My Honest Feelings | CR

I thought it would be different than this....

There's a disillusionment with studying abroad. Everyone puts up the best pictures of their friends, their food, and their activities. No one puts up the bad pictures because obviously you can't make people jealous with those. Your pictures have to stand out among the other 1,000 friends you have studying abroad. In fact, your blogs have to be so incredible that people even bother to read them. It's a lot of pressure to be under when this trip was suppose to be about you. But what if I told you I didn't care about that pressure and I wanted to tell the truth.

What I'm about to tell you may shock you but it's worth saying.The truth is I don't like Costa Rica. I don't like living in Puntarenas. This experience is very different than I thought it would be.

I came to Costa Rica comparing my experience to that of studying abroad in Italy and that was wrong. It didn't give either the chance they deserved. So I promptly stopped comparing and decided to throw myself into my current experience. What I soon realized was that despite not comparing them, Costa Rica was not somewhere I wanted to be. Before I came, everyone told me about how great this country is and how easily they fell in love with it. I felt guilty not having the same reaction so I didn't say anything. But a month has passed and it's time I tell you why I'm not holding up a #1 foam finger for CR.

Santa Elena Cloud Forest 

• It's dirty here. There's trash all over my city and no one seems to care or want to do anything about it. Along with the trash comes the horrible smells of the city that everyone just laughs about now because there's not much else you can do about it.
• The machismo culture is, and I mean this literally, the worst. Men think they can do whatever they want because they are men. Especially in my city you don't find many women out at night because of either safety or home obligations. It saddens me that I feel I can't be a proud woman here because of the continuous catcalls and names I get from the street. I actually feel disgusted at the fact that I'm a woman because the men in my city make it seem like I'm just a piece of meat or a prize to be won. It's wrong.
• Turismo. Tourism is generally a big industry for Latin American countries because they have cool attractions other places do not have. Of course they should learn how to capitalize on that so they can economically advance themselves. However, the tourism industry is a dangerous one...it's been known to take the soul from places. I think Costa Rica has fallen to that. Everyone is looking to get money from you to hike, climb up stairs, see monkeys, go into a hot spring, buy a purse, look at a volcano, or hold a bug. Being outdoorsy here is great if you have a lot of money. Which clearly I do not have.
• When all else fails, do nothing. I'm not one for relaxing but I can always appreciate it. Here, relaxation is taken to an extreme. The citizens seem to have a lack of interest in doing things, like anything at all. The hardest workers I've seen have been hostel owners and tour guides. Costa Rica is a third-world country and although it is difficult to make success happen here, it is not impossible. There seems to be a lack of motivation to do anything- to go to school, start a business, or do something other than watch Telenovelas. It's difficult for a country to advance if the population is not attempting to advance as well. 

We didn't know sloths could write

• To be nothing and no one. I feel that Costa Rica has not only fallen into the tourism industry but also this lie that the industry tells. It says you have to become so pleasing to the masses that you must lose who you are. People come to CR for adventure and animals, not for the Costa Rican culture. It's because in attempting to appease so many they have become disingenuous. I like to say they have become nothing and are no one. I think Costa Rica has forgotten who it is and who it wants to be and instead has created a delusional paradise that sucks people in to thinking this is the ultimate place to live and just be. It is not. 

It's been difficult coming to grips with the thought that after four months I will be happy to leave here because that is not how I want to feel or how I've felt in the past after leaving places that I've lived. I don't regret coming to Costa Rica for a second because some amazing things have happened here that would never have happened somewhere else. I'm happy I'm in CR because I get to see that life isn't always rainbows and butterflies (although maybe it is here).

Monteverde (aka the Cloud Forest)

I also want you to know that I'm loving my experience but I don't love the country. There are parts of this world that I just won't love being in but it's important to note why I have those feelings and then learn from the experiences. Studying abroad isn't always magical. Sometimes it's dirty, smelly, hurtful, boring, expensive, and uncomfortable. But sometimes it's just what you need. And sometimes it's not. Either way, it's okay to feel that way.