I always love to take city tours, but never the ones they offer so many of. The top 5 churches, the big squares and most important buildings,… All fascinating, but easily visited and researched on your own. I like the tour that offers something unique. Something your everyday tourist would miss completely. These kinds of tours you can only really get when they are given by locals who speak from their own perspective.
I was therefore thrilled that today’s extracurricular activity in the Spanish immersion program at Instituto Estelar Bilingüe was a City Tour given in Spanish by the lovely profesora Merlyn. The tour had a mix between history and personal experiences. Merlyn would show us her favorite restaurants and hangouts, but also take us to the old part of the city with more historical structures. I loved this part of the tour mainly because we were taught to look at these houses in a different way. Right now we would build in order to have a south facing garden, for instance. But these houses were built in order to maximize sunlight in a more practical way as they were built before electricity was a norm. Still an amazing and energy sufficient way to live today!
My favorite part of the tour, and what I felt was the main focus, was how to be at home in Liberia. We were not only shown great places to eat and drink, but also great places to shop. Fresh, local produce was available at a stone’s throw from the school and I had no idea! A big store selling only vegetables at amazing prices. This would even be a nice place to take a walk just to practice my vocabulary!
The long list of shops we had seen, also included a shop for school supplies. Great for the teachers, but also for me! I definitely need flash cards to get cracking on those verbs!
This blog was contributed by a Spanish student, Mieke from Belgium, at Instituto Estelar Bilingüe in Liberia, Costa Rica.