Costa Rican College Life

At EARTH University, learning about sustainable agro-tourism.

    Studying in Costa Rica, one of the biggest obstacles for me has been adjusting to the student life here. Back at GW, life revolves around campus. You live there, walk downstairs to visit friends in their dorms, work on campus, study there, eat there, attend meeting for student groups and clubs. For the last two years I have gotten very used to walking around campus running errands bumping into at least a few friends every time I’m in the streets, and being surrounded by my friends and classmates in our own small little community.  This makes the differences here so surreal. At ULatina, there are no dorms; in fact the campus is just two, three story building with two small food courts. There are no student life centers, study buildings, lounges, or anything that really screams student life. Many of the activities include job and study abroad fairs, but no student organization fairs. There are no sport teams, or performing arts groups. This is a killer for me, being a dancer and a Floridian, where high school and college sports are some of the most important things on campus. This makes for an interesting dynamic, where it seems as though most students attend school as if was a job- totally necessary but not where you want to spend you time. While I’ll admit sitting in a cold lecture hall for and hour and a half is not my favorite place to be, when I’m there I’ll always quickly seek out some friends, laugh a bit, and go grab some coffee afterwards. Another difference is that while I am used to getting classes out of the way early and then going to work or an internship, here the school is jammed packed come 6pm!

Shell searching in Tamarindo.

     I have also heard the private university I am attending is very different from the public university down the street. There, I know they have sports teams, a student government, and other aspects of student life that I am used to. One thing I do miss- good ole school spirit. While GW has been criticized for lacking in this area, I can proudly say I strut around in my GW sweatshirts and other gear all the time, but I have yet to see a single piece of ULatina anything. While these may sound like insignificant differences, seeing as the real purpose of college is to learn, for us in the USA College life is the fun, the comraderie, and living a certain way. But hey, one difference I don’t mind at all is my three-day weekends, which I can use to travel to tropical rain forests and beaches. While there are many dissimilarities, that’s the reason for going abroad. If I had stayed in DC, living my normal life, I would’ve never had the chance to visit all the amazing places I have while being here. I wouldn’t have gotten to go to Nicaragua, or to Tamarindo this weekend where I met some amazing people. And I never would have gotten to experience College life from a Central American standpoint.

Pacific Coast sunset!

Another picture of the beautiful sunsets in Tamarindo.

  A little update on my weekend travels: This weekend we spent an amazing 4 days in Tamarindo in the Pacific coast! It was so lovely we may have even stayed a day longer and missed a day of classes…  Besides the fact that there was a beautiful beach, and the our hostel had an awesome pool and several hammocks, one of the reasons it was so great was that we met an awesome group of people on our first night. Our new friends came literally from all over the USA, and a couple where even from Europe. We had a blast surfing, and watching Pacific coast sunsets. I got into some pretty intense conversations (of the political nature of course), and it was great hearing about countries and politics outside of those just in the US. Good company is always a perk!