vamos a costa rica

Before my senior year of high school, I spent four weeks in Costa Rica. While there, I had the opportunity to live with a family, do some community service and play soccer.

Week One: Immersion Other than a few family vacations, this was my first real abroad experience. I was extremely nervous to live with a family. My Spanish was pretty good, but I didn’t know if I would be able to understand them. What if they spoke really fast, what if they didn’t like me? When I finally met them, my fears began to dwindle away. It was me, Roberta-Maria, Anielka and Daniel. They were so inviting and accepting. They welcomed me into their family and treated me as one of their own. During my week with them, we eat together, talked together and danced together. On the second to last night, they even invited me to come to a party with them. At the party, I got to meet all of the other kids in the neighborhood. We spent the evening eating and talking and salsa dancing. It was this night that really made my experience with the family so memorable. I was an outsider, an American; my skin was different, my accent was different, my clothes were different (I definitely stood out in my bright blue tshirt with “ABERCROMBIE % FITCH” written across it.) But to them, it didn’t matter. I was there, trying to learn about their family and their culture. They appreciated me for it, and vice versa.

Week Two: The next week I spent in a small village called Cano Negro. Our project for the week was to help lay the flooring for a new community center and repaint the walls of the local elementary school. From this experience I got taste of aid and development. Throughout the week of our stay, I got a chance to talk with some of the locals, play soccer and see what life was like in a rural Costa Rican village. My time was so short lived that I couldn’t help but think to myself if my work was really even meaningful. I was only 16, so I don’t think I fully grasped the reality of what I was doing there, but as I look back now, I wonder if I really did do any help. Thinking about it now, I am not so sure I did. I was only there for a week; was my work really helpful? Would it really have a sustainable impact on the rest of the village? Or was my time there really just a selfish cultural exploration to see how the others live? .

Weeks three and four: I spent the remainder of my time on somewhat of a road trip, traveling to different towns to play soccer. One of the most memorable stops was at the Arenal Volcano. Here we got to play some indoor soccer against a local girls’ team. During the game I took note of some of the ways that these women played the game differently. They had some different rules and different names for things. But it was cool that even though there were differences, we all understood the universal object of the game and that we could all come together to enjoy the game of soccer.

I think I chose to write about my summer in Costa Rica because it marked an important time in my life. It opened my eyes to the world around me. It got me interested in excited about other cultures and I think this is what ultimately attracted me to ICS. After this experience, I new that I would not be satisfied with a major that would not allow me to explore people and places outside of my world. I don’t know if my life goal is to save Africa or cure world hunger, but I do know that I want to do something in the international context. Crossing borders and boundaries, experiencing new people and cultures is something that I love and want to continue to do.