advertisement:
For a good number of years, especially during the typewriter era, journalists used to end their stories by writing -30- at the bottom of an article before handing it in to an editor.
In fact, we read once that the number became so popular as a sign of completion that it made its way into Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. The use of -30- at the end of an article, however, is almost non-existent anymore since computers have replaced typewriters in newsrooms across the nation.
Today’s column, however, needs a -30-, sort of, as I won’t have a column again until mid-August.
For the past 12 days, I have been living in San José, Costa Rica, and taking Spanish-language graduate courses at the Universidad de Costa Rica. Every five years, a public-school teacher needs to renew his teaching license, and this summer is when I decided to take care of that requirement. While my license doesn’t expire for another two years, procrastination of such an important undertaking wasn’t an option.
I learned about a program called the Modern Language Studies Abroad a few years ago. Located in Frankfort, Ill., the program is for teachers and students who want to travel to either Spain or Costa Rica to take Spanish language, culture or methods classes at a university, either undergraduate or graduate courses. In addition to taking classes, participants also live with a host family.
Living with a host family was the true selling point for me because it means constant exposure to Spanish and the Costa Rican culture. It’s been four years since I have lived in a Spanish-speaking environment for an extended period of time, so it’s time to go back for some much-needed total language and cultural immersion. Our hope is that most young folks will get the chance to live someplace else in their lives to learn one of the most important life lessons: Other cultures are neither better nor worse than ours. They are different, unique, but no better and no worse.
While I have been lucky enough to travel throughout Puerto Rico, South America and parts of Spain and Mexico, this six-week adventure to Costa Rica will be my first trip to Central America.
I will spend the first four weeks of the program going to school each day to take a conversation and methods class. (I looked into taking a week off in mid-July to return to Bluffton to help cover the 4-H Fair, but, unfortunately, missing 1⁄4 of the course to come back to cover one of my favorite summer events wasn’t an option.)
After one month of course work, three friends will fly down from Arizona, South Korea and St. Louis to meet me so we can travel throughout Costa Rica and Nicaragua for 15 days before returning home.
I look forward to writing about Costa Rica once I get back in August to share some of the stories about what is supposed to be an idyllic place, the Hawaii of Central America. Look for some stories later this summer about the small country that is slightly smaller than West Virginia.
Or, drop me an e-mail and I’ll be glad to tell you about Costa Rica or add you to my e-mail list while I’m there.
So, for the next five weeks, it’s -30-.
by JUSTIN PEEPER
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
Read this story in our E-Edition, Click Here
Talk about this story in our forums!