{"id":174,"date":"2009-10-02T16:00:02","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T20:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/?p=174"},"modified":"2021-01-11T19:57:40","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:57:40","slug":"in-another-country-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/2009\/10\/02\/in-another-country-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"In Another Country Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

by R. Wesley Proctor ’10<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really know how to describe my preconceptions going into my May Term abroad program in Costa Rica other than about 95% pure excitement mixed with 5% apprehension about living with a foreign family whom I knew relatively little about, not to mention the language barrier.<\/p>\n

Hindsight is 20\/20 and I have the good fortune of being able to say that I would not have done anything differently. Pushing myself to speak the language and interact with the family and the local community yielded tremendous dividends in both conversational improvement as well as in social education. I learned a lot about myself and an international environment while having a good time in paradise.<\/p>\n

There were 16 Hampden-Sydney students on the trip. Everyone lived with a Costa Rican family and made their way to class twice each day at the institute where we studied.\u00a0 During the week we worked hard during the day and unwound a little a night, but the weekends were definitely highlights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first weekend we toured around San Jose getting acclimated to the area as well as seeing many museums and places of interest, such as the Teatro Nacional (left), which was a standout because of its fantastic architecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0The second weekend we went to Manuel Antonio (right), a rain forest national park positioned next to Quepos, a small fishing town. With the help of my taxi driver, I set up a day of off-shore fishing which turned out great; although it was the off-season, we landed a sailfish.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The following Friday I was invited by my host sister, who is my age, to go to one of her friend\u2019s birthday parties. I foolishly accepted not knowing how hard Costa Ricans throw down. They told me I was welcome to bring a friend, so I invited Holden Bryant ’10. The party was ridiculous. One thing that was hard to keep in my mind was the possibility that some of these people do in fact speak English. It was about 10 minutes of my stumbling with my Spanish trying to tell someone, whom I thought to be Costa Rican, about the plot line of The Dark Knight<\/em> before he informed me that he was from California.<\/p>\n

Getting up at 7AM the following morning wasn\u2019t the easiest task, but there was no way I was going to miss Costa Rica\u2019s most active volcano, Arenal.\u00a0 If there\u2019s anything that wakes you up in the morning it\u2019s vistas of liquid hot magma chased by hot springs with waters of varying temperature both with and without aqua-bars.\u00a0 Seeing this volcano may very well have been the highlight of the trip.\u00a0 It was majestic, impressive, and humbling all at once.<\/p>\n

Our final weekend we visited Tortuguero, an island in the Caribbean where turtles go to lay their eggs.\u00a0 It was quite a trek to get there, but, when we did, it was worth it.\u00a0 The beaches were astounding; the water was the perfect temperature, unattainable in any bath or Sharper-Image product.\u00a0 I went fishing and canoeing; both offered uncanny views of the Caribbean Coast.\u00a0 The canals behind Tortuguero made me feel like I was in the Amazon and far more intrepid than my mom may have liked.\u00a0 We saw three types of monkeys, a sloth, toucans, crocodiles, and many other animals for which I lack the proper nomenclature. The trip was a blast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The following weekend was our departure, which was bitter sweet.\u00a0 I had such an indescribably good time and bonded with my host family, with whom I still keep in touch, but as always it\u2019s good to be back in the old U.S. of A. as well as Hampden-Sydney.\u00a0 The trip had such an effect on me that I have decided to minor in International Studies as well as a Spanish minor.\u00a0 I would advise anyone who is thinking about doing a study abroad program to just check all reservations at the door because for me it was the experience of a lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by R. Wesley Proctor ’10 I don\u2019t really know how to describe my preconceptions going into my May Term abroad program in Costa Rica other than about 95% pure excitement mixed with 5% apprehension about living with a foreign family whom I knew relatively little about, not to mention the language barrier. Hindsight is 20\/20 and I have the good fortune of being able to say that I would not have done anything differently. Pushing myself to speak the language and interact with the family and the local community yielded tremendous dividends in both conversational improvement as well as in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[19,59],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-term","tag-costa-rica","tag-proctor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2738,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/2738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}