Aero: Annie Livingston – Costa Rica 2015 – My Expectations
Aero: Annie Livingston – Costa Rica 2015 – My Expectations
Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project
Aero: Annie Livingston – Costa Rica 2015 – My Expectations
Annie Livingston CR@FLCC 2015
This trip to Costa Rica will be my first experience traveling without my family, and the longest time being away from home even. It will also be my first ever time really being out of my own country (except for Canada.) and first time ever flying out of my own country and going through international security. It is a lot of new experiences and I am a little nervous, as is natural for me whenever I am doing something that is new, but I am excited and curious about everything more than I am nervous. I am even excited to experience the airport security measures for the first time!
Probably what I am wondering about the most on the trip is how I will get along in a country where most people speak Spanish. I am really looking forward to learning more Spanish while I am there, as learning to speak a foreign language has become one of my life goals. I am also a little bit worried about embarrassing myself, as my knowledge of Spanish right now is pretty limited. I am sure that will happen a few times, but if it does, I know it is not the end of the world and no one is going to care. I think it will be a really eye opening experience to be in a culture where I can’t always rely on my own language to communicate with people, and definitely an experience that I have never had before.
Something else I am curious about is the food in Costa Rica. I absolutely love trying new foods, and like just about anything. Sometimes I spend time just looking up pictures of Costa Rican food, and it makes me so hungry every time. I hope that it is just as good as it looks! Getting to eat new and exotic fresh fruit and foods that grow right there in the country should be really tasty! Getting to visit the coffee plantation should be fun—I am not personally a coffee drinker, but I have a lot of family who loves coffee, and who knows, maybe I will enjoy the locally grown Costa Rica coffee! Getting to see how stuff like coffee and chocolate is grown should be neat, as I know hardly anything about that.
ML@FLCC Costa Rica
2015 Flickr Gallery
Another thing that I am excited about when I go to Costa Rica is seeing all the biodiversity and beauty there, all the volcanoes, rainforests, beaches and the thing that I am especially hyped about, the hot springs. It will also be a lot of fun to see all the animals such as monkeys (I hope!) and birds, living in their natural environment. I can’t wait to take a lot of photos documenting the beauty of Costa Rica and share them with my friends and family back home. Hearing that we were going to learn about travel photography made me really happy, because photography is another one of my current interests,, and I am sure there will be lots of interesting things to photograph in Costa Rica.
Something that makes me both excited and nervous, and what I think I will especially grow and benefit a lot from on the trip, is meeting a lot of new people who are different from myself. I tend to be shy around people sometimes, and I am expecting to feel slightly uncomfortable at first around my host family that I will be staying with and everyone new that I meet. But I have heard so many wonderful things about students who went on this trip and became so close with people they met, and that makes me excited. I have always been a person who tends to become close with people, and has a hard time saying goodbye to them. I believe that I will most likely develop a close bond with my host family, and with all the other nice and interesting people that I meet in Costa Rica.
Annie Livingston
LEAF Contributor
