Rave #31: Costa Rican Adventures

I take Spanish at school, and I am positively abysmal at it. In class, I sit between two friends, and spend much of the class time catching their eyes and looking at them desperately. (Sometimes they explain things to me, and sometimes they shrug apologetically.) I spend far more time on Spanish homework than I do on that of any other class, and my parents have various bribing techniques in place, contingent upon my grade in Spanish. I’ve come to accept, however, that I’m just not good at Spanish. (I reassure myself that I have other strengths, like hula-hooping and [English] word games. I figure that this is the last year I’m required to take a language, and so next year I can drop Spanish and spend all that glorious free time doing something I’m better at. Perhaps I’ll suggest a hula-hooping course. I should look into that. But I digress.)

Thus, when my mother announced that we were going to Spanish immersion school in Costa Rica, I was skeptical. I didn’t, however, have much of a choice. Ella fue la jefe. I was going to be spending a week of my vacation from school in school. Spanish school, with my parents, 12-year-old brother GP1, and 8-year-old sister GP2. I was not pleased. Then I realized, however, what Costa Rica means. Costa, as in coast; coast, as in beach. I consoled myself with fantasies of free time, lying on la playa with frothy drinks and trashy chick-lit. At least I’ll be on the beach, I thought. Visions of sand and blue skies got me through the grey, drippy, interminable month of February, and by March 4th, when I left school for vacation, I was positively excited about the upcoming trip. 

On March 12^th, the day before our departure, I turned to la jefe.

“How many bathing suits should I pack?”, I asked cheerfully. La jefe paused, and put her hand on her hip thoughtfully.

“Hm, I’m not sure,” she answered. “I guess the school will have a pool. Yeah, you should bring a bathing suit.”

Something about that didn’t sound quite right. There was almost an implication there that… “We’re not going to the beach?!” My mother looked surprised.

“No, we’re not”, she replied. “Why would you think that?”

Oi. Vey.

At that point, it was too late to back down. I had my plane ticket; I had an assigned host family; I had taken a Spanish placement test. (It was a 100-question, multiple choice out of 3 test. My mother had gotten a 38%, a smidge better than a monkey hitting keys at random. My father got less, as he refused to answer many of the questions – he was a quitter monkey. I received a 42%, and counted that as a victory.) I had to go.

We drove to the airport. We checked our many bags – carry-on’s for overachievers – and went through security. We waited a little bit. We bought a few magazines. We waited a little more. We boarded the plane. We sat down; it took off. I read some exceptionally fantastically bad chick-lit, and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, we were in San Jose, Costa Rica.

We arrived Sunday afternoon. We were met by a charming woman from the language school, who, after initial hola’s, spoke to us solely in English. She asked if we were wearing sunscreen. I assured her I was. Once the other group arrived – about 15 middle-school students (oi) – we departed for Santa Ana, about 20 minutes from San Jose, where our host family lived.

Turns out Costa Rica’s very, very green. During our ride, I stared out the window at the green. It was, in all honesty, stunning; in the distance, amongst the rolling green hills, nestled jewel-colored little houses and the occasional gently sloping field. We passed a fruit stand set up along the side of the road, complete with a toothlessly grinning old man, and I was delighted. This is what Latin America is, I thought! Mangoes and coffee and green and toothlessly grinning old men! Jewel-colored houses on green backdrops! It was perfect; graciously foreign and respectfully Disney.

Then we left Disneyland.

I heard the town before I saw it: the buzz of cars, barks of dogs, and shrieks of children. The houses were small, surrounded by heavy gates. Shop fronts were dingy, and mangy dogs roamed the streets. There were a few vendors set up along the road, but M told us that we shouldn’t eat any fried street food, as you never knew how old the oil was. I reached into my bag and blindly gripped my Merriam-Webster English-Spanish dictionary. I clutched it, my talisman, and desperately hoped Santa Ana would have Internet.

It did. In one dark, dingy Internet café. (Erroneously named, as I found out, as one couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee there. There were just rows of poorly-lit cubbies.) Luckily, my school had Internet, and I was able to check email / Facebook / very important political news (read: Lindsay Lohan’s outfit choices for court [doubly parenthetically: the skintight beige thing was not only wildly inappropriate but also wildly unflattering]) there.

Living with a family was a new experience for me. I’ve been to developing countries before, but I’ve stayed in pleasant hotels with pretty views. You could say it’s been the Disney-sanctioned version. This is not to say that I was anything but a tourist in Costa Rica; obviously, I was. (A phrase I uttered continuously throughout the trip was “lo siento, a mi madre le gusta tomar muchos fotos”.) This is also not to say that I was in a scorpion-infested run-down shack. (Though more on scorpions later.) The home I was in was fine. It was very clean (every morning, I heard my host dad sweeping the courtyard at 5:30!), and perfectly pleasant.

I’m perfectly aware I sound like a spoiled brat right now. I’m not trying to. (But then, of course, who would ever want to sound like a spoiled brat? It’s a sin of obliviousness and carelessness.) I really want to give a sense of my trip, and I do think that the culture shock was a part of the experience. It does not, unfortunately, reflect too well on me. But please bear with me as I finish explaining my home-stay.

The couple my family stayed with was very sweet. Let’s call them C, the wife, and V, the husband. They spoke absolutely no English – or at least, spoke no English with us; I’m pretty sure C could speak some English but refused to because we were trying to be immersed – and gesticulated a lot. (That worked well, because we too like to gesticulate.) C cooked for us every morning and evening, and even did our laundry every day. (We didn’t ask, of course, and requested numerous times that she wouldn’t, but she did anyway.)

I liked them a lot.

I have a side bar here. Skip the next couple paragraphs if you’re in a rush.

Several months ago, a group of students at my school who had gone to Tanzania over the summer to help build a school made a presentation about their experience. They used phrases like “our Tanzanian sisters” and “we formed a new family”, and read letters from the students that said things like “I love you so so so so so so so so so so much.” They were in Tanzania for 2 weeks. Now, it’s a constant struggle for me to keep from turning into a jaded, world-weary brat. I tried to reason to myself that it was a different culture I knew nothing about; maybe, in Tanzania, that’s what you say to people you’ve known for 2 weeks: “I love you.” Maybe they really were thrilled to have the building expertise of 20 16-year-old girls. I could certainly see how they were happy to have the resources the girls from my school brought: the notebooks, pens, building supplies, and laptops. At the same time, however, I didn’t think I could ever call someone whom I met 2 weeks ago my sister.

I have a sister. I have a family. And while I truly love my friends – especially at an all-girls boarding school, I really do think I have an extraordinarily special, close relationship with those I eat, study, and live with – they are not my sisters. Some of my friends, whom I have known for several years, I do say I love; some, whom I have met more recently or known at a more superficial level, I don’t. But even my closest friends, whom I really and truly do love, are not my family. I certainly would not call a woman whom I was with for a week my “second mother”.

This is all to say that I enjoyed my week with C and V very much, I think they’re lovely people, it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever see them again, and I’m okay with that. That’s the end of my rant.

Moving on to Emma’s Language School Experience.

Every morning, we walked the 5 blocks to the van pick-up station (a central spot in the town) and were supposed to be picked up at 7:45. It was about a 15 minute drive to the school, and, depending on how late the van was and how many people we drove by whom our driver knew and had to chat with, we arrived at school anywhere between 8:05 and 8:20. Class started at 8:30. We had 2 hours of classes, and then our mid-morning break; we resumed at 11, and went until 1. By my mid-morning snack, I was exhausted, and by lunch I was ready for bed. The 4 hours I did was the less intense option. Some people had class after lunch for another 2 hours. Those people missed out on very important cultural activities, like afternoon siestas.

There were two students in my class: me, and a lovely girl my age we’ll call L. She was much better at Spanish than I. In the first class, our teacher asked what we missed the most while in Costa Rica. (A tricky question, obviously, as I couldn’t be completely honest, since our teacher was both a proud Costa Rican and related to my host family, but I also had to answer the question somehow.) I went first. I said I missed hot water. Then L went. She missed being able to exercise. It was hard for her, because it wasn’t safe for her – a single, young girl – to go out by herself, and she couldn’t get to the gym. That was the type L was.

Everybody I spoke to before I left was confident that my Spanish would improve. Everyone seems to agree that immersion is the only way to learn, that my confidence and accent and vocabulary would inevitably improve. My advisor urged me to go for it, just to speak, even if I felt nervous or unsure, as that’s the only way to learn. And so, to all the students out there considering traveling to a foreign country under expectations that your linguistic skills will improve immensely, I feel obligated tell you about my experience.

I was in Costa Rica for 10 days, and that was not enough to make much of a difference. My accent did not improve; my grammar did not improve; my vocabulary may have improved by 20 or 30 words, but not markedly. After a few days, however, I did notice a change: the vocabulary I did know came to me faster, and I could form better, more complex sentences using various grammatical tenses faster. My oral capabilities got to the same basic place as my written Spanish.

However, I don’t think I would have improved without my language school. (Called Conversa, in Santa Ana, and it was fantastic. I highly recommend looking at it if anyone’s considering Spanish immersion school!) I don’t think immersion itself would have gotten me very far – people speak very quickly with lots of big words in the real world. When you are learning a second language, I think some things have to be explicitly taught to you. At least, I have to be taught things like grammar tenses and sentence structure; these sorts of things I wouldn’t pick up through immersion itself. Perhaps a better language student would be able to pick up on these through lots of conversation, but I needed them to be spelled out for me. They were, in Conversa, and it helped me tremendously.

Thus, if I have a new theory on learning languages, it is this: small class sizes are paramount. Small class sizes are always beneficial, of course, but I really think they’re essential for languages. Currently, my Spanish class – at a relatively posh private school – has 12 people. That’s a quite small class, comparatively. But 2 is much better. I learned more in 5 days of 4 hours a day (total: 20 hours) with a class of 2 than I had in 6 months of 50 minutes a day (total: about 80 hours) with a class of 12. I’m fully aware that that type of schedule would not be feasible in the real world of other subjects, homework, sports, clubs, etc, but it’s still something schools should consider. If I feel overwhelmed with a class size of 12 – like I can’t fit in all I want to say, or ask the questions I need to, or get the attention and clarity I want – what about kids with classes of 20 or 25?

Another thing I noticed: in Conversa, we worked entirely orally. Now, at school, I have a truly marvelous teacher, and what I’m about to say is not an indictment of her. However, at school, we do a lot of written work. That’s important, don’t get me wrong, but oral comprehension is more useful. In school, we do much of our oral comprehension and verbal evaluations in the computer lab. There, each student is hooked up to a computer headset, listens to the instructions, and speaks into the microphone. Later, the teacher collects the recordings and grades them. This, obviously, has some practical benefits, and I see what this system is used. Unfortunately, it offers no way of in-the-moment corrections and prodding from teachers. Speaking to nobody is a very unnatural way of learning a language. By the time the student goes back to see her grade and comments, the moment has passed, and she can barely remember what the topic was, let alone what she said.

Therefore, I think language classes should save 10 minutes at the end of class to speak one-on-one or two-on-one with the teacher. For example, my class periods are 50 minutes. 40 minutes is enough to cover new material; maybe we’d have to skip a couple grammar activities, but that’s okay. I suggest taking the last 10 minutes of class for two students to step outside of the classroom with the teacher and just talk. Talk about their days, what they did last night, their plans for the weekend (thus getting in different tenses!), whatever. It doesn’t have to be graded; it’s just an opportunity to practice speaking in a plausible, conversational scenario. It would also give the teacher a chance to see where each student is. While this is happening, the students left in the room could do something quietly; more grammar or vocabulary exercises, perhaps.

Moving on from Emma’s Theories on Language back to Emma’s Costa Rican Adventures.

On Friday, after our week in Conversa, my grandparents flew in to San Jose and met us in Santa Ana for the next component of our journey. We bid C and V adios and drove about 4 hours to Monte Verde. It was a difficult ride, winding around and over various mountains and valleys, with little pavement and many potholes. It was gorgeous, but there were few houses or people along the way. At one point, there was a sign: Escuela: 25km. We were excited, as it seemed to be the first sign of civilization in about an hour. We stared out the window, breathlessly waiting for la escuela. Finally – finally! – Nana saw it.

“Look!”, she exclaimed, pointing at a structure in the distance. “That must be the school!”

“No,” our driver said, “este es la cementaría.”

Dang.

We finally arrived at our hotel. It was very lovely, and GP1, GP2, and I ran to claim beds. As we were unpacking, GP2 called to me, “Emma! come here! I killed it!”

GP2 had found a scorpion. This was the first time I had seen a scorpion; it was about two inches long, black, and straight out of the horoscope page. I was not a fan. For the next three nights, GP2 and I shook our sheets and blankets out before going to bed. (GP1 was remarkably cavalier about the scorpion situation.) We didn’t see another one, but it was certainly stressful. (Though, upon further research, it turns out that those types of scorpions won’t seriously hurt you; their sting is compared to that of a wasp. It’s the lighter sandy, less scary-looking ones that live in California you have to look out for.)

We spent Saturday hiking in the cloud forest. I was a little nervous, having read about poisonous snakes, but it was very pretty – and very green. It was quite damp, though evidently it was the dry season. (I don’t think I would want to go during the wet season.) It was very pretty, and we were able to see lots of anteaters. (At least, I was pretty sure they were anteaters. They were not attractive animals.)

The next day, Sunday, I attended the Quaker / Society of Friends’ services. When I was little, I attended a Friends’ school, and loved it; thus, I was excited to learn more about the Quaker history in Costa Rica. In Monte Verde, there was a well-established Friends’ school, K-12, with about 150 students. Services consisted of a half-hour of singing various peace songs – there was a lot of overlap between Monte Verde Friends songs and Connecticut Friends songs, so I think I impressed them with my musical knowledge (or at least lyrical knowledge) – and then an hour of silence. (Many jokes were made amongst my oh-so-witty family members about how silence is the same in Spanish.) It was lovely, and everyone was very welcoming and warm. Quakers are really great.

Sunday evening, my family and I rode horses. It was the first time I’d ever really been on a horse, beside the requisite country fair pony rides. My horse was named Tequila, and he only spoke Spanish. He was the prettiest of the horses, but he had a lot of bodily functions. He wanted to go quickly, but I made it clear we were going lentamente. GP2 got the slow horse, Tojo. I was jealous.

Monday, we drove to our last destination: the Peace Lodge, about an hour from San Jose. The Peace Lodge was quite spiffy, and connected to a nature reserve. That afternoon, we visited the bird conservatory, the butterfly exhibit, and the monkeys. (I had to chastise some fat kid when he tried to stick his flute into the monkey cage. I made it clear that that was not okay. Geesh. Then his Ed Hardy-clad father came, and I scampered out of there.) My family then decided to go commune with frogs, at which point I left the group to have a marvelous massage. That night was glam night, a family tradition, so we all put on clean shorts and put on red toenail polish and were very glam.

Tuesday morning, we had our last breakfast in Costa Rica. I wandered around the reserve and got lost for a while, (estuve buscando por los gatos grandes) and then fed some hummingbirds. Then I stared at the monkeys for a little longer, undisturbed by flute-brandishing hooligans. (Fun fact: monkeys are my favorite animals. I think this is because they’re the most similar to humans.) Unfortunately, that was the end of our vacation; we drove to San Jose, got to the airport, used up our remaining colones, the Costa Rican currency, got on to the plane, and landed back in the good ol’ US of A.

Wow. That was the longest blog post I’ve done. Kudos to you if you read all that.

During this trip, I spent a lot of time reflecting on the differences between Costa Rica and America. Beyond the obvious – they’re one of the most eco-friendly countries in the world, we have an army, we speak different languages, they don’t call the police if 2-year-old are unattended on horses, etc. – there are more cultural distinctions. I’m not sure how to describe it; I’m certainly no cultural expert having been there for 10 days. I did get the sense, however, that life really is more relaxed out of America. People smiled more – every morning, as I walked to the bus stop, everyone I passed would greet me. With the houses so close together, everyone knew each other; when walking around Santa Ana, V would call out to everyone by name and ask about their families, dogs, and gardens.

You see, Costa Rica was neither Disney-sanctioned nor devastatingly poor. It had the rolling green mountains capped with clouds, and it had spiffy hotels with air conditioning. It was neither better nor worse than the United States; it was just different. That’s the point of traveling, after all: to remind us that there are different places. If you’re not happy where you are there’s always somewhere else with totally different people and customs.

In that spirit of deep personal reflection, here are some more realizations:

1. No matter how bad you are at a language, there is someone who doesn’t speak it at all. You are ahead of that person.
2. I am very glad that the United States sees the benefit of paved roads. I like paved roads. Paved roads are the way to go. If I could make a suggestion to the Costa Rican government it would be to invest in the highway system. (But keep up the good work, guys. Your country’s great.)
3. I am very glad that I have had a couple very good Spanish teachers. A good teacher makes all the difference.
4. I fully support leash laws. Dogs should be on leashes. See #2 re: suggestion to Costa Rican government.
5. My life would be much better if I were a monkey.
6. I would, however, not want to be a horse. All they do is work.
7. Horses are hard to ride. It must have been very hard to battle on horses.
8. My sister can be counted on to kill scorpions, if need be.
9. I’m lucky to have my own room.
10. I actually don’t drink that much coffee compared to Costa Ricans.

With that, I am done. Thanks for reading. Go forth and live la pura vida.