I remember how nervous I was that my first ever plane ride would be eight hours long. When we touched down in Barcelona, I couldn’t wait to try the food, see the amazing architecture and practice my Spanish with the locals. During my short 10 days in Spain, I met so many new people and learned so much about Spanish culture. After I landed back in Chicago, I couldn’t wait to get the chance to travel again.
In the fall of 2015, I started college at the University of Illinois. It is a big school in central Illinois. I decided to major in global studies where I was able to focus my learning on world issues, languages and cultures. I narrowed my cultural studies to Latin America and Spanish because I was already familiar with it. Being in this major gave me many opportunities to take classes where I would get to travel to other countries. In the past 2 years, I have been able to travel to Argentina and Peru. Each experience has been incredible, and both have further fueled my passion for travel.
I decided that I wanted to spend part of my last year in college in a different country. I have friends who have studied in other countries for a semester, and they all have had good experiences. The biggest thing was choosing the country where I wanted to live. Eventually I decided on Costa Rica because I’ve heard so many good things about the food, friendly people and beautiful geography.
I was worried about a lot of things before coming to Costa Rica. It would be a long time before I would see my friends and family again, and I would be missing some of my favorite holidays. Also, it was my first time traveling by myself. Luckily, I had a lot of nice people helping me along the way to my destination.
