¡Aquí vengo Cancún! I’m heading to Cancún for a nice vacation in August. Once again, it has piqued my interest in living in another country. Costa Rica really let me down when I went to see if I liked it. The crime rate there is so off the chart it’s not even funny. I felt like I could’ve been robbed, or worse, at any time when I was in public. There was no easiness other than at school or my home-stay. It’s sad because it really is a beautiful country but wearing a watch and being gringo all but guarantees you a bad day.
Hopefully Cancún, being all about tourism, will have a much lower crime rate. It would be nice to find a kickass place to spend a few months practicing my Spanish and working on la playa.
As stated in my previous post, I’ve wanted to go to Costa Rica for some time now. Some diligent research over the past few days has led me to a Costa Rica immersion school. The Costa Rican Language Academy or CRLA is a private institution specializing in Spanish language instruction. They offer homestays in which you stay with an actual Costa Rican family. Spend a few hours every day in class learning Spanish and then take it home to your Costa Rican family and practice. This is perfect for me in that it will be a great opportunity to see what it’s like living in Costa Rica, which is my eventual goal someday if I end up liking it as much as I think I do.
I’m thinking a month-long stay will give me a good idea if I will like it or not. Plus, I will be learning Spanish at the same time and killing two birds with one stone is usually a good thing. I would leave this week but apparently my Mother would like to tag along to Paradise for a week or two so we are waiting on her passport to get here. Once that is here then we can get the ball rolling with airline tickets and the like. The excellent thing about the CRLA is, there is no set schedule you have to abide by. Basically, all you have to do is fill out the form on their website or give them a call and let them know when you are coming. They will have someone at the airport to pick you up and take you to the school or your Homestay house if you arrive on the weekend.
Hopefully we get the passport in the mail sometime early in September and then hop on a plane and get our learning on! I just hope it’s as great of a place as I imagine it to be.
