Surgery Went Well

Well, both surgeries are out of the way and now all we need to do is recover so we can get on that plane and go to Costa Rica. Bob's knee is doing great! He will be starting outpatient physical therapy next week so he should improve even faster! My surgery went well too....not so much the anesthetic though...:-(.....and I am not in a lot of pain. Very happy to be home. Now i just have to wait for all of the blood tests that follow checking different levels of....things....that need to be checked.

Bob and I are researching places to live on http://www.ticotimes.net which we subscribed to a couple days ago. It is downloaded to my email every morning and we browse through it keeping up with the happenings of Costa Rica....you should check it out! Below is an article in today's edition:

Legislators look to add to education

By Chrissie Long
Tico Times Staff | clong@ticotimes.net

In one of is first debates since its new members arrived on May 1, the 57-member Legislative Assembly agreed to debate an initiative to increase public education spending to 8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

According to legislator Guillermo Zúñiga of the National Liberation Party, a 2 percent increase in education spending would amount to ₡ 360,000 million colones ($670 million).

Because former President Oscar Arias left office with education spending already at 7 percent of GDP – which is above the legally mandated 6 percent – an increase by one percent would only require ₡ 150,000 million.

The increase was supported by the left-leaning Citizen Action Party (PAC), which said in a press release that spending more on education has been “an aspiration that PAC has expressed since its creation and in all its electoral campaigns.”

At the other side of the political spectrum, the fiscally conservative Libertarian Movement agreed not to block the final vote on the bill.

If the bill should pass the Legislative Assembly, it would increase public spending on education (which includes higher education) by a half of percentage point annually until spending arrives at 8 percent.

The increase would be directed at general education and specialized education for rural zones.

Despite a drop in the gross domestic product last year, Costa Rican universities maintained their government funding at $388 million. In fact, the education minister agreed to increase the 2010 budget by 10 percent over the prior year.

This is just one of the articles in the paper. Enjoy!!