Aero: David Whitt – Costa Rica 2016 – Learning the Language
Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project
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Leading up to the trip, I knew that the biggest challenge for me would be communicating in another language. In Middle School and High School, I struggled in every Spanish class I took, so that gave me a sense that I would be in for a struggle. When we arrived at the airport, after we got out of security and onto the street, you could hear Spanish everywhere, and it was a surreal moment. It was a moment of “Wow, I’m really in another country!” and “Wow! How am I going to talk to these people?” Another reason going into a natively-Spanish-speaking country was even more difficult for me was the length of time in which I haven’t been in a Spanish class. I haven’t been in a Spanish class since my Sophomore year of High School, which was 3 and a half years ago, so that made it harder due to my unfamiliarity with the language due to not being around it in so long.
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David Whitt
One thing that worked in my favor on this trip was that my host family spoke a lot of English. I was expecting to have trouble communicating with my host family, but when we met up with them at the airport, I was immediately pleasantly surprised that they spoke so fluently in English. I don’t think I said one thing the entire time at Maria Marta’s house that they didn’t understand, which again, was very helpful. I was able to try speaking Spanish and learning some more Spanish, but I was also able to communicate fairly easily when I didn’t know how to say something in Spanish.
Restaurants in Costa Rica were an adventure in itself! Many restaurant workers spoke just Spanish, which wasn’t a surprise, but was obviously pretty difficult to communicate. Even though many didn’t speak Spanish, tourism is huge in Costa Rica, so many of them are still able to communicate even though they don’t speak English because of the high amounts of Americans that go into Costa Rica all the time. Most restaurants had English on their menus as a secondary language in small print, so even though we didn’t know what something was, we didn’t struggle too much because they had the English translation right there. This also helped in ordering because we could find what we wanted in English, then say it to the order-taker in Spanish, which helped prevent a lot of confusion.
In school, I had always thought that learning another language was not necessary, and I wasn’t really interested in taking it too seriously. This trip really changed that thought process. It helped me realize that learning another language is essential because you never know what opportunities will arise and force you into a situation of being surrounded by another language. This trip has encouraged me to learn more Spanish and be able to speak it more so I can go back in the future and be able to communicate a little more with the natives.
David Whitt
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016
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