Dr O
ASU in Costa Rica Joined: May 17th 2008
Logged in: January 25th 2012
Logged in: January 25th 2012
This year, there are 15 students in the ASU Study Spanish in Costa Rica group. The students will be studying Spanish at el Centro Panamericano de Idiomas (CPI) and will live with families in San Joaquin and in Monteverde, Costa Rica, for a month this summer. If you are interested in seeing pictures and reading about what the group is doing in Costa Rica, this is the place for you! Each new entry will be at the top (just scroll down from here), and entries further down are from the 2008, 2009, and 2010 programs. To see all of the pictures and videos in each entry about this year's group, click on "read more," since only the first four pictures will show up on the first page of the blog. This year, the students will join me in uploading photos, stories, and cultural information so that friends and family at home can enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience with them!
Just scroll down to check out our Costa Rica blog and please check back every few days between June 5 and July 3 for updates. When you look at an entry, be sure to click on "read more" to see lots more pictures! Otherwise, you will only see the first few pictures of each entry. After you look at any entry, please send comments, either to individual students or to the whole group. That way, you can participate in the blog with the students!
We hope you enjoy the blog!
Travel Blog Posts
CPI Monteverde
This will be the last entry of our Costa Rica 2011 blog. The program is almost over and we are getting ready for a long day of travel tomorrow. On Friday afternoon at CPI, we got out of classes about 15 minutes early and our teachers here in Monteverde had a little "end-of-the-program" ceremony for us. Each teacher said some kind words about our group and presented us with certificates. Then we watched a DVD of highlights of our month in Costa Rica that Meggie, our special CPI staff member, had put together for us. Finally, we filled out program evaluations and got instructions for the weekend. I am including a few photos of the school at Monteverde, since it is so beautiful, along with photos of the little ceremony. Most of us spent today, ... read more
Justin (Author of this Entry)
The school system in Costa Rica is rather large considering the size of the country, covering more than 25% of the population of the country in some facet, either through employment as instructors or attending the schools themselves as students. Before the 1949 constitution abolished the army, one of Costa Rica's proudest claims was that the number of teachers overshadowed the number of soldiers. Education has been an important element in the pride of the country for sometime, even though recent studies have shown that the fruits of the educational system and the funds being put into it aren't quite as sunny as many Ticos would like. For instance, the average number of years of education for the Costa Rican adult (5.7) is lower than Panama (6.6), Trinidad-Tobago (8.4), Colombia (7.5) and Cuba (8.0). (Manuel Delgado, ... read more
Hailie (Author of this Entry)
On Sunday, June 26th, I got to be a part of a major cultural event here in Costa Rica. Corpus Christi is a Catholic holiday that is celebrated by many Costa Ricans and the name refers to "the body of Christ." The event commemorates the last supper on the day before Jesus' crucifixion. At 5:30 am, I joined Abby and her host family to help "paint the streets" for the Corpus Christi parade in Santa Elena, Costa Rica. We worked until 9:00 am decorating sections of the street with flowers, grass, mulch and twigs. I really didn't know what to expect, but the results were beautiful! We worked with other families and members of the church to create pictures of angels, peace signs, crosses and other holy images on the street. It felt great to be ... read more
The Riders
Here in Monteverde, we have the option to add some activities to our itinerary. Each individual can choose which activities he or she wants to do and pay for them separately. The prices are very reasonable and there are lots of choices, so everyone has been able to join in on at least one extra activity. It won't be possible to cover all of them in the blog (since this is our last week), but this entry will give you an idea about one of them -- horseback riding. Nine members of the group had the chance to ride down a country road, through open fields, along the edge of a mountain and through a dense forest, all in the course of a 2-hour ride. The weather was perfect that day and the views were spectacular. ... read more
Group at Arenal
We spent last weekend in the Arenal Volcano area. Besides the volcano itself, a highlight was our beautiful hotel. We were greeted with a welcome fruit drink and a relaxing warm hand towelette before we were shown to our rooms. Each room was a little villa with gardens for privacy and a spectacular view of the volcano. It is very common to miss seeing the volcano entirely, since it is often clouded over, but we were lucky and could see it during most of our visit. On Saturday evening, we went to soak and relax at Baldi Hot Springs, which is a series of thermal springs from the volcano in natural-looking pools. There are also small waterfalls and couple of waterslides. We don't have pictures from Baldi Hot Springs because we were busy in the water ... read more
ASU Group at Café Britt
This entry is a little bit out of order because we went to Café Britt last week, but things had to slow down a bit to have enough time to get it posted. Café Britt is one of the top export brands of coffee in Costa Rica, and their coffee tour is one of the top tourist attractions in the country as well. It is an entertaining, informative and hands-on coffee experience. Since coffee is Costa Rica's primary export product, this tour (or another coffee tour) should be on everyone's itinerary when they visit Costa Rica. Our Café Britt guide, Mario, handed out chocolate covered coffee beans to everyone before starting to explain the ins and outs of coffee growing and production. He was joined after a few minutes by the plantation owner (an actor/tour guide ... read more
Monteverde
After a very busy weekend of traveling and visiting the Arenal Volcano area (pictures coming in a later entry), we arrived in Monteverde late Sunday afternoon. We had been on a winding and bumpy unpaved road for the last hour and a half of the trip, since that is the only way to get to Monteverde. Everyone was a little bit apprehensive about meeting new host families. When we got to Sabores ice cream shop (the meeting point in Monteverde), all of the families were already there, since we arrived about half an hour later than expected. It was difficult to keep up with taking pictures of everyone because the families were eager to meet their new guests and take them home. Some brought entire families and some just arrived with one adult, but there should ... read more
Erica at La Carpio
We have been immersed in this beautiful country for almost two weeks now! It’s hard to believe. It has passed so quickly. I personally have enjoyed each opportunity I’ve had to see the beautiful wonders of the land as well as the rich culture that is embedded in every pebble seen. I have to admit. I’ve never had such an impression as the one that I received during our visit as volunteers through The Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation in a place called La Carpio. La Carpio is an impoverished neighborhood in Costa Rica where the common struggles of everyday life consist of extreme poverty, physical and psychological abuse, malnutrition, drug addiction, and alcoholism. I wanted to explain the experience correctly so whoever reads this might get a good sense of the impact the place leaves on ... read more
Up-Close Monkey
5 or 6 spider monkeys, at least 8 white-faced monkeys, 6 sloths, 4 pairs of scarlet macaws, 10-20 crocodiles, two large iguanas, numerous miscellaneous lizards, tons of hermit crabs, one baby aguti and two adult agutis, one toucan and a very busy raccoon -- that was the wildlife count from our weekend at the Pacific Coast. We saw most of them within the borders of Manuel Antonio National Park, where the unusual land formation creates calm, greenish blue water with smooth beaches bordered by the palm trees and forests where the animals live. We had the chance to hike through the forest, enjoy the beach, use the pools at the hotel, eat some incredibly good food, shop for bargains at some little stands near the public beach, go dancing and even sing Karaoke. Our driver, Carlos, ... read more
Erica and Brayden
Salsa, anyone? How about merengue or cumbia? No, they are not appetizers or desserts before or after a Costa Rican meal. They are Latin American dances and now we are pros at doing them. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but at least we had a lot of fun trying to learn them. Luis, the dance instructor AND exercise instructor at CPI, led us in an energetic introduction to the basic steps and rhythms of these three types of dances. There was as much laughing and giggling as there was dancing, but you can see from the pictures that everyone did well. ... read more
