Pura vida, or pure life, is a philosophy many Costa Ricans live by, and this summer, a group of 14 students will get to experience first hand what it means to live purely.

Together with students from Eureka, MHS students will have the opportunity travel to Costa Rica for two weeks. The first week will be spent traveling around the country, and the second will be spent living with local families to practice Spanish skills, something Sam Filson, junior, is looking forward to.

“The reason I wanted to go on the Costa Rica trip was that I wanted to expand my knowledge, but expand it in a way that’s outside of the classroom,” Filson said. “I wanted to be able to be around the culture and people who speak the language.”

Filson has been preparing for the week-long homestay by practicing his speaking skills in class and attending monthly preparation meetings with the group.

“Out of all the Spanish skills you could have, speaking’s the worst for me,” Filson said. “ In class we’ve just been all of a sudden listening a lot more, so that’s helped me to try to listen to how they pronounce certain letters and certain words.”

Filson will stay with a couple and their teenage son who don’t speak any English. Not only will the experience help his Spanish skills, but he said he hopes it will also help him to grow as an individual.
“I’ll be able to learn a lot about myself, how I’ll be able to persevere through the week with people who don’t speak my language and try to problem solve and think of how to communicate,” Filson said.

Catie Brydels, Spanish teacher and trip chaperone, sees studying abroad as an incredible experience for students, one that even changed her life when she visited Costa Rica in 2008 with her college, she said.

“That was my first experience abroad and when I got back I said ‘you know if I really want to learn this language and I really want to keep up with it I’m going to have to go for longer’ and then that kind of inspired me to go for my semester abroad in Argentina and that inspired me to be a teacher,” Brydels said.

Brydels said she remembers being in high school and studying Spanish just to get the grade, something many students are familiar with. But studying abroad changed that.

“When you actually learn about the language you learn that there’s a whole other culture and life out there that’s more than just Missouri,” Brydels said. “It’s so important for students to understand that. And I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to take students abroad and teach them that.”

Besides the language barrier, there are many cultural differences between the U.S. and Costa Rica, which students have been learning about in their meetings, Brydels said.

One example is that in Costa Rica people are much less direct.

“They don’t actually use the word no,” Brydels said. “They’re just a very friendly, very polite culture and they try to avoid conflict. That’s probably one of the main differences.”

In addition to the lack of directness, there are also major differences in the food Costa Ricans eat, with their diets consisting of a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables compared to the processed food of America, Brydels said.
At the meetings, students also have been learning about travel and packing, as well as participating in activities to help bond them as a group
“We try to create team building bonds between the kids because they will be with each other for a full week, so we want to prep them for that as well,” Brydels said. “We do a lot of prepping.”
One way the students have been prepping is by learning about the concept of pura vida, which Maggie Knesel, junior, is looking forward to embracing

“It just says to embrace life in its fullest, in the purest form and to not let other things get in the way of your happiness,” Knesel said.

Knesel is also excited about the week of travel before the homestay where the students will get to see rainforests, volcanoes and beaches, she said.

“I’m really excited about the wildlife, specifically the sloths and the monkeys,” Knesel said.
But ultimately, using her Spanish in an authentic environment during the homestay is the part of the trip Knesel is most looking forward to.

“In class it’s hard to actually tell how much you know,” Knesel said. “I really want to use my Spanish in a situation where I actually have to know the language.”