It all started around Christmas 2016, I was looking on the computer browsing up places to travel to, like one does, when I found a link that led me to a site that took high school students all around the world. With a lot of research and randomly bringing this website up in conversations with my parents (My conversations usually went like this: my Mom: “What would you like for dinner?” me: ” How about pasta? spaghetti? Did you know spaghetti comes from Italy! Hey, actually, that reminds me, I found this site that lets high school students travel to Italy for school! Wouldn’t that be soooooo fun! Hey Mom?”). My parents said no each time. But with a lot of perseverance, more research, and randomly bringing it up in conversations with my parents whenever I could, I finally found a place that they would “consider”.
After extensively researching around 5-6 more study abroad programs, I finally found the one that really resonated with me, The Cloud Forest School. An environmental school that is located within the cloud forest in Monteverdi, Costa Rica. This school builds its curriculum around learning about the environment and its sustainability as well as bilingualism. I felt a real connection with what this school represented and I knew this is where I wanted to be for part of my Grade 11 studies. I showed my parents and they loved it… This was all a part of my master plan where I contrast really good schools with not so safe kind of sketchy ones.
anyway.. flash forward to now.
This morning I woke up, gave heartfelt and tearful goodbyes to my dog and 3 cats and left my house. My parents and I walked onto the BC ferry, took a bus and then the sky train to the airport, and after a very confusing ticket mishap, I was ready to go through security. Because of the mishap I had to quickly get through security so we had a quick goodbye, but without a doubt, the most meaningful goodbyes yet. I hugged and waved at my parents as I disappeared through the security gates. I was off and now ready to start my 5 months- 1 semester journey in Costa Rica.
I am here in Mexico City writing this, waiting for my gate to appear on the screen in 4 hours. I am indulged in the Spanish language, however tough for me to understand at this point. I know that when I return, I will be able to say much more to the airport security than ” hablas espanol?”… and I probably won’t get so lost.
All for now,
Alysha 🙂