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I traveled every weekend during my month studying abroad. The first two weekends I traveled with my study abroad group, and the second two weekends I just traveled with one other lady. Each Wednesday I would warn my teacher that I wasn’t going to be in class on Friday. She would give me the homework I would be missing, which I completed during the bus rides. To share all of the details of my travels would be an enormous task, but I will give a broad overview. The first weekend, my study abroad group and I rented a van from USAC to take us to Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio is a small town on the Pacific coast, but it is mostly known for its national park. The park is a tourist haven and costs $10 to ... read more

1. I would recommend getting in shape before traveling to Costa Rica. This is beneficial not only because of all of the beautiful hikes available around the country, but because running is a phenomenal way of exploring the local area. Whenever I had no evening activities planned I would put on my running shoes and start running with nothing but a general idea of the direction I wished to go. I ran all around the Heredia area. Middle class houses give way to gated mansions and, as I ran farther, houses became sparser and gardens began to fill the steep slopes of foothills. Houses became smaller and more ramshackle. I do not believe that this was a sign of poverty; rather, it seemed to be Ticos living contentedly with what they had. I had a few ... read more

1. Directly in front of campus is a great ATM. If you talk to your bank ahead of time, you won’t get charged much for foreign transactions. I was only charged $1.50 for each ATM transaction. I would recommend just waiting until you’re in Costa Rica and taking money out of an ATM, because I exchanged money at the airport and I think that I got ripped off. However, if you’re like me and haven’t dealt with a lot of ATMs, be careful. The ATM sucked my debit card in, I conducted my business, and then my debit card came back out. I was looking at my receipt and, ignoring a soft beeping sound, took my time grabbing my card. To my dismay, the ATM ate my card! It does this for safety purposes to protect ... read more

1. The traffic here takes a bit of getting used to. Not the quantity of traffic, but more the way people drive. The first rule I figured out was the most important, and a necessary one for leaving Costa Rica alive: cars, buses, and semis have the right of way. This sounds easy to adjust to, but in reality it takes a bit of adaptation. The sidewalks here are generally very narrow, and in some places they don’t really exist. Therefore, walks through the city require a state of constant awareness (at least initially), and you have to be prepared to quickly jump out of the way if you here a horn behind you. While cars have the right of way over people, every car seems to think that they have the right of way over ... read more

1. : I was in Costa Rica for 5 weeks and taking 7 credit hours, so I was extremely busy with classes. I sort of wish I had taken less of a load so that I didn’t have to study so much, but I figured that, since grades don’t transfer back to Kansas State, I should knock out as many credits as possible. That said, I didn’t slack off; slacking off in language classes would be pointless when you’re trying to learn a language. I also took classes above my technical ability level, which forced me to push myself. With only one semester of Spanish under my belt at Kansas State, I was a little nervous when I enrolled in Intermediate Spanish and Spanish Conversation, but the classes forced me to work hard and I learned ... read more