Living and Learning in Costa Rica

Central America

Costa Rica

           Central and South America are world renowned for their people, food, beautiful scenery, and culture. While Americans are known to visit some areas in Central America for vacation, to live abroad in this part of the world is a unique experience. Dr. Patrick Van Inwegen, a professor of political science at Whitworth, has spent the last year abroad teaching at Whitworth’s Costa Rica campus. I recently interviewed Professor Van Inwegen to learn about his experiences living in Costa Rica, which has been his first time living abroad. He provided me with his experiences and also included his advice to students.

Professor Van Inwegen said that he has enjoyed his time spent in Costa Rica and shared some of his favorite memories of traveling to Manuel Antonio National Park, eating churros on the streets of Havana while watching street performers, adventuring near Rincon de la Vieja (a volcano), zip-lining, traveling to Guanacaste (Northern Pacific side of Costa Rica), and seeing wildlife like the Quetzal in Montverde Cloud Forest and the sloths of Manuel Antonio National Park.  He also described the scholastic benefits of living in Costa Rica for both him and his students. He has been able to further his research in revolutionary history by interviewing people in Nicaragua about their experiences, traveling to revolution museums, and visiting sites that are historically significant to different uprisings and revolutions.

Quetzal

 

Havana

 

Professor Van Inwegen acknowledges that he has learned valuable lessons about what it means to live and thrive abroad. He shared that living abroad has greatly altered his sense of “arbitrariness of norms” and has learned how “influential social pressures can be.” He explained that an area that he specifically learned this was in the field of dress. Costa Ricans have a unique sense of style and dress, and he mentioned that it is odd feeling out of place with North American clothing.

 While he enjoys living abroad, he did mention that there are difficulties in living in an unfamiliar part of the world. He mentioned that a difficult part of living in Costa Rica was differentiating between what he expected about Costa Rica and the reality of living there.

  “Going to a remote place, you expect not to have hot water showers. When the water turns off in a suburb of San Jose or the power is intermittent, that has been frustrating. The frustration is compounded by the cultural differences in getting answers to questions and figuring out how to solve problems. In the US we have a sense of who we need to talk to solve problems, but we don't in a new culture. It is kind of like the lack of street signs and house numbers here. In the US, if you need to find a business, you look up the address and then go based on that. Here, you can't because they don't have addresses; it is all relational - 100 meters from this school.”

                        While undeniably, there will be difficulties when traveling or living abroad, Professor Van Inwegen encourages students to travel as much as they can while they are young and have the opportunity:

"Now is the time to do it. Every year you wait will make it much more difficult to travel. You don't have any money, but that is the best way to travel. You do have time, fewer attachments and commitments, an adventurous spirit, a positive attitude, an open mind, and you're healthy. Those won't all change, but many will make it more difficult to travel, the older you get (and not just retirement and old-age old, but next year old)”

                He also encourages students who are already planning on traveling abroad to think about their own culture before they leave and to question why you uphold the values that you do. If you have a strong understanding of what has influenced you and your beliefs, Van Inwegen asserts that you will be more likely to be understanding of the different beliefs of others that you encounter. If you know that you yourself have had unique experiences and therefore have a different perspective in the world, then you will be able to value the opinions and beliefs of others because their beliefs have gone through the same process.

Professor Van Inwegen will return to Whitworth’s main campus in the fall, and I would encourage you to meet with him and talk about his experiences in Costa Rica as well as his advice for living abroad.

A fun, little known fact about Professor Van Inwegen is his wife, Victoria, was Miss Spokane.