As with all countries, Costa Rica has its own set of norms and customs, based on centuries of tradition and social development. Ticos are very proud of their customs and traditions, roots, and history. One great norm is that Costa Ricans are extraordinarily friendly to visitors
Even our taxi driver was lost. “Where’s the mango tree?” he asked the person on the cell phone. The taxi sat idling on the side of the road as the driver spoke to the host of the party that we were going to somewhere in the
With all the world to see, what would you say was the main reason you have resisted spending time in a foreign country? The food, the heat, the customs or simply missing the comforts of home? Of course, it could be any of these, but it
In my prior article, I reviewed some of the main pros of living in Costa Rica. Today we’ll take a look at some of the challenges of living in Costa Rica. However, while there are many things that create frustration here, I’ll also try to
GATO (ga-to) And now, the time has come to talk about one of those strikingly polysemic words Costa Ricans have -and use- in a variety of situations. Chances are, if you do speak Spanish, even at a beginner level, that this word is probably one of the
GALLITO (ga-ʝi-to) Most Costa Ricans have a thing for diminutives and, you probably know this by now, right? And chances are some of these words have already been incorporated into your Spanish language arsenal. Words like “momentito” (jiffy), or the much used “toquecito” (jiffy), chiquito/a (little boy/girl), and/or
POLACO (po-la’-ko) So, in Spanish, we would use the words brasileño/brasileña to refer to a Brazilian national, for instance, -a male and a female in this case-. And the same word endings are used with most nationalities. So, it is no surprise that a national of,
NANDAYURE (nan-ða ʝu'-re) Being born and raised Costa Rican, my first Geography memories date back to elementary school, where our first Social Studies lessons would inevitably be linked to the country's administrative division into provinces, cantons, and districts. And then, I first learned about Guanacaste, its people, traditions,
MARIA (ma-ɾi-a) According to a report by the U.S. Social Security Administration, James and Mary are the most popular given names for male and female babies born during the 1920-2019 period, with James with 4,735,694 occurrences and Mary with 3,265,105 occurrences. And it continues to be
FERIA (fe-ɾja) So many things have changed along this pandemic. I mean, needless to say, the freedom and some of those things and habits we had -and took for granted- are just barely getting back to a somewhat similar -yet still distant- scenario. But, of course, having