My spanish Pura Vida adventure @ TicoLingo

I spent four weeks at TicoLingo and had an amazing time. Let me explain why.

I arrived in Costa Rica with zero Spanish. Had one week of intensive Spanish course back in Germany ... But that lead to nothing.

This four weeks really pushed my Spanish! At the end I was able to have conversation with locals and my family. Though it was easier for me to talk and use my words rather than to understand people ;) But that came with the time. And especially my guest family was very pacient with me. Thanks for being so pacient Maes ;)

I went to another language school in Argentina a couple of months later. These was one of the big language schools, they had several schools in South America that u could switch between. At first I thought that these big schools were better or had more experience, but it was the other way around. These big schools have there fixed schedules, textbooks and programs. So they stick too much to that and do not really meet ur personal needs or the needs in the class.

The experience at TicoLingo was so different. The classes were small, I was together with just one american girl, and our awesome teacher really interacted with us. I remember that he even prepared text for us where we were the main persons in ;)

Also the school was much more integrated in local activities. I loved the cooking with a friend of the schools manager and they took us out to an amazing salsa/merengue/kizomba party at the weekend with heaps of locals of every age dancing like crazy.

As I was travelling through central and south america afterwards, I can state two things.

- the school really gave me a good basic language pack for travelling in these countries. I could manage all my travels, speak to locals, order in restaurants, even argue with taxidrivers

- Costa Rica is perfect for learning the language! as I've seen a couple of other Spanish speaking countries in the Americas I can definitely say that Central America, especially Costa Rica or Guatemala are the perfect countries to study Spanish. People speak relatively slow and the pronunciation is nearly perfect. When u come to Chile or Argentina u know what I mean ;)
And obviously it is one of the nicest and most secure countries in that region.

So all in all I can totally recommend TicoLingo. At that point thanks to the staff at the school, especially my amazing teacher Freddy ... He did such an awesome job and really helped us to get into the language. And also to Chris, the manager. He did everything he could in advance to plan my stay as perfect as can be and while I was at the school he was so helpful and nice ... Thanks Mae! Pura Vida for all of you ;)