You never know what to expect on a study abroad trip. I was surprised at how quickly I made friends and how we\u2019ve stayed in touch even weeks after the trip. When you\u2019re with 19 students for three weeks straight, you truly get to know them. I figured that I would make friends while I was there, but I never thought I\u2019d meet friends that I was so close with by the end of the trip. I was also surprised at how comfortable I was with living in Costa Rica for three weeks. I feel like I wasn\u2019t homesick at all. I emailed my mom three times during the trip, but I would\u2019ve been content with staying there for an extra month. The experiences that I had were amazing.<\/p>\n
To be honest, the biodiversity of Costa Rica surprised me as well. I didn\u2019t realize that such a small country would have such a variety of wildlife. Costa Rica is currently big on ecotourism, and after spending three weeks there, I can see why. From the active volcanoes to the chilly cloud forests, to the wild sloths and monkeys, Costa Rica is a great destination for anyone who wants to experience a wide variety of flora and fauna.<\/p>\n
I felt very prepared for my trip, but I wish I had known that I wouldn\u2019t want to leave. We had the option to stay behind to explore on your own, and I thought I\u2019d be ready to leave by the end of three weeks. I was so wrong, and I wish I had decided to stay a couple more weeks with some of my new friends!<\/p>\n
I\u2019d give anyone who is thinking about studying abroad this advice: just go somewhere. Even if you study abroad for a week during spring or fall break, just do it. It was the best experience of my life and I would love to be able to do it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You never know what to expect on a study abroad trip. I was surprised at how quickly I made friends and how we\u2019ve stayed in touch even weeks after the trip. When you\u2019re with 19 students for three weeks straight, you truly get to know them. I figured that I would make friends while I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":266,"featured_media":1909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33,35,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian-biology","category-costa-rica","category-faculty-led","category-maymester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/266"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1910,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/1910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}