Defining Diversity
Diversity in this situation is simply the blending of people from different situations. While at the SFS Center, even though I only live and work with fellow Americans, there is still an abundance of diversity. Learning to live with this type of diversity has been my biggest challenge here to date. It has been much harder to adjust to than to the Costariccenses. With the 32 students that reside here, it has been very tough for all of us to reach an equilibrium where we are all content. Even though we all are from the US, we all know English, and we all came here with a passion to help the environment, that does not in any way categorize us as the same type of person. We all have different expectations, different goals, different beliefs, different backgrounds, different political views, different hobbies, different amounts of wealth, different music tastes, different noise levels, different sleep hours, different study habits, and so on... We are all such different people, which is good, because we all bring our own strengths to the program, but it does make it hard to get along at times. Yes we pretty much have all had experience living in dorms beforehand, but being crammed into one small dorm building with 4 girls to a room is vastly different from the space and freedom of a US college campus. SFS Costa Rica is definitely not what I expected it to be coming in, but is any new situation? I know being here is making me a stronger person and I will come out having conquered a new set of learning experiences. Costa Rica is the right place for me, right now.