It’s currently August 9th, and I leave for home in less than 2 weeks! As the final days of my program come to a close, I wanted to share a couple things I learned throughout my two months in Costa Rica:
- Learning a new language is hard. At first, I was afraid to communicate with people in Spanish because I didn’t think I’d be able to express everything I wanted, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. However, I eventually figured out this was the wrong mindset to have, because the only time I actually learned new words, conjugations, and figures of speech was when I engaged with the locals and actively corrected my mistakes.
- Explore your surrounding community and country as much as possible. Even if it was just taking a 40-minute bus to San José or walking to the neighboring town of Higuito, every trip/excursion my group made was beneficial in some way; we visited cultural heritage sites, improved our conversational Spanish skills, and picked up on discrepancies in social cues that we otherwise wouldn’t have known.
- Don’t try to plan out your entire time in-country – you never know what unexpected events might happen or where you’ll end up, and sometimes it’s better to go with the flow. Of course, if you are trying to plan a multiple-day excursion it’s important to research ahead of time, but some of the best moments I experienced were unplanned and spontaneous adventures with my friends or host parents.
- You will experience uncomfortable situations, but as long as you are safe, try to make the most out of the moment, ask for help, or learn from the experience.
There are so many more things I wish I could share, but every study abroad journey is unique, and the only way to know what the adventure will entail is to dive head-first and experience it for yourself!