Make as Many Mistakes as You Can

In the previous article, we established a couple points that help one stick with the formidable project of learning to speak a second language namely, Spanish.

To re-cap:

• It is a huge project that will take longer than you think.
• It is hard for everybody (except for the extremely rare progeny).

If we can clean these 2 points out of our heads and press on, we’ll be more likely to learn Spanish. However, there is another point that needs to be mentioned. And it’s a problem that likely plagues other areas of our life from time to time: pride.

To learn to speak a language, we have to pass through the goo-goo gah-gah phase of our toddler days yet again, but this time as an adult. It was much easier when we were 16 months old, everybody expected our incompetence. But now we are mature, intelligent, have a respected career, and are really quite intellectually advanced. 

Pride kills a lot of efforts to learn a second language. Funny thing, it isn’t just the big, wealthy, fit, smart, beautiful ones that fall to this. Over the years of living here in Costa Rica and being asked on innumerable occasions to help Tico friends with their English, I have seen on a regular and consistent basis these lovely, humble Ticas (female Costa Ricans) unable to overcome their embarrassment (they need to speak perfectly before they’ll let anyone hear their limited level of English). This effectively hamstrings any possibility that they will learn the language. 

Ya’ Gotta’ Make Mistakes:
It’s the only way. You try this, and it doesn’t work, so you try that. If you’re wrong, you find out by doing. It’s the Thomas Edison rule of achievement. “I didn’t fail 10,000 times while inventing the light bulb. I uncovered 10,000 ways that a light bulb won’t work. 

This point has actually been established by researchers. The process of learning a language involves making many mistakes. If we aren’t sticking our necks out

"In many cases, it seems that small business sites are becoming harder to find through organic search. If you look you can find them, but users want convenience, and they are probably not going to look too hard if they can find what they are looking for on the first search results page..."

Costa Rica's southern pacific zone is a sausage linkage of small towns: Dominical, Uvita, Ojochal, Hatillo, Matapalo, all chalk full of small businesses.  There are no, none, zip, zilch - name brand hotels, restaurants, department stores here.  Consequently, when people are preparing to visit here and they go into their favorite search engine, let's say - Google, and they search for the nice, generic words "Hotels in Dominical Costa Rica". What they are going to find in their returns are portal sites, like Dominical Dot biz, that deal with all that the town has to offer, and a smattering of long standing, hard working hotels in the area.

One of the most searched for words on the Internet is "Hotels".  There are hundreds of hotels in Costa Rica.  They are all vieing for that search term. 

How to get your page on Dominical.biz:

1. Check out the rates table below.
2. Register and send me your user name.
3. Send me about 8 photos that you would like to post.
4. Send me the content describing your product or service.
5. If you are a lodgings provider, send me your prices.  If you have different prices for different times of the year, send them organized as such.  Restaurants can post their menu to the site.

Click here to send me your user name, and I'll send you the e-mail address where you can send the photos and information.

I'll take care of the rest. 

Thanks for reading. 

Ben Vaughn

I found a recent article in the Costa Rican national newspaper that discussed the current state of the “Bumpy Road” north of Dominical. It was so detailed and specific with date projections that I thought it might be a benefit to readers of my blog to translate and paraphrase it here. My analysis should be unique enough that I haven’t asked permission from La Nacion, but the attribution is inherent in the above disclosure. Their website is www.nacion.com. (Click here for the smaller English version.)

The article was dated Wednesday October 19, 2008: “The minister of Public Works and Transportation, Karla Gonzales, declared before neighbors of Quepos ‘In October of 2009, the Southern Coastal Highway (la Costanera Sur) will be ready’”

It was interesting to find this article when I did because I was sitting in my favorite Sushi restaurant in San José, when I found the article. I had to come up the coast since the Pan American route had been experiencing periodic shut downs due to landslides. I don’t like driving up the coast primarily due to the 25 mile stretch between Dominical and Quepos. It is hard on the car and my temperament.

Uvita Costa Rica, where my office is located, is exploding. In the last year we have seen changes in this little coastal town that now has a smooth, pot hole-less highway running through it. Huge changes - nay, massive… what would the word be – revolutionary? One year ago we had no banks in Uvita: we now have two with a third on the way. One year ago we had two small neighborhood groceries; we now have three major ones, fluorescent lights, grocery carts and all. I went to a PDGD (pretty darn good dentist) here in Uvita the other day. I guess I should say PPDGD since she is pretty to boot. I needed a front tooth fixed cosmetically and she did a PDGJ. I used to think that I would have to travel to San Jose for such service, and in fact I/we have made numerous trips to San Jose when my kids had braces.

There is a golf course going in down the way, there are new hotels, cabinas, restaurants, tour companies, storage facilities, car washes and businesses of all types going in all around. In real estate companies we’ve got six in Uvita that I can think of off hand.