San Jose, Costa Rica

Why I chose to go to Costa Rica: If coming to Kalamazoo from Oregon was already a switch from the values and priorities that I had known before, going to Costa Rica has the potential to turn my world upside-down. The biggest changes coming from Oregon to Kalamazoo were the cars people drove and the slang that they used. In Costa Rica, it will be a whole new language, new stores and types of food, and new music on the radio. I’ll have to make more adjustments than I can count. But that’s what I want. A senior who studied abroad in Costa Rica told me that it’s not uncommon for Ticos to be ten or fifteen minutes late for everything. “In fact,” he told me, “it’s pretty much expected.” I’ve become so conditioned to being on time at all costs that I get anxious if I’m a couple minutes later than I wanted to be getting to the cafeteria for lunch. In high school, all my classmates couldn’t wait to get out of their houses and away from their parents for awhile. I've read that in Costa Rica families are a lot closer, and independence isn’t as highly valued as it is here. As opposed to us Americans, who have army bases in countless countries and are presently involved in a war with Iraq, Costa Rica doesn’t have an army at all. This isn’t to say that Costa Rica is any more different than Europe, Africa or Asia would be. In fact, in some ways it could be more similar to the United States. However, it’s Costa Rica's differences that made me choose it as a study abroad destination. The different family and political values, and the different concepts of time are things that I want to experience. Somewhere inside I know that my family is the most important thing in the world to me, but I get so wrapped up in my classes that I often go two or three weeks without talking to them. I’m hoping that the culture in Costa Rica will slow me down a bit, and help me learn that grades are not the most important things in life. Costa Rica sounds like a place where I will be able to get my priorities straight, and to look at the world in a better way.

A different intercultural experience I had: When I went to the United Kingdom in high school I felt like a kid again. The world felt brand new. Every step I took was on ground that I had never been on before, and every person, place and building inspired wonderment. The people, too, seemed new. They walked differently, dressed differently, talked differently, and even drove on a different side of the road. Their shops sold different things, they ate differently, their newspapers reported different opinions on different topics, their gestures, facial expressions, common phrases and slang were all different, and most intriguingly, they had different ideas. Their conception of Americans, of themselves, of politics, of what was normal, and of the world in general, was different from every point of view I had known in the United States. It got me thinking about things I had never paid any real attention to before, like why our cars and lawns are so big but our buildings are so short, why we don’t have better public transportation or state provided healthcare, and why we’re so determined to be independent. When the fourth of July came and there were no special sales in the stores, no special songs on the radio, and no fireworks at night, that got me thinking about why we celebrate the fourth of July, and what all of our other holidays mean. The more that I learned about the English, the more I was able to critically examine the things I had always unthinkingly accepted as true. The more familiar I became with the UK, the more objectively I saw the US; and the more I understood the people who lived there, the more I understood myself. This is what makes me want to study abroad - interacting with cultures different from my own makes it easier for me to get beyond my presuppositions and find new and better ways to look at the world.

What I identified as the greatest challenges facing me as I began my study abroad program: When I think about the challenges study abroad is going to present, I sometimes think life here in the United States is hard enough. Then I think about how I’ve gotten through tough times in the past, and I realize that it’s always been the people I love who have helped me make it through. So now I wonder how I will live without my best friends, my confidantes, the people I look to for help and support, and the people who can cheer me up when I feel like I’m lost in the world and nothing makes sense. This is my biggest fear. It’s not so much that I’ll be alone, because I’ve always wanted independence, but it’s being so far from the people who mean so much to me. When I can’t understand Costa Rican humor, I’ll need the people who never fail to make me smile. When every relationship I’ll have on study abroad will be brand new, and complicated by a language barrier, I’ll need the people I usually go to for relationship advice. I’m bound to feel more incompetent than ever while I’m in Costa Rica, and that’s when I’ll need the people who usually restore my self-confidence. Worst of all, when I’m sad because I’m missing them, they’re not going to be there to cheer me up. In the past when life was difficult, it was the people I love who kept me believing that everything would work out, and now that I’m facing a whole new set of challenges alone, I can’t help wondering if I can really do it without them.

How life abroad might be easier than life at K: Over the years I’ve discovered something ironic about myself—the harder something is, the better I do at it. For example, in high school, the easiest class you could take was keyboarding, and I got a C. Then I took AP US History and got the highest grade the teacher could ever remember giving. Another time, when I was driving to a new shopping center not too far from where I live in Oregon, I got on the wrong highway, and didn’t even notice until I was crossing the river into Washington. I was lost for two hours. That was four years after I had gotten separated from my group in the Paris subway. Alone, fourteen, and not knowing French, I stayed calm and found my way back to our hotel without getting on a single wrong train. As odd as it is, I seem to have much more success with difficult tasks than with easy ones. For this reason, I think I might do all right trying to make it in a foreign country. A big, brand new city, a language I don’t speak well, a foreign culture, a new family, being a million miles from familiar things, being a minority for the first time in my life, and knowing hardly a soul in this new place—this sounds like the kind of overwhelming task that I might actually be good at.

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Read excerpts from my letters home.