Aero: David Whitt – Costa Rica 2016 – Life at Home

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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My host family was Maria Marta and Big Marco, and their two sons Marco and Daniel. Walking into the house, we realized that the house was very beautiful! Very neat and tidy, spacious, and had a beautiful backyard with plants all around. They immediately gave an impression that they were very friendly and family-oriented, which was definitely true! Something that really encouraged me and made me take a step back and look at things in life was how important family is to them. Also helpful was the fact that they spoke a lot of English. They are very fluent in the language, so that made life easier and helped us communicate with them without much difficulty. Daniel and Marco kept picking on us for the way we talked, and said that Americans don’t pronounce the words correctly, such as holding out the “r” in many words, so that was funny.

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David Whitt

Their daily routine was pretty different from mine at home. I usually don’t eat breakfast at home, where as they seem to almost never leave the house without eating something for breakfast first. Most mornings, we had fruit, toast, and water or fruit juice. The fruit was the best fruit I had ever had. I haven’t really had an abundance of fresh fruit. At home, we would generally have fresh strawberries, but other than that, everything was purchased from the store, which in the US, isn’t typically very fresh. This helped me realize how good fresh fruit is. I didn’t ever really think it could be too much a different, but I definitely realized that that is not true!

Every night, me, my three classmates (Ana, Sarah, and Alyssa), Daniel and Marco sat down and talked and bonded, which was awesome for me because I have never really hung out with a lot of people outside of my house. One night, we played a game called Secret Hitler, which is where one person is Hitler, one is Fascist, and the rest are Liberals. Hitler and the Fascist have to work together to make everyone this they are Liberals until they get enough policies down to win, where the Liberals need to try and figure out who the Fascist and Hitler are and kill them off. I always look guilty when I’m put on the spot, so every time someone accused me of being Hitler, I looked guilty, so every round, I was the first to be killed, and every time, I was Liberal. Marco and Ana were Hitler the most, and they aren’t good at lying, so they usually got caught and killed. After me of course.

When I first learned about the trip, I wasn’t too excited about the idea of staying with a host family because I’m typically a very shy person. Luckily, I was able to bust out of my shell pretty quickly and have a wonderful experience with my family! It was very stunning to realize that when we left, after just 2 weeks of knowing them, how much it felt like we were leaving out family, and how hard and emotional that it was to leave. I was very blessed to have such an amazing family in Costa Rica, and that definitely was the best part of the trip!

David Whitt
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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