The Costa Rican Experience of Carla Mertens

Typical day on the other side of the world, approximately 9,300 kilometers away from my hometown in Germany — waking up at 7:30 in the morning and getting ready to eat breakfast (mostly pancakes with fruits) in the garden. After that, driving to school, where my project takes place — teaching physical education — only to see how one of the teachers tell our organizer, “No hay clases hoy!” (We don’t have lessons today!). The reason being, sometimes the people just don’t show up or the teachers have different schedules.

I will never forget the moment they cancelled school for the first time. My organizer didn’t know it (although he asked one day before) and he just looked at me, smiled, and said, “I don’t know how we got the highest level of education in the whole of Central America”. After reacting with a bit of shock, I slowly realized that this was definitely why I have chosen this project.

I wanted to get to know the daily life and the mentality of the people. And I understood that this chaotic and spontaneous way of changing plans was just the best example of their mindset — ‘Pura Vida’ (simple life / way of life).

Although it was sometimes a bit annoying for a structured German girl [like myself], I was really thankful to get the opportunity to work with different kids in different schools — because the other ones were closed some days. I worked with kids from 3 to 14, poor to rich, and they were all really lovely and sympathetic, [especially] when my Spanish sometimes didn’t come across, so they had to repeat their questions one to five times.

So I really enjoyed my time as a participant. The accommodation was really clean and we three girls all had our own room (November isn’t the main season). Andy, our organizer in the house, helped us a lot with the plans for our weekends, which are free for excursions. Moreover, he cooked really well – trust me guys, nobody will starve in this accommodation. It was a good mix of traditional Costa Rican food and other food like burger, pizza , pasta, etc,  all homemade. I’m going to miss getting a warm meal twice a day 🙁

For me, the adventure isn’t over yet, I’m going to travel a bit more in Central America. The project was a good access to get to know the culture, the people, the way of life and the language. So I would highly recommend the project.

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