Aero: Brianna Cardina – Costa Rica 2016 – City Life

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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Life outside of the house was quite different than what I experienced at home in the US. I’ll start with talking about – quite literally – the outside of the house. There was no front yard or back yard on ours, and many of the others. The house was small, and only two floors typically. No basement or attic! And all of the houses had their own security, which included gates, metal fences, and bars on the windows. The houses were small, compact, practical, and close to one another. Another feature of Costa Rica to point out, are the roads. There are very deep gutters along the sides of the roads. They exist to prevent flooding, by directing rainfall to the sides of the streets and getting it out of the way. One would think that it would be hard to drive with such deep gutters at the side of the road… but no one had any problem with them when we were there.

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Brianna Cardina

Speaking of driving, the traffic was crazy! Pedestrians do not have the right of way, so you got to be careful when crossing the streets. The streets are a bit narrower than USA’s streets, so it seemed scary whenever cars passed by each other! We took a taxi once, to get back to one of our host family’s house, and it was quite an intense ride. I feel like we broke at least half of the rules of the road when driving! But surprisingly, no one crashed. It may seem like a crazy task to drive on their roads, but they can do it very well.

City life seemed rustic. It was probably because the city is so old. The USA is a fairly new country, so everything is shiny and clean and not crumbling. Costa Rica has old buildings and systems that give it a rustic vibe. I loved it. Unlike us, however, there wasn’t too much garbage lying around the streets. But what was lying on the streets, were a few homeless people and many stray dogs! Our group of students couldn’t help but feel bad for all the strays wandering the cities. One night, we came home to our host family to see them sitting outside, next to a small golden retriever puppy. We petted it and asked our host family for its name, but it turned out that it wasn’t theirs! Just a homeless puppy on the streets. It was sad to see so many, but it was also really cool to see dogs running wild here and there!

Daily life in the city seemed so simple. Either you worked at a store or restaurant, or you simply hung out at the central plaza. In the center of town is a big church, and in front of it is always the town square. There are park benches, trees, flowers, a fountain, a theater-like area, and ice-cream vendors. People go to the park to sit and enjoy their day. Usually friends chat, families catch up with others, and others just take in the world. As I’ve seen people, I’ve come to realize that despite the heat, at least half of them wear pants instead of shorts or skirts. I wore shorts anyways, pants would have been too much!

Brianna Cardina
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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