetable garden, lots of trees, and very little traffic. And four amazing little dogs.

For reference, here are some population numbers:

• Population 15,000 Pataskala, Ohio (childhood hometown)
• Population 28,000 Lebanon, Tennessee (actually I lived in the sticks well outside town)
• Population 114,000 Murfreesboro, Tennessee (where I bought my house, a university town)
• Population 600,000 Nashville, Tennessee (where I never actually lived, just went downtown some days)

Now I live in San José, Costa Rica. Which, ironically, became the capital on my birthday, 16 May… in 1823, that is. If you take into account the entire metro area of San José and surrounding areas like the canton I live in, San Pedro, the population is 2,160,000. Over a million people commute in to work in the city.

For me, that’s a big city.

Having lived here for a while, there are some clichés that have started getting under my skin.

San José es muy feo. 

San José is not the most beautiful place on earth, I will grant you. There are several large sectors of sprawling ghetto. Houses are thrown together with corrugated tin and cheap materials. Litter chokes the gutters. Buses spew black smoke into the air. Gray water is pumped into the rivers and sewers.

But it is also surrounded by high green Costa Rican mountains in every direction. At night, these mountains twinkle like warm yellow stars close enough to cup in your hand. Stately palm trees and bird of paradise flowers sprinkle the sidewalks with reminders that you are 10 degrees north of the equator, but the breeze never stops and the nights are cool enough to want a sweater because of the elevation.

Several Spanish-influenced colonial buildings surprise you around each corner. San José has many beautiful theaters including the lovely Teatro Nacional. Several churches catch your breath and a few hotels are stunning.

San José, to me, is all the more beautiful because it is BURSTING with life despite the rampant poverty. Walk downtown to Avenida Central on a Saturday morning and you can barely move for all the people. Some shout about the wares they are vending, some are playing music or dancing in the street, some are shopping, and some are simply sitting under the shade of a palm tree munching on helado or, my personal favorite street food, mangos verdes con limon y sal.

San José es peligroso. 

San José is no more dangerous than any big city. In fact, San José is one of the safest and least violent cities in the region. Costa Rica is the third most peaceful country in Latin America, says the sixth edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI). In the global ranking, Costa Rica obtained the 36th position among 158 countries.

You can look it up yourself, but violent crime in San José either mirrors rates in other big cities or is lower. Petty theft is common, as it is in ANY place where large numbers of people live. Does that make San José inherently dangerous? I say no. It makes it a CITY.

You should only spend one night in San José and then get out of there. 

(This one I hear from gringo tourists.) Because it is a large, diverse city, San José has numerous cultural, musical, and artistic presentations and activities, which include traditional and modern Costa Rican and San José culture. On a given day, you can find live theater, museums, visual art, parks filled with free mind puzzles, hula hooping, roller skating, live music, drama, dance, concerts, demonstrations, parties, film festivals, and intellectual diversions.

I keep saying over and over, San José doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how great it is. It is COOL to live here. There is always something stimulating going on. There is always something to do. Something to help you grow as a person. Something to expand your horizons. Why would anyone ever want to breeze through a place like that?

Maybe it’s because I have never lived in a place you can legitimately call a city before, but I am in love with where I live. Will I stay here forever? No. Do I long for the woods and a quieter pace of life? Occasionally.

But it really gets under my skin when people take a look at the loud, sometimes smelly, bustling surface of the city and conclude it’s a crap place. Because in actuality, it’s a great place to call home.