By Bradley R., guest blogger studying Spanish in Heredia and Samara Beach, two of AmeriSpan's most popular Costa Rica Spanish schools
My name is Brad and I'm somewhat of a study abroad and Amerispan veteran: I spent semesters in college in both Sydney, Australia and Prague, Czech Republic, and have taken short programs of two months or less in Morelia, Mexico, Quito, Ecuador, and Vina del Mar, Chile.
Given this experience, my decision-making process has changed somewhat over the years. In this case, I knew that I would have April and May to travel, so I chose Costa Rica based on its climate, which allows for some beach time during this period. In essence, Costa Rica was the first country I found that allowed me to lay around and tan.
I did know a bit about Costa Rica before coming here, principally that it is the wealthiest of Central American countries, has a stable government, is safe, and it is rumored to have gorgeous girls. Within
the first couple of days, all of these things have been verified for me.
After landing at the airport, my host family met me and we took a bus to their house. This was notable for two reasons: it was night already and people were walking, often by themselves, everywhere, and
there were many English signs along the streets. The first speaks to the safety of the area. The second is less obvious, but in my experience, where there are a lot of signs in foreign languages (usually English outside of the English-speaking world and Japanese, German, Russian, etc in English-speaking countries) there is a large number of foreign tourists, who are wealthier than the average citizen of the world and spend more while on holiday than locals do, thus creating wealth. Think of the many foreign language signs in New York, Miami, or Las Vegas. This gave me the impression that Costa Rica is indeed relatively wealthy.
That the government is stable I assumed from the fact that everyone complains about it. Think in terms of free speech. Unstable governments–especially feigned democracies–have to silence dissent, less it aggregate into the kind of protests that have recently toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt. In stable governments, however, people can complain at will, because although the ruling party may
change with elections, the structure of government will not change. Thus my assumption of stability.
Lastly, the girls. While attraction is a very personal thing, there are a few indicators of general attractiveness for a society or country as a whole. Americans are generally agreed to be the least
attractive people by the rest of the world, because we are the fattest. While our obesity is true to an extent, it masks the fact that among Americans are also the most fit people in the world. This argument aside, I have been shocked in Costa Rica to see people running and walking and wearing athletic clothes everywhere, which is very unusual in Latin America according to my experience . In Mexico and Ecuador, I was immediately identifiable as a foreigner just by virtue of running along the street, and while Chileans were more active than the former two, their dedication doesn't approach that of the Costa Ricans, who come out in all genders, ages and sizes. I leave the rest of my conclusion up to the reader!
Read all of Bradley's blogs from Costa Rica
Learn more about AmeriSpan's several Costa Rica Spanish schools
ShareThis
