Social Justice & Development Program: Costa Rica

Living with a host family is something I believe is critical to long-term study abroad experiences. There is truly no other way to learn about the culture as in-depth as having a host family and essentially becoming a member of that family.

The ICADS program finds incredible host families in San Jose (for the first month or so of the program) and outside the metro when students do field work or an internship. I am so glad I found this program. I still keep in contact with my host family and was so moved by my internship experience, assisting with health education on the border of Nicaragua.

My Spanish skills improved so much while in Costa Rica thanks to the intense classwork and immersion program that has been so well thought out. I wish I could go back again and again!

This was great experience for me. The first month was in San Jose, where you take classes in Spanish, local history and politics during the week with educational and or recreational trips on weekends. I had a lot of fun during this period and you really get to know the 15 or so other students participating. The teachers and administrators are awesome as well.

After the first month, you go on your own for your Internship. They have loads of options in varying fields all over the country and in Nicaragua as well. I chose to work in Cobano a small village on the Nicoya Peninsula. ICADS set me up with an awesome family for my home stay. The parents were cool. I would often have late night drinking sessions with the patriarch while watching football. (Viva Saprissa!). And their children were adorable, I spent many afternoons hanging out with them around town or at the rivers or beaches near by.

My internship was actually more like two related internships. In the mornings I assisted at the CEN (Centro de Educación y Nutrición). Essentially a day care, I helped wrangle a bunch of unruly 3-5 year olds and made sure they ate all of their lunch. It was tons of fun, although not particularly challenging.
The other was more aligned with my interest in education. I worked as an English teacher at a neighboring villages elementary school. It was about a 30 minute walk along a deserted dirt road, but I wasn't complaining. It is through beautiful country side and I would often see troops of howler monkeys swinging through trees. It was hot, but as often as not a Tico would offer me a ride in a car, back of a truck, or once over the rear wheel of an ATV that already had four other people on it. I really enjoyed teaching the 4th 5th and 6th graders English. They were keen students and did well even though they were starting from zero. I also raised funds to add an English section to the library. My experience there was very rewarding. As an added bonus of living with no English speakers for miles, my Spanish level quadrupled.

ICADS is an amazing program that I would recomend highly. Great for internships in so many areas.

I lived with a family in a small fishing village for most of my experience with ICADS. It was amazing. I learned from the local people how to build, fish, milk cows and tend to olive ridley turtles.

The Internship Program is great! As long as you are in an internship that you enjoy and are busy with it will be a great program. There is a lot of down time so is important to stay busy. It is mainly important that the internship you are participating in is what you want because it would be a very dull experience otherwise.

I lived with a really kind, funny, and supportive Costa Rican family in San Jose, Costa Rica. They did not speak English, and were very accustomed to communicating with students who are struggling or beginners at Spanish, which was helpful for me even though I am not a beginning speaker. For the first five weeks I walked to the ICADS program center to take intensive 4-hour Spanish classes with a class size of four or five students. This was my favorite part of the program. Our Nicaragua trip in the middle of these five weeks took me out of my comfort zone, but it really prepared me for the issues I'd be working with for the rest of my time in the program. For the next eight weeks I tutored in English at a children's soup kitchen in an impoverished neighborhood in Costa Rica. Here I had a loose structure to work with; kids of all different ages and levels in English came in at random times for unpredictable lengths of time, and I had to ascertain what their tutoring needs were and how I could fill them during the time allotted, sometimes with twenty kids who needed help, sometimes zero. This was the most rewarding part of the program, and I made lifelong friendships with the soup kitchen staff and all the smart, kind, funny kids at the soup kitchen. The big drawback to the program, which I've heard other participants speak of as well, is that during the internship there is a feeling of isolation. All your ICADS friends are scattered all over Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I especially felt isolated because I had a hard time connecting to my fellow ICADS students. However, these feelings did not stop this program from being one of the most important academic experiences of my life, and I suspect that this isolation from other English speakers forced me to form deeper connections with my host family and the children I was working with. I am so glad I did this program, and I would recommend it to anyone. This was a huge building block in my personal and academic growth. Thank you, ICADS.