Boldly Go Solo

You get off a plane in San Jose, Costa Rica, and get picked up by someone who has been expecting your arrival. You are driven to Santa Ana, "the most beautiful little town," and meet the family you’re going to live with.

The day classes start, you are driven up a mountain to go to the school class. It’s a perfect 70 degrees up there every day. The Spanish you learn is "very sweet." That is, it’s simple to understand and learn.

This is how my brother, Michael, describes his two-week Spanish immersion program in Costa Rica with Centro Linguistico Conversa. Now I’m thinking of going.

It surprised me that he chose to do it. Spanish was his worst subject in school. He’s a skilled numbers guy who works in tech and has taken a fair number of accounting classes.

But as he moved up in management, he thought
Spanish would be a good skill. He signed up for a class at New York
University. Partly for fun. He wanted to see if he would be any better
at learning the language than during his high school days.

He signed up for an entry level
class. And found he was getting "destroyed" in class!  That
Thanksgiving, he flew to Central America.

He had never been to
that part of the world. He was impressed by its beauty. Mountains. Nice pink houses
with fences, off narrow paved roads. "It looked like a fairy tale."

But it was an uncomfortable start. The family he was
assigned to didn’t speak English. He was nervous. He thought, "What did
I get myself into here?’

Tell me about it. I feel like that on the
first day of practically every trip I take.

But immersing yourself in a foreign language adds an extra
element, as Michael discovered. "I was having a tough time understanding anything. I didn’t
realize how bad my Spanish was."

The first day, he hopped on a bus San Jose to poke
around. He returned with a
big pineapple pie and a bottle of wine. The family, including a
six-year-old girl and and pudgy little 3-year-old boy, went from
reserved to "jumping up and down," he says.

Each day he went up the mountain to classes in a little
hut with a gorgeous view. And each day he brought something for the little ones waiting at home. They would get so excited over the daily surprise.

His "Mama Tico" – Tico is the name for a native Costa
Rican – sat down with him at night, interested in helping him
learn Spanish. Like a mother hen. (Madre gallina in Spanish?)

He started to pick up the language. At the end of two
weeks, he realized he was understanding almost everything people said.
"We were talking about things, about feelings. I couldn’t get over
it. I thought I wasn’t good at
languages."

The final assessment? His solo trip was, "very pleasant and very intense. And, I did learn Spanish."

Photo: by joiseyshowaa