When South Carolina's Rotary District 7770 awarded me the Rotary Cultural Ambassadorial Scholarship in August 2004, I was given my choice of virtually any country in the world to act as a goodwill ambassador, learn their language and experience the culture.

I chose Costa Rica.

Named in 1502 by Christopher Columbus, Costa Rica means "Rich Coast." This Central American country is the size of West Virginia and home to 4 million people called "Ticos." For three months, I was a Tico myself.

I chose to go during the country's dry months from December to May, a season which can be compared to our summer.

Last Dec. 30, I moved into the two-bedroom, one-bath, home of a 65-year-old couple in Santa Ana, a town of 20,000 just outside the capital, San José. After celebrating the New Year with them and their extended family, I jumped right into Spanish language school Monday at Centro Linguistico Conversa in the Santa Ana mountains. There I studied Spanish one-on-one with a native instructor for 12 weeks, six hours a day.

To make a smooth transition into life there, I had to learn certain things.

The buses

I had to understand the bus system to get to grocery stores, movie theatres, to the capital city or to the beach on the weekend, There are no bus maps, so I had to learn by trial and error or ask a local with my survivor Spanish, a gamble in itself. After a few months and many roundabout bus trips, even the locals asked me for advice on which bus to take, an indication of how confusing the system is.

The mail

Second, there was the mail. My home address was "100 meters west of the post office." Every home and business had a similar physical address, devoid of numbers and street names. Once I learned that all the churches face west and that one block equals 100 meters, I got around with relative ease. Sending mail there is risky, and many people who receive mail from the States have a post office box in Miami or Houston and pay for a private delivery service to bring their mail to Costa Rica.

Safety

Also, I had to learn different safety precautions from what I am accustomed to here. I lived in a house across from the town square, which in Latin America consists of the church and a soccer field. The Internet café, bus stops and all of my friend's houses were within walking distance. Just the same, my host family and every Tico I met constantly advised "tenga cuidado, tenga cuidado," meaning that I must be careful when I walked across town or took a taxi alone after dark, as mugging is not uncommon.

Darkness followed close after 5:30 p.m. every day, so I either had to limit my experiences or take chances and be vigilant. I opted for the latter. After classes, I wanted to visit the Internet café or travel to different towns. I also had to travel to neighboring towns to meet with the Rotary clubs, and meetings started around 8 p.m.

From where I lived, San José is about 10 miles and 45 minutes by bus. I loved to walk along the crowded streets, visiting the sidewalk fruit vendors, the shopping district, and the outdoor handmade crafts market. One of the girls I met found herself in the middle of a purse-snatching scam in San José the first week I arrived, so I was exceptionally careful with my purse when walking downtown. Once, a homeless man fell on top of me in front of the national cathedral. My nerves were a little frayed until I realized he wasn't trying to rob me.

Public speaking

One of the requirements of winning a Rotary Scholarship is to give cultural and humanitarian awareness speeches in the native language to at least three different Rotary clubs in the host country. I scheduled my speeches during the third month so that my hours of Spanish would have registered in my brain. Most of the clubs were relaxed and small, only about 20 or so people. The first two speeches went by smoothly.

Upon walking into the meeting room to give my third club speech, I noticed an unusually large crowd. I asked the secretary what the occasion was, and she told me I would speak following the address by the Rotary District Governor for Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica. At that moment, I was thankful for the required speech class I took in college and hoped they wouldn't compare my speech to his.

Teaching while learning

Volunteering was another requirement for the scholarship. I chose to work for a government-sponsored kindergarten for at-risk children ages 2-5. The country's poorest are provided with this service from the Costa Rican government either free or through meager donations from the parents. Every day I brought games and supplies with me to help teach them English. The children would run to the gates to greet me, yelling "Niña! Niña!" meaning "little girl." Thinking this name for me was a total lack of respect, I complained to my Tico friend that I should at least be called "muchacha" (young woman), but he explained to me that, as strange as it seems, all students call their teacher "Niña."

Most of the children didn't understand that Spanish wasn't my first language and would cry, yell, or talk to me in Spanish as if I were a native. Although at times I was laughed at by the children for saying something wrong, they may have been my best resource for learning because I wasn't afraid to practice with them, and I needed to understand what they were saying to me.

Supplies from Rotary

I wrote to Donnie Jameson, my Rotary sponsor in Orangeburg, about the pitiful condition of the kindergarten and their needs for basic learning materials, such as blackboards and books, and he sent me a $250 grant from the Orangeburg Rotary Club for supplies. After telling the director of the kindergarten the good news, she and I headed to downtown San José to go shopping.

A lot of materials can be purchased for $250 there. As we were carrying all the bags from bookstore to bookstore during the five-hour shopping trip, I thought about how easy this would have been with an American superstore and my own car. Even so, both the administrators and the children were immensely appreciative of the new learning materials, especially the blackboards we installed.

Slowing down

Another lesson was slowing down. The national motto, "pura vida" ("pure life") rubbed off on me. I had to learn to relax and appreciate things.

For the first time in my life, I never wore a watch or carried a cell phone to tell the time. When I met a group out for dinner at 8 p.m., no one usually arrived until 8:30 or later.

I just had to adjust when the water, electricity or Internet would not work in the town, or when my shower, heated electrically as the water pours out, would sometimes shock me.

I noticed that hardly anyone uses a babystroller and even I walked more carefully on the sidewalks, which are harzardously uneven due to the severity of the earthquakes. On a bus ride, we came to a place where the bridge had fallen into the river below during a particularly strong earthquake. I had to trust the bus driver when he took a detour over a dilapidated railroad bridge. Looking out the window, I saw planks of wood flapping with the bus tires and hoped we weren't going the way of the original bridge.

Nature and local festivals

The natural beauty of the country made up for every inconvenience many times over. Most weekends, I traveled to waterfalls, beaches, rainforest, even to an active volcano. Each part of Costa Rica is unique, with its Caribbean and African influences on the east side, its surfing capitals and influx of American tourists on the west and the ecological wonders in all directions.

When I didn't plan weekend excursions outside the Central Valley, I attended festivals in neighboring towns. As I was usually the only American in attendance, local festivals provided untainted insights into the culture. I celebrated with the locals at the annual oxcart parade, at the blessing of the farm animals by the town priest and at an infamous horse parade, which concluded with a salsa dancing party in the barn.

Missing 'pura vida'

Now that I am back home, I miss a lot of things: my bowl of fresh papaya, pineapple and mango every morning; the Sunday morning fruit market in front of my house; the kids from my front patio playing fútbol in the town field; the genuine kindness of the Ticos and their aspirations for purer lives.

Thank you, Rotary, for opening my eyes to the world. I am so grateful for this experience and for the understanding I now have of the cultural differences and similarities between the United States and that of Latin America. I encourage anyone interested to research and apply for the international scholarships Rotary offers.

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