If you’re not a friend of mine on Facebook (sorry), you probably haven’t seen many pictures yet of my tour through the beautiful country of Costa Rica.
Check out the pictures on my ongoing blog at IFSA-Butler, my study abroad program. This time, I feature San José, the capital of Costa Rica, and la Rincón de la Vieja, an active volano.
I told my host mom the day I moved in that my Internet didn’t work.
15 minutes later, four different ticos, from at least three generations of the same family, were in my room (pictured here) trying to get my computer to work.
Today was my last full day in Liberia, one of the bigger cities in Guanacaste, the northwest region of Costa Rica.
I had a great time climbing volcanoes, touring the clubs and dancing/singing with ticos.
But one the best, worst parts of my first week here: Spanish.
Read the rest of the post here.
UPDATE: July 22
I misspoke in the original headline, “Learning Spanish, poco por poco.” The saying is, “poco a poco.” Clearly I’m not learning Spanish as quickly as I thought. h/t to Paige Jones for pointing out the error.
I’m here in Liberia’s Hotel Boyeros in Guanacaste, the northwestern region of Costa Rica. Guanacaste, in itself, has a fascinating story, as it voted to leave Nicaragua in 1824 and to annex itself to Costa Rica. But I’ll try to talk more about that later this month when the Ticos celebrate that decision in their annual festival.
Now, all of my reading up on Costa Rica’s culture and nature did help (I’ve been voraciously reading Lonely Planet‘s guide to the country), but I was still pleasantly surprised by what I found.
This is a first of a series of blog posts I’ll create about my travels throughout Costa Rica for the next four months.
Studying abroad was always something I knew I needed to do, but I never thought it would be this hard.
Take packing, by far the hardest part of predeparture shenanigans. It’s not just the logistics of fitting everything needed (and nothing more) for five months in two suitcases and a backpack.
But there’s also emotional baggage to unpack.
Zach C. Cohen 