Two weeks in the valley

Mi Familia Tico
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I decided to go to Costa Rica to study Spanish after finally being fed-up with only knowing English. Traveling through a lot of Europe, I encountered some individuals that were fluent in up to five languages. This made me feel somewhat culturally shallow, and thus a change was in order. I took a couple of Spanish classes in high school, and traveled through Mexico several times, but both proved to be worthless for my Spanish speaking skills. The first night with my host family will be something I will never forget; such a disconnect between humans with just a simple language barrier to hurdle. Fortunately that night wasn’t a precursor for the next two weeks, and I learned a lot thanks to my family's patience.

Centro Panamericano de Idiomas
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The host family I stayed with lived in San Joaquin de Flores, which is about thirty minutes north of San Jose, the capital. It’s a fairly small town in the valley that has lush hillsides surrounding the majority of it. The lighting storms are the greatest; gobs of clouds stick on the hills with a flash of white light about every minute. Amazing. The town gets pretty much no tourist, minus the people that attend the local language school, CPI. It was a great place to practice my new second language.

Flashes of white light