Each school has had its advantages and disadvantages. The Sarapiqui Conservation Learning Center, SCLC, was my fist, and most enchanting experience here in Costa Rica. I found the job posting while scanning through Dave’s ESL Cafe. 

In March of 2001, the school offered me the position, so I packed my bags and flew to Costa Rica with a Lonely Planet phrasebook and a few words of Spanish that I managed to retain from high school. When the plane landed, I looked out the window and three tan-skinned, handsome young men were waving at me. It made a good first impression. On my first journey to the school we drove through the Braullio Carillo Rainforest. Mist moved through the high rounded mountains, and then hovered over the deep ravines below. I had never seen such a dense tropical forest. On the side of the highway waterfalls plunged into ponds surrounded by blankets of pink flowers and pre-historic size plants.

Teaching was really difficult at first. I couldn’t control the children I was teaching, because I didn’t know any Spanish. It got better over time and my methods as well as my Spanish grew.

I also taught adults at night and we had a nice exchange of cultures. While working as a volunteer there were many moments were I felt like I was making a difference in peoples future.

 Every experience has its downfalls, and the downfalls at the SCLC were mainly interpersonal or administrative.

After volunteering at the SCLC for eight months, I decided it was time to find a paid ESL job. The only paid jobs are located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, which is urban and a completely different experience than rural Costa Rica-dirty air, crime, and no butterflies or birds. 

I found a job at ProEnglish in San Jose. Instead of teaching children in the rainforest, I was traveling around the city from company to company teaching to businessmen in cubicles. I liked the increase in intellectual stimulation of teaching businessmen, but it was a terrible letdown from my experience volunteering in the rainforest. 

They paid around eight dollars an hour which was a high salary at the time.

I only lasted for the minimum four month commitment at Pro-English until I decided that I would rather be back in the United States.

I flew back to the USA, worked, and took classes for about a year. However, I still felt that I hadn’t learned enough Spanish and that I wasn’t entirely finished with Costa Rica. I decided that I wouldn’t go back until I was able to find a job that paid a fair wage, and had a community of teachers to rely upon in a foreign land. I searched around the Internet and found a school called Intercultura.