Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – City Life
Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – City Life
Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – City Life
Ashley Hager
Life in Alajuela was a great learning experience. I come from a small town with one convenient store and a small population where everybody knows everybody. So to be in a city with busy streets, lots of stores including restaurants, cafes, souvenir shops, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, and local parks was very different. Being able to experience the city life allowed me to dive into the Costa Rican culture and learn the way of the lives of the Costa Rican natives. Walking down the sidewalk even at 7 am in the morning there were always lots of people, especially at the parks. My guess would be due to the constant warm weather and laid back environment. There were always people outside taking walks and shopping or eating at the local restaurants. Costa Rica is definitely a slower paced environment than the United States. While I was walking down the sidewalk I experienced a lot of people driving by honking their horns or yelling out the car windows and giving us different looks. I guess it was due to us being tourists or maybe even young American women.
Costa Rica 2014
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The streets kind of reminded me of New York City especially the driving; there were a few times that I thought we were going to get into an accident, the taxi drivers are a little crazy. The streets in Alajuela are mostly one way streets they are just wide enough for a car to get down them, and have cars parked on the sides of the roads. The concept of having one way streets is familiar in the United States but it is not common to see every street that way. The rides to school by car took a lot longer due to having to drive around the block to face the right direction due to the one way streets. I’m glad I wasn’t ever driving because there would be no way that I would remember which streets were one way. In Alajuela they don’t have signs like in the Unites States that are black and white with an arrow saying one way. It is also very rare to see traffic lights they do have stop signs but there are very few traffic lights in Alajuela. It was also very different to not see an abundance of police and cop cars around the city. We would see cops that would stand on the sidewalks during the day at busy locations, but we were told they were more for tourists or if you were lost or needed something. Looking at the driving in Alajuela it would not be acceptable in the United States. However, Costa Rica is definitely a slower pace environment and you would have to try really hard to receive a traffic violation in Costa Rica.
While we were there we also saw construction on some of the streets. It looked like they were tearing up the road and reputing down black top. In the streets they have trenches between the sidewalks and the roads and there are little bridges that allow pedestrians to walk over to get to the sidewalk when crossing the street. These trenches help during the rainy season when they receive torrential downpours so the streets and buildings don’t get flooded. City life in Costa Rica was a large part of my experience. I feel that the city life allowed me to learn a great deal about the culture and I got to compare it to our culture in the United States that has more regulations and is a much faster pace.
Learn More: Study abroad with Modern Languages @ FLCC: Costa Rica!
– Ashley Hager
The LEAF Project
www.leaflanguages.org
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