Una semana a partir de hoy
One week from today, I will be sitting on a plane its way to San José, Costa Rica.
Right now, I’m sitting in my campus center after finishing my finals thinking about how it’s St. Patrick’s day (happy St. Patrick’s day, by the way) and how crazy it is that I’ve made it to this point.
The program that I’m studying abroad through — run by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) — is pretty darn cool and provides a unique research component which is the main reason I applied. My time in Costa Rica will be divided into three parts: first, I’ll be living in San José (the capital) with a host family and taking classes with ACM, mostly learning more Spanish and about Costa Rican culture. After that first phase, I’ll be switching host families and relocating to a rural locale to start my research, which will last for four weeks. Finally, I will spend three more weeks or so in San José with my original host family to process my results and write a big ‘ole paper.
As a French minor, I’m apprehensive about living and breathing Spanish. But it’s also exciting that after my program, I’ll be proficient in two foreign languages. ACM actually requires two years of college Spanish to participate in this Costa Rica program, something I didn’t have when I applied. Instead, I had to teach myself Spanish last summer from a textbook — a process that was not exactly fun — and since then I’ve taken two intermediate courses at Lawrence. Last week, I had a brief conversation (mostly in Spanish) with Mario Morera, the language instructor for ACM Costa Rica. That phone call reassured me and increased my nervousness at the same time. On one hand, Mario was fun to talk to and helpful when I tripped up my Spanish or didn’t understand something. On the other hand, I realized that I have a long ways to go before I get comfortable in my third language. I’m sure that I will say embarassing things, or feel silent sometimes, but I’m also confident that my abilities will dramatically increase with three months of immersion.
At this point, I don’t know exactly what I’ll be researching in Costa Rica, which, I admit, sounds a little ridiculous since that’s the main part of my program. I do know the name of my research advisor, and I will be working with him to decide on a topic and design my project. My dream would be to research coffee production from an environmental economics perspective, although I don’t know yet if that’s plausible. Another topic I’ve considered is studying the environmental and economic impacts of expanding sugar cane plantations in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. And, I mean, check out how incredible those beaches look — can’t complain about that. I think I will find out my final topic pretty quickly after I arrive in San José, so I’ll be sure to pass along an update when I do.
This past week, I was placed with my host family. Apparently, my host mother has started a catering business out of their home, and is a passionate cook and baker, so I pretty much hit the jackpot on the food front. In my host family preference letter, I said that I like to be active and keep a balanced diet; it turns out that my host brother is studying to be a physical education teacher and my host sister is studying nutrition. So I’ve found my motivation to keep up a healthy lifestyle in San José.
A week from today, the journey that I started over a year ago will end and the real challenges, rewards, and experience will begin.
