ULatina

Hey everyone, I'm glad to see people have been commenting on my posts. This week I decided to write my post about the university that I studied at while I stayed in Costa Rica. Both Kristen and Sandy asked questions about my classes so I wanted to clear them up this week! ULatina is the university that we studied at. This university consists of two buildings and the picture on the left is one of them. It is located in San Jose and it was about a 20 minute walk from my house every morning. My roommate and I usually walked to class although there are many busses along our route that we could have gotten on. Some students were not fortunate enough to be in walking distance so they needed to take a bus.
ULatina does not have dorms like a university in the states. Almost all colleges in Costa Rica are commuter since family and living at home is very important in Costa Rican culture. There are security guards with guns that stand outside the buildings every day and this is because there is a small bank inside the university. At first the thought of men standing outside with guns frightened me, but after a while, it just became normal to see them there. During the month that we were there we took two classes. One of them was a conversation class that was conducted in Spanish and taught by a wonderful Costa Rican teacher named Elizabeth. The other class was a culture class that was taught by our program leader who is a Spanish teacher from UD. Some weeks we had a full five days at the university and others we had Fridays off in order to travel to other places of the country. This picture on the right is the other university building and this is where our classes were held. We also had access to many computer labs, although often it was hard to find one without a class in session, but we had free internet access here. This past winter was the first year that the University of Delaware studied at ULatina because in years past they have taken their classes at the University of Costa Rica. We also visited here for a day but everyone seemed to enjoy ULatina better because it was more technologically advanced and the University of Costa Rica was run down compared to our school. If for some reason anyone is planning on taking classes in Costa Rica, I definitely recommend taking them at ULatina! I hope this answered everyone's questions about my university experience in Costa Rica but if not, please comment and ask more! I'll be happy to answer them.