Submitted by Elsley Hazell on the 2024 Winter SPAN program in Costa Rica…
We had a few excursions within our first week in Costa Rica! All of the students live with a roommate at a host family’s house in Heredia, Costa Rica. Our first excursion was January 7th, the day after we landed and we did a short bus and walking tour around Heredia. Our next excursion was Thursday the 11th where we went to a Toucan Rescue Center! They have more than just Toucan’s, but that’s the animal they started the center with. There were sloths, an otter, an Oncilla, Toucan’s, monkeys and various other kinds of birds and animals.
On Saturday the 13th we traveled into San José and did a few tours there. We started with Costa Rica’s National Theatre that features many famous works of art relevant to Costa Rica’s history. The most important one being the Alegoría al Café y al Banano (Allegory of the Coffee and the Bananas), it was painted by an Italian painter (who had never been to Costa Rica) so there are inconsistencies, but regardless of that the painting still means a lot to the people of Costa Rica. After the theater was finished being built in 1897 Beethoven happened to be the first person to perform at its grand opening.
I can’t say that I have experienced an overwhelming amount of culture shock, and that’s because I like to try to keep an open mind about things I don’t understand these days. There are so many things I haven’t learned yet or experienced yet in my life and I think it’s unfair to myself to set “expectations” of what I will experience. Obviously I have goals and aspirations, but I can never truly know what to expect when experiencing something new. (Submitted on January 14, 2024)
