continuación... la vida aquí en Monteverde

Monday marked our first day of classes at the Monteverde Institute!  This week we have three hours of Spanish every morning, then 2 hour long introductory classes to the other classes we’ll be taking here.  They have been great so far—overviews of what to expect for the semester and first lessons on topics like tropical ecology, environmental sustainability, and community health!

The class that drew me to this program and that is the reason I’m studying abroad here this semester is the class on community health (Human Health and Development in the Tropics).  Of course it’s the perfect class for me; we’ve only met once, and already we’ve talked about STIs, epidemiology, learned new public health terminology, and heard the birth story of our teacher, whose one-month-old stays in class with us.  What could be more up my alley?!

…Tropical Ecology?  I never would have thought so.  The professor let me and the others of us who are in the community health class sit in on the first day of class (“class”=a tromp through the reserve behind the Institute, “sitting”=climbing a strangler fig) and I loved it.  Unfortunately, because these are elective courses, we’re only allowed to take one of them.  The community health course is so exactly what I have always been interested in… but when else will I have the opportunity to explore/study the tropical cloud forest of Costa Rica for a semester?!

Luckily, there is a solution.  Because of the number of credit hours needed for each class, Human Health and Development in the Tropics doesn’t start until mid-February (Tropical Ecology starts this week and ends early in the semester).  The Tropical Ecology professor told me that I could audit her class until mine starts, so I get the best of both worlds!! Crisis averted. 

I already feel like I’ve learned so much here.  New animals and plants, new friends, new ways of life, new Spanish vocabulary, new foods.  New amount of sunshine!  (Molly and I joked that sunscreen has become our lotion, part of our daily routine.)  And now classes are starting and I’m taking classes in subjects I’ve never studied before, like anthropology and environmental sustainability, so I’ll get to expand my academic knowledge too. Adjusting to life with my homestay family has been a challenge, but nothing I can’t handle.  Adjusting to the 40-minute uphill walk to school has also been a challenge (for my calves) but I’m gonna be so buff when I come home. 

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was telling someone back home that living here was helping me realize how much I have that I don’t really need in the U.S., how I wanted to live more simply when I go home, like my host family here does.  That morning, my host mother’s partner and I had a conversation in which he restated much more eloquently what I had said in my dream (I think my exact words were “there’s so much shit I have that I don’t need!”).  I asked him how he was doing and he said he was well, thanks to God… “Thanks to God for health, for happiness, for having what I need.”  I agreed.  He said he didn’t need a lot of money as long as he had those things: health, happiness, and just enough to live on. 

Thought that would be a good note to end on.

Love, abrazos, y besos,

emma