My last few days in America were beyond hectic. Believe me when I say you do NOT want to know how packing went. Despite all six weeks of preparation, I still didn’t even finish packing until an hour before leaving for the airport. The night before I even went to Rutgers University to cheer on my a cappella group, The Lehigh Melismatics, in a big competition. I’m just happy that I somehow managed to not get an over-weight baggage charge. Hoorah!

I had been dreading the flight over more than anything else. I’ve been flying all of my life, but last year, when visiting my best friend Shannon in Barcelona, I developed an irrational fear of flying. I literally have spent every flight since gripping the arm rests and square breathing. I’m not sure what it was – perhaps my friend Sarah talking to me and keeping my mind off of things – but I made it through the flights with no problem. I slept a lot, and it only took me a day or so to stop feeling jetlagged. All in all, I’d say it was a success!

We spent the next four days at the Sydney Academy of Sports and Recreation in Narabeen. Truthfully, I was a little antsy to get to my apartment in Coogee, but orientation ended up being pretty fun. We had time to get to know our roommates, housemates, and people in our program, which was really nice. We went to the Taronga Zoo, walked around Circular Quay, took surfing lessons, and had some aboriginal bands perform for us. The orientation was a really great way for us to get over our jetlag, get to know each other, and introduce us into Australian culture.

On Friday we finally got to move into our apartments. My expectations were more than exceeded. Our apartment, which is brand new, is about a five-minute walk from the beach, and has a ton of security. It’s fully furnished with a big living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and two bath. We have four balconies in our apartment alone. How crazy is that?!

This past week my friends and I have been doing a lot of exploring. I think we’ve eaten at pretty much every restaurant there is in Coogee, have done shopping in Randwick and Eastgartens, gone to the Sydney Aquarium, of course gone to the beach, and have gone to UNSW a few times for orientation-related things. I’m actually off to our last day of Orientation Week now!

That’s all for now. It’s funny to think that there’s snow on the ground at Lehigh University, and I’m about to walk out of the house in a sun dress. I’m not complaining ☺

Maracaibo is beautiful. Abuelo wants me to say, “Maracaibo is the most beautiful city in the world,” but…there are a lot of cities I haven’t seen. Let’s keep it beautiful for now.

We drove around without traffic, despite it being midday. We ate the same lunch we usually had in Caracas for a third of the price. And we saw the bridge that spans the Lake of Maracaibo, the fourth largest bridge in Latin America.

Not only that, but we saw it from La Vereda del Lago Maracaibo.

La vereda, for all of us, stood out the most in contrast to life in Caracas. Here, a four-lane divided road has been re-appropriated (note: not expropriated, despite the trendiness of Venezuelan expropriations), half of it for pedestrians, skaters, and cyclists, while the other half functions as a two-lane, two-way road.

We arrived around 4 PM on a weekday, and already a good number of people were either exercising or passing the evening in the company of friends and family. By 5:30, when the work crowd had been spilling in for the past half hour, the park was full. People were passing this way and that, running, biking, walking dogs, while others cuddled up in the park’s hammocks or next to the lake. The people were out, enjoying a beautiful evening, watching the sunset, and socializing. This is how it should be, we though. But this is not how it is in Caracas.

Gertrudis and I decided to make the most of it. We rented bicycles from the park’s local shop, just over $1 each for half an hour at the official exchange rate. One doesn’t expect perfection for $1 – I rode around with my knees and chin colliding – but one does expect a good time. And, indeed, one was had by all. I even have a picture to prove it.

The abuelos had a romantic walk along the lake’s edge while the youngsters had their fun, and half an hour later we met up for coconut water. I found it within a giant coconut, at least 10 feet in diameter, complete with a giant candy-cane striped straw and a margarita umbrella sticking out the top of it. Inside, a college engineering student, my age, sold not only coconut water but also cocada and coconut cookies. Delighted, I ordered a natural cocada, which consisted of coconut, ice, milk, sugar and vanilla all blended together into frappe bliss. And the cookies… They didn’t have any flour, just coconut flakes, shortening, and pineapple concentrate. The texture of baked, dried coconut is a paradox of dry and moist that is best described as “wow.”

Barrigita llena, corazón contento. Full belly, happy heart.

So we were, full and content, as we snapped this last picture of me in front of the bridge before heading home for the night.

February 10th & 11th

We arrived at Tío Arnoldo’s house around noon. We planned to chat for half an hour or so, as we had everywhere else, and then go out for lunch. What we didn’t realize was that Arnold’s wife sent him out to pick up lunch for all of us. And twenty minutes later there we were, sitting together at the table with plates full of lasagna, fried rice, and rolls. All of which ran completely against my diet and Gertrudis’s.

As somebody who doesn’t eat meat, who almost never touches white bread/rice/pasta, these were my problems: lasagna – white pasta, ham; fried rice – white rice, pork, chicken, and at least two other unidentified forms of meat; roll – pure white flour. And Gertrudis doesn’t eat grains or dairy products or salt, ruling out…everything. So what did we both do?

We cleared our plates, of course. Not because the food was delicious, but because this family had gone out of their way to feed us. And we had a great time. Arnoldo talked about how Venezuela has become a burrocracia, where the burros, or asses, rule. We had fun with words – I invented burrología and burrólogos, the only university subject and professors that are supported by the current government.

Gertrudis and I left dizzy, feeling intoxicated – poisoned, really – by the foods we’ve avoided for so long, but one might say que valió la pena.

The next day we stopped in Cubiro, a town in the mountains near Barquisimeto, somewhere in between Bachaquero and Caracas. Our first stop looked like a scene from the Sound of Music: we walked up a rolling green hill, and from the top we saw a valley of hills surrounded by mountain peaks. A gate several meters away held in a few dairy cows, and a man came out moments later to offer us strawberries with cream, neither of which could have possibly have been any fresher. It was a beautiful break, a sharp contrast from the city, the hacienda, and the pothole-ridden highway connecting the two. After we savored our dessert, the gentleman recommended we check out a restaurant down the road and, given how much we enjoyed his dessert, we took him at his word.

The name of the restaurant – El Chupa – was mysterious to us all. (Chupar means “to suck” – you can imagine the uses of such a verb.) But our anxieties disappeared when the owner of the restaurant greeted us shouting, “My queens! My kings! Welcome! Please, sit wherever you would like and allow me to serve you.” We followed her command, then asked for her recommendations. “To the prince, I recommend the chupi-chupi.” I didn’t know what that was, but I said, “Okay! I’ll have the chupi-chupi.” Which was to say, “I will have the fried pork, plantains, black beans topped with white cheese, rice, and a salad so heavily dressed I will think it is cole slaw.”

And, what do you know? They delivered! Everything was delicious. The black beans were silky with just a touch of al dente perfection. Their smoky flavor combined perfectly with the ripe, sweet plantains and the salty, creamy fresh cheese. The pork, sliced into large cubes, was crispy and salty on the outside, while the thin strips of fat that ran throughout the inside gave the pork a melt-in-your-mouth feel. And the flavor: it suffices to say that only pork, high-quality pork, possesses the kind of flavor this possessed, the kind that is just waiting to be perceived by human taste buds.

The salad…it was cole slaw.

The meal was finished in the style that every meal in Venezuela is finished – with a shot of Venezuelan coffee, always impeccable. There are, unfortunately, shops that are now replacing their espresso machines with Nescafé coffee-pod abominations, but El Chupa served us fresh coffee with a pinch of sugar. Or a handful. The coffee might best have been described as “syrupy.”

And we drank it anyways. Who were we to turn down their hospitality?

Blizzard in Minnesota the day before I leave. Over a foot of snow….perfect timing

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I’ll start with this simple statement: my apartment is fan-tas-tic. As in, I wake up every morning feeling as if I’m living the high life in the jungle.

Why am I living the high life, you ask?

Well, my room looks over a pool and palm trees and a gazebo, and if I turn my head to the left a little I get a view of the mountains. Connecting to my room is a patio sort of thing, with large windows that open up without screens so you can let in all the sunshine and fresh air without going outside into the scorching sun. We’ve got a dishwasher, washer and dryer, our own bathrooms, and nice big closets for all of the stuff we can’t afford to buy. Now that I think I’ve figured out how to add pictures, there should be some of my place in this post.

Our first day in Cairns, we went on the SkyRail, which took us up over the rainforest. At one point, all you could see were clouds, and you could hear the chattering of countless birds around you. The SkyRail stopped twice on our way to Kuranda, and we got to walk right in the heart of the rainforest, while a guide explained about the ancient trees and a funny plant I can’t remember the name of, but if you walk into it its little prickers will cut you.

The SkyRail ended too soon in my opinion, but we were finally in Kuranda, and had hours to ourselves to do whatever we liked. It was the first time since we arrived in Australia that I had time to myself, so I took advantage of it and wandered leisurely through the village.

But there were so many things to buy . . . so many things I knew I would never get a chance to buy back home. At one point, I walked back and forth to the ATM, fighting with myself on whether to extract money for a canvas painting or not. I resisted . . . and then bought a boomerang.

Well, you can’t win every battle. At least the boomerang was three-times cheaper than the tapestry. I also got these really tasty lollies (candies) from a shop there, and have been restricting myself to one or two a day in the hopes of making them last.

Speaking of food, I miss home food. A lot. With the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. Maybe it’s my addiction to sugar that’s rearing its ugly head, but everything tastes so much better back in good ‘ol VT. But even as I force down the Chex-like cereals, I know that the time away from sugary home food will be for the better. I feel healthier . . . but I resent it. It’ll take some time to appreciate the change.

An experience I should probably mention is shopping. The walk to Smithfield, the big shopping plaza, is half an hour. I was dreading the walk when I first heard about it, but maybe that was because it was raining and I ended up walking with no shoes, pushing my shopping cart full of groceries down the sidewalk like a bum. Now I enjoy the walk. Since I haven’t been able to find any good trails to walk yet, that has become my trail. There’s a little student express mart across the highway, maybe a five minute walk, but I braved it this afternoon and felt that crossing through that many lanes of traffic is just a little-to risky to do often.

So, in my opinion, take the walk to Smithfield. The sun is always shining, it’s warm out, and you can appreciate the beautiful day–which it will be, since every day is gorgeous here, even when it’s raining.

Honestly, I wake up in the morning, step out onto my porch, and think: damn, life is good, isn’t it?

So really, this past week has been time to explore for me. I’ve wandered to Smithfield a few times, played chicken-crossing-the-road to get to the expressmart, navigated the JCU campus (which is equally fantastic in terms of natural beauty), and essentially established where my apartment is in regards to most things within a mile radius.

Something I’ve learned in this past week when it comes to scheduling classes is that the Australians have a much different system than we do. You pick classes without knowing when they are, then check out your schedule to see if lectures overlap. If they do, you need to reschedule, but if they don’t, you need to check the (often) five options of tutorial times, and hope that when it comes time to pick your group, you get the one you want. When you first look at it, it seems as if you’re taking fifteen classes in a week, which, for a foreign student like myself, freaks you out. Luckily, I’ve gotten everything straightened away at this point, except I need to ask the registrar back home to approve the new class I had to switch in for one that conflicted with another class. But even if they don’t approve me, I’m taking it.

I mean, how many people can say they took an Indigenous Studies class? On a scale of one-to-ten, Vermont’s cultural variety is about a .2.

Well, now it’s time for dinner, and since necessity has yet to compel me to cook an actual meal, I’m going to make a hearty peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I can only make so much progress in a week.

This week’s updates on my helpful suggestions lists:

Run Run Run As Fast As You Can (List of Things to Stay Away From and/or Avoid)

1. The Scary Biker Chick Smoking on the Side of the Road (You gotta walk that path to get back home with your shopping cart of groceries, so just smile meekly and scurry on your way. Ignore the fact that she might put that cigarette out in your eye.)

Check It Out! (List of Things to . . . Well, Check Out)

1. The Kuranda SkyRail (You’ve never see anything like Barron Falls before, so I also suggest taking the Kuranda Railway back down the mountain after you take the SkyRail up. The rainforest is, as I have mentioned earlier, gorgeous.)

2. Internet (I know, it sounds random, but reception up here is close to zero, so go to a Telstra shop, get one of the Internet USB sticks, and bring your passport, because your Vermont license doesn’t count for squat here, and then the phone number they gave to call you might not work, so you’ll have to trudge back to Smithfield to have them authorize it. . . . Yeah, just get your Internet as soon as possible.)

3. Cairns (The city is about twenty-thirty minutes away from the JCU campus, so take a bus and see the sights. You may not go to most of those places, but at least you’ll have an idea of where they are.)

Well here I am, two weeks into my trip to Australia and I have yet to update the blog here.  I am going to blame in very very limited internet for the past few weeks but it has really also just been mass chaos as I have been trying to get everything over here set.  Before I get into what has happened the past few weeks, I will give you a bit of background on me, my life, and my plans here in Australia.

I am currently a Junior at the University of Redlands in California.  Redlands is a small liberal arts school in the mountains east of LA.  I have lived in Southern California all of my life so I am a California girl through and through.  I am studying speech pathology and am actually almost done with my degree and will be graduating a semester early (winter 2011).  I certainly have not done the typical college thing because I am doing a year abroad.  This semester (spring 2011) is actually my second semester abroad.  Last semester I was abroad in Costa Rica with IFSA Butler.  I had an amazing time in Costa Rica so I am very excited to be here in Australia with IFSA.  This transition from States to Costa Rica to States and now to Australia has been a bit much but I am very excited to see what life has to hold for me here.

Now on to Australia stuff:

I left about two weeks ago on the group flight that left out of LAX.  My parents just drove me up there so thankfully I only had the one 14 hour flight.  The flight itself was not bad, I slept for most of it as I had been so busy unpacking what never got unpacked from Costa Rica and repacking everything back up, that I had not gotten much sleep.  When I arrived in Sydney, we were met by the IFSA staff and taken to our orientation site.  We were at this sports park that had a motel on the campus (think summer sleep away camp where you do lots of sports).  On our first day we took a hike around the campus and received some info on life in Australia.  At about 7pm we were all exhausted and basically just crashed.  Day two consisted of a trip to the zoo in the city and then some time to walk around and see the Opera House and surround area.  The next day we had our information sessions about our university here.  I am at Macquarie University which is about 45 minutes on the train outside of the center of Sydney.  After our info session we headed out for some surf lessons.  Finally, on Thursday we headed out to the actually university and moved into our rooms.  I am living in what is call the University Village which is basically a collection of town houses that have 5 students living in each one.  We each have our own bedroom and bathroom and just share a kitchen and common area (random fact: this is where the Canadian Olympic team stayed during the Olympics).  Hopefully I will have a little video tour uploaded for you all soon.

For the past week and a half we have just been hanging out here in Sydney, getting use to everything here.  Classes did start today which I was actually quite excited about.  It has been a bit hard with nothing to do so school will be a good time filler.

I think that is about it for now.  I am sure I missed something but I will try and fill it in later.  I am going to try and get videos up today or tomorrow (provided that I can actually be smarter than the computer and flip camera and figure that out).  If you all have any questions about being abroad in Australia, Costa Rica, in general, or just whatever, feel free to message me.  This is my second go around with this whole abroad thing so I kinda have a bit of a handle on it and can try and answer questions.

There are times when borders have no gates and other times when the border is more than just the physical reminders of gates and barriers, but a presence in the air, a sensation that pervades all around you.  When I took the bus up from Dublin to Belfast for one of Butler’s weekend trips I crossed multiple borders; technical and imagined, seen and unseen.

I couldn’t make the first evening and day of Butler’s trip because I had a few classes I couldn’t afford to miss so I only have the word of a number of trusted friends that the sights of Giant’s Causeway and other such highlights were magnificent things to behold and wonder. My journey instead took me by Bus Eireann up to Northern Ireland.  Like Greyhound and other forms of mass transport in the States, Bus Eireann has its fair shares of what some call “Lynch-ian” characters, in other words the bizarre people that seem to only exist on bus routes and disappear immediately thereafter.  There were the rowdy and loud teenagers near the back, the tired and saggy middle-aged and old shutting their eyes from the world around them, the person with absolutely no luggage but five grocery bags filled with food and who-knows-what-else, the college kid with eyes lost out the window…  There was no checkpoint or border stop when we entered Northern Ireland.

Two, three hours later I found myself in downtown, central “South” Belfast. I checked into the hotel Bulter had put us in, which was actually pretty nice.  Since the rest of the Butler crew was still out on their planned adventures I took advantage of the remaining daylight and sunshine while I still had it to go tour around the city by myself and try to get the feel of Belfast.  My aimless wanderings were somewhat aided by the tourist maps and signs posted about the city, since I hadn’t the foggiest clue which way was which.  My little lost feet found me along the river with beautiful buildings and bridges along the waterfront as the sun disappeared to the west and night overtook the city.  My eyes eventually spied a sign that stopped me in my tracks, advertising pints for £2, which, even after the conversion back to euros, meant I could fill myself with wonderful Guinness for half the price I could in Dublin. I firmly planted myself against the bar, ordered my pint and learned, to whatever truth it may actually hold, that the pipes for the Guinness tap have to be cleaned every two weeks or the taste and consistency changes considerably, or so said the bartender to the native Belfastians with accents I couldn’t begin to comprehend, except that they loved Guinness.  It was after a few pints that I was found by a few of the Butler guys at TCD who were on the re way to dinner, so I joined them for a bite and friendly conversation.

The next morning after breakfast they spilt us up into three sections, with each section at a time being taken on the Black Cab Tour of Belfast’s famous “troubled” sites. They explained that in the city center, South Belfast, things were fine nowadays and nothing bad really happens there, but in West Belfast the trouble is still a very felt presence.  At our first stop we were given a brief bit of history of how the calamities began way back hundreds of years ago and how they’ve been evolving yet staying basically the same ever since.  All around us were housing units in decent, not terrible nor fantastic, condition, and almost every single one of them on one end had a mural painted on it.

You can divide the murals into two basic types: peace murals and the violence or war murals.  I care to blanket them into such black and white categories because, from what I saw, they all pretty much fit perfectly into those two choices.  There were murals dedicated to innocent civilians killed in the violence, to murdered children, to ending the hate, the suffering, and the violence. Then there were those proclaiming the justice of the cause, loyalist to Britain or separatist to, dedicated to “volunteers” of the fighting factions.  One that was pointed out to us, a painted mural of a guy in his twenties with a backwards baseball cap and “thug bling” around his neck, had been connected to the killings of somewhere between thirty and fifty people before he was himself killed.  The guide made reference to that by saying it would be akin to Americans painting a picture of OJ Simpson on the sides of buildings, or any other person famously connected with murder.  The impression stayed.

Next they took us to the Peace Wall, a name aptly or poorly fit depending on your feelings about the situation in front of you.  The Peace Wall is a series of walls that separate the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, thusly creating a semblance of distance and safety from the other group when they would otherwise be separated by a distance of about thirty or forty yards.  On the wall are quotes and signatures of hundreds if not thousands of people who have made a pilgrimage to the site to write words of peace.  You can find quotes from the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton, and other famous figures whom have traveled there to promote peace between the two sides; you can also find the scorch marks from Molotov cocktails and bomb blasts.  The guides then showed us large gates connected to portions of the wall, leading into the communities inside.  Every night they are still locked and sealed around 9:30, under guard.  Every single night, after all these years.

After the tour a group of us walked around the city center, coming upon a huge open market full of stalls of vendors of every sort. Fish mongers, butchers, bakers, pastry chefs, farmers, weavers, nearly everything you could want and maybe a little bit more.  I got myself a delicious jerk chicken wrap from a Jamaican lady and listened to two young guys on guitars play an eclectic cover of songs, from Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens, to maybe the best cover of the Counting Crows “Round Here” that I’ve ever heard.

I walked on my own around the city for a while, see if I could find some sights.  I had with me a brochure for a tour of the place where the Titanic was built, and since it didn’t look very far away on the tiny map in my hands, I thought why not and went off to find it.  Once again, my poor navigational skills led me astray from my goal and I wound up a few miles down a road I had no intention of going down.  I ended up, I found out later, in East Belfast, a place that hadn’t been named on the tour before. It was walking here that I began to get a feeling in me, an eerie presence I couldn’t quite place, like something was off or that I had crossed over some imaginary line.  As the feeling got stronger, I saw the first mural, a peace one, with a strong message begging for the violence and hate to cease. Thirty feet away was another mural, dedicated this time to the Red Hand of Ulster, the Loyalist forces, which said they would never give up their true and just fight for English rule. A store that sold nothing but Union Jack souvenirs.  Mural after mural, memorial after memorial dedicated to fallen volunteers/soldiers.  At one point, someone pulled out of a parking spot in their car, popping a rock out from under a wheel, which made me jump in fright.  Even though nothing around me was actually threatening, the broad daylight did little to shield me from the primitive fear from hearing all the stories of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being killed just because.

During the tour earlier, they mentioned how in Belfast the fighting wasn’t between blacks and whites or other stereotypical fighting like that, it was between Catholics and Protestants. Someone asked if you could tell the difference, if there were signs. They said no, not really, you couldn’t really tell just by looking at someone.  I hate myself for this bit of immaturity, but when I heard that the first thought that came to mind was how stupid it was to fight over such meaningless differences, when you couldn’t even tell by looking at a person. But, really, do looks really matter, either?  In a way, that’s part of the message I took from the tour and the trip.  It was easy to get up caught up on one side, and say the other one was at fault because blah blah blah, and then mock the whole thing for being ridiculous, as opposed to other similar tragedies.  As I walked back to the city center, I went through a street of alternating violent and peaceful murals and unlocked gates.  War and peace until I passed the one I saw when I entered, that rang out a resounding “No more!”

This blog is a lot different than previous blogs that I have written. The creative juices were flowing and I went with it…enjoy!

During the last few weeks the IFSA-Butler program of productions has launched a new season of the hit reality show “Gringos in Costa Rica.” The original cast has been completely revamped, with guest appearances by Carli Trail and Jerusha Hawkins (myself) who were participants in last season’s show. However, rumor has it that these two plan to be regular participants in the show. Modern viewers (those of you reading this blog) have reported that this is a much better picture of living and surviving in another country. Participants in the reality show say that it is a truly remarkable and eye-opening experience, often scoffing at the ever-popular Survivor TV show and its failure to bring realistic experiences to its viewers.

While the outline of the series remains the same, the challenges, experiences, and adventures are sure to be different. Already, there have been changes in the location of the IFSA-Butler Orientation. This season it was held in Monteverde with the participants (students) arriving on the 22 of January. Orientation commenced with the traditional lectures on Costa Rica etiquette, study habits, language learning, and several need-to-know tips on banking, visas, embassy registration and so forth.

The weekend excursion this season was a trip to Fortuna, a town near the Arenal Volcano. It was during this episode (January 28-30) that Jerusha Hawkins made her first appearance on the show alongside the new participants, but Carli Trail, due to scheduling conflicts, unfortunately wasn’t able to make an appearance at that time. The students spent an afternoon in the town shopping, sight-seeing, and chatting. Later that evening the participants relaxed at a “big Jacuzzi”—a large man-made pool naturally heated by the many thermal vents in the area around the Arenal Volcano. The following day, the participants tested their strength and stamina in a hike to a waterfall (a short and relatively easy hike in reality).

Back in Heredia, the new participants to the show continued their orientation, while Jerusha and Carli were content to pass the time amongst themselves, only appearing with the other students to take part in registration—a challenge of often bitter memories amongst foreign exchange students. At the end of the week, Carli and Jerusha presented a slideshow and gave a short presentation of general advice to the other participants. There have been reports that the new participants are asking Jerusha and Carli lots of questions about the previous season and what they can expect from this season’s show.  

During the most recent episode, the participants face their biggest challenge yet—university classes. This challenge is expected to last a total of 18 weeks, by the end of which the participants are hoping to be able to handle the Spanish language with relative ease. Of course, throughout the season there will be other challenges as well, but those are not on the forefront of the students’ minds right now.

We recently caught up with Jerusha, in order to hear her thoughts as she starts a new season and continues the brutal challenge of university classes in a foreign language.

Are you excited to start a new semester in the university?

“I am very excited for this semester. It is still a challenge for me sometimes. I feel like there is still a lot to learn about the Spanish language and the Costa Rican culture. ”

Why did you choose to stay for another season?

“Originally, when I was deciding whether or not I wanted to study abroad, I asked the IFSA-Butler Costa Rica Program Advisor if it would be worthwhile to spend two semesters studying abroad. She said that many who had only gone for one semester wished that they had stayed for two and those that had stayed for two were glad that they did. So I decided to stay for two semesters.”

How are you feeling about the new group?

“One should never judge a new group by the old group. It is not fair to the new students. I was blessed to know the participants of last season’s show and I am working hard to get to know this group.”

How do you think the new participants are handling the show’s challenges?

“I think they are doing quite well. They are a very diligent group and try to speak in Spanish all the time. I think they will be able to look back on this experience with many memories and lots of pride in their accomplishments.”

What are your hopes for this season?

“I am excited to have already experienced and succeeded in those daily cultural challenges, which were so overwhelming last semester, allowing me to focus on Spanish even more this semester. I really want to increase my vocabulary and speaking ability during this season.”

We wish the best of luck to the new participants and as well as Jerusha and Carli during this season’s show. Tune in to this blog as often as you want to get up-to-date information about “Gringos in Costa Rica” right here on the IFSA-Butler website!

This is a brief account of what orientation week was like in Auckland.

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