My CEA experience as a Health Science student

One of the things that my family was really concerned about was safety, health, and what academics are like abroad. As soon as my plane landed, Yeison, one of the on-site representatives was waiting for me when I got there so I felt safe because I didn't have to take transportation by myself in a foreign country to get to my host home. It was nice that there was a security guard in addition to the Veritas university security on the lookout for me when I was walking to and from campus. The CEA representatives were always very helpful whenever I needed any help or assistance especially during the time when I had mesenteric adenitis. I was hesitant to go to the hospital especially because I have never went to the hospital on my own before, but Yeison came and waited in the waiting room until I was done. He helped me communicate with the hospital staff too because there was a language barrier and a misunderstanding with the traveler's insurance. So, in the end he was able to lessen my bill to $100 rather than $800.

I thought it was really helpful that CEA familiarized with getting us a walking and bus tour of San Jose which is the place that we were going to be living in for the 4 months I was there. The CEA staff also familiarized us with the culture and told us a few things to watch out for in the presentation they had for us.

It was also easy to ask for help in planning our own weekend excursions because Yeison has experience in tourism so he was able to recommend us places and how to get there and what activities are recommended for me to do there. They also had CEA excursions which were always nice to go on and planned out thoroughly. I liked the excursion to Panama because of the island hopping tour and we were able to see a lot of Costa Rica's wildlife.

For academics, I really liked the classes that I was taking there, and I think it was very convenient because it was a maximum of 15 minutes walking. I thought the learning style was really helpful since it was more discussions, presentations, projects, and hands-on learning rather than quizzes and exams. I also liked that the teachers who worked at the university were very interactive and passionate, which made me even more compelled and inspired to learn. It was a lot more of a close relationship between the teachers and students due to the small classroom sizes and I liked how participation was very much emphasized and from this I learned a lot more. The university we went to was quite small and locals would go to our school so it was a cool experience to be to talk to them (a lot of them spoke pretty good english).