Veritas

For future students looking into this program, something needs to be said about the school. It´s very different from Central. Veritas is a small private school with an artsy crowd. There are the international students, most of us taking some combination of electives and spanish classes; then there are the arquitecture, graphic design, fashion design, film, photography, and animation students. The school only consists of two buildings for 2,000 students so there is a sense of community at school because you see the same people every day. My classes are really small, the most people being 7. It´s cool that the teachers here make an effort to tweek the curriculum to be as beneficial and applicable outside of the classroom as posible for the students. They relate everything to culture, reality, our specific fields of study or future careers, politics, etc. On the plus side, we go on field trips (of sorts). I´ve gone to La Basilica and some markets, and I have friends who study biology and climb mountains and go to the rainforest with their teachers. For Spanish students looking to get their study abroad experience credit: COME TO VERITAS! The intensive Spanish classes offered are great! My fluency has improved so much in the last two months: I have actually had a few ticos tell me that my Spanish makes me seem like a tica! HAHA! That is an awesome feeling for people studying another language. Plus Costa Rica has one of the best dialects of Spanish, it´s easy to understand and pick up easily. But here´s the thing: to have the best experience abroad you really need to immerse yourself into the culture so you can get something really valuable out of it. You have to embrace the chaos and get out of your element to learn and adapt. You learn so much doing this. Moving in with a tico family gave me a whole new perspective on Costa Rican culture. Even though I´ve learned from living in San Jose that city life might not be for me, that´s ok! It´s all a learning experience. And being down here offers the super cool opportunity to travel to beautiful places for crazy cheap. I´ve found that the majority of Americans that I´ve met here were visiting the country then decided to never leave. And then I´ve met other people that finally left the States and adjusted to the idea that the world is big and needs to be explored. It´s awesome seeing people flourish like that. You just start to think bigger. :) There is a sense of an oasis here, things aren´t really ´´time is money´´ oriented and it´s totally normal to catch eye contact with someone and exchange ´´pura vida´´, which says it all. I´m actually getting pretty nervous to come back to the States because the wavelength that Costa Rican culture is on has its perks in easy and happy living.