The beautiful opportunity to experience a new culture, to learn from a new perspective; just two weeks in San José and we LASPers are settling in poco a poco.
The city of San José is located in
the Central Valley of Costa Rica, a highly elevated area of the country
surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. In other words, the views are striking.
Taking the bus home, one might look over a downward slope of red, green, and
grey-roofed homes to see a distant mountain shrouded in clouds. However, one may
also struggle trying to explain this same view in Spanish. Language, basic
communication even, has been a consistent challenge. If Spanish is the language
of love (as so many ticos insist),
then we LASPers have just re-entered the awkward, sometimes-daunting phase of
pre-teen romance.
Our group is eleven strong with the
women leading the men by one (6 women; 5 men). We come from schools and
universities all across North America, from the Southeast of the United States
to the Northwest of Canada. With majors ranging from Spanish to Biology to
Religious Studies to International Politics, our small group is about as
interdisciplinary as a group of eleven can be. Each person brings her own
context into conversations to make the learning process very interesting. Also,
we like each other, which helps a lot.
However, it is not simple to
describe in a blog post the new relationships, new information, new
understandings, etc. that come with this type of “abroad” experience. Gallo pinto, its taste and its importance,
can’t fully be described in a sentence or two. The lessons we are learning
through dialogue with our Costa Rican friends and family and professors is
difficult to relay in text without omitting a great amount of valuable detail
(please ask us about these lessons). What can be said is this: the study of
Latin America and of Spanish challenges us, as North Americans, to think
outside our own context. It forces us to pursue the intricacies of our own life
actions and their impact of the world at large.
This is the beginning of a semester
we all know will pass too quickly. As relationships with our families deepen
and opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue increase, we pray that we would
be receptive to the truths God reveals. Please think of and pray for us as
often as you can, so that this semester would be a reflection of God’s glory.
More to come…. LASPers Spring 2015
