Costa Rica

This semester has been flying by. We have all finished our elective classes. All we have left is 3 weeks of service learning (which starts on Monday) and a week of finals, a goodbye party, debriefing, and home. So Crazy!

This week we are in Costa Rica. Part of the reason we are here is because our visa's only last 90 days, so we needed to leave Nicaragua for 3 days in order to update them and finish out our semester. The other reason is because we are studying the immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica. It resembles (but is not the same as) the immigration of people from Mexico to the US.

We visited the neighborhood of La Carpio in San Jose, which is sometimes referred to as 'Little Managua'. Costa Ricans don't like going near there and all claim that it is dangerous, the Nicaraguans are violent, and that they steal all their jobs away from them. Nicaraguans are going to Costa Rica because they think they can make a better life for themselves there. It's an interesting situation.

While we were in La Carpio, we walked around with our guide and interviewed some of the immigrants there. Many of them have been in Costa Rica for years. Their children are Costa Rican, not Nicaraguan. It was really interesting to hear about their lives and get their perspectives. Most of them said that now that they have their lives in Costa Rica, they don't want to return to Nicaragua. It's really interesting.

I'm excited to return to Leon tomorrow and to see my host family. Leon has truly become a home and my host family is easy to consider actual family. It's been awesome. I'll miss it when I leave, but I'm excited to be back home as well. It's bittersweet.