So because I don't learn from my mistakes, I went on a tour of Costa Rica the summer after my sophomore year. It wasn't my fault, it was a choir tour, and I was actually super excited. We got together a strong repertoire of maybe fifteen songs,
a couple of them in Spanish so as to connect to Costa Rican culture. Do you know anything about Costa Rica? It's gorgeous. The plant life is so different from what we have in Seattle, and to give us a break from performing we went on tours of rainforest volcanoes, or ziplining through the rainforest. There are gorgeous tropical birds in the forests, and monkeys there are as common as squirrels here. A good portion of their economy is based on coffee, and they are one of three countries in the world with no military. As a tourist, you cannot help but enjoy yourself in Costa Rica, and it's a good thing, because another good portion of their economy is based on tourism. Yeah. That kind of a country. Like Hawaii maybe. It's hot and humid, enough so that we had at least two singers pass out at just about every performance we had. But this is perfect weather for beach bound tourists and for gorgeous wildlife, and if you want to see this side of Costa Rica it is perfectly available to you.
There is another side of Costa Rica though. This is a side that has one of the highest inflation rates in Latin America. It is the side that is below the poverty, more than a fifth of Costa Rica's population. It is a side that does some of the USA's job outsourcing because companies can afford to pay Costa Rican employees so little. And it is a side that lives in villages cramped together like this one, that does not have the means to educate all of its children, for whom it is a major splurge to host a visiting American choir. Ticos always treat Caucasians well, because Caucasian tourists are a huge source of income for them. They sell us their wares in little markets--painted beads, coffee, handwoven bags and cute t-shirts. Their people are paid minimum wage to serve us in fancy hotels with nice pools and professional gardeners to make sure that we as tourists are living the life, that unlike in Ireland, all of our expectations of Costa Rican flora and fauna are met with a stunning and colorful reality.
I didn't know what to do with myself in Costa Rica. It was a two week guilt trip, us walking around in our shirts that said "pura vida," "pura musica," "pura fe," or "pura amor" on that back, two of those being gramatically incorrect. I loved it, I'd never been on a tropical vacation or a choir trip before, and this was both. But I couldn't stand it. I didn't know how to react to the college students we sang for, who sang just as well as we did and were just as intelligent as we were, but who would probably never have the opportunity to come to our country and certainly not with the luxury with and fine treatment we got when visting theirs. It was awkward for me. We were a church choir, our job was to help these people. We were supposed to see the injustice in the world and do something to fix it, not see the poverty and then return to our resort to hang out in the pool. We learned about respect in their culture, about greetings and how to avoid being rude, but it seemed rude just being there, being wealthy Americans who could afford whatever we needed and then giving them some monetary gift that couldn't possibly equal their need, and spending just a couple hours of our lives with these people. They thanked us profusely for our performance, for our kindness, for our gifts, and then we went on with our daily lives and went off to another performance in a 500-year-old cathedral or expensive hotel.
So I loved Costa Rica. It was warm, it was gorgeous, the people were always friendly, we had fresh tropical fruit at every meal, and any two week tour with a talented choir is bound to be pretty great. But it was also my first experience in a culture so bound to tourism, so dependent on first world countries for its success. And as much as the Costa Rican people appreciated having me there to give them business, I felt that I was doing them a disservice, letting their country of talented workers continue to depend on tourism and exports of tropical plants when they were just as competent as American computer scientists. I guess I still haven't found a solution--I look back on that trip with nostalgia as I do with any other trip, but I also wonder about it. How do you turn a developing country into a developed country when its entire economy is dependent on others? How does a country with a stable government and sound governing structures end up so far behind the developed world that they play maid and street vendor in their own country? Hm. Maybe I'll go into international economics after all.
So because I don't learn from my mistakes, I went on a tour of Costa Rica the summer after my sophomore year. It wasn't my fault, it was a choir tour, and I was actually super excited. We got together a strong repertoire of maybe fifteen songs, 
a couple of them in Spanish so as to connect to Costa Rican culture. Do you know anything about Costa Rica? It's gorgeous. The plant life is so different from what we have in Seattle, and to give us a break from performing we went on tours of rainforest volcanoes, or ziplining through the rainforest. There are gorgeous tropical birds in the forests, and monkeys there are as common as squirrels here. A good portion of their economy is based on coffee, and they are one of three countries in the world with no military. As a tourist, you cannot help but enjoy yourself in Costa Rica, and it's a good thing, because another good portion of their economy is based on tourism. Yeah. That kind of a country. Like Hawaii maybe. It's hot and humid, enough so that we had at least two singers pass out at just about every performance we had. But this is perfect weather for beach bound tourists and for gorgeous wildlife, and if you want to see this side of Costa Rica it is perfectly available to you.
There is another side of Costa Rica though. This is a side that has one of the highest inflation rates in Latin America. It is the side that is below the poverty, more than a fifth of Costa Rica's population. It is a side that does some of the USA's job outsourcing because companies can afford to pay Costa Rican employees so little. And it is a side that lives in villages cramped together like this one, that does not have the means to educate all of its children, for whom it is a major splurge to host a visiting American choir. Ticos always treat Caucasians well, because Caucasian tourists are a huge source of income for them. They sell us their wares in little markets--painted beads, coffee, handwoven bags and cute t-shirts. Their people are paid minimum wage to serve us in fancy hotels with nice pools and professional gardeners to make sure that we as tourists are living the life, that unlike in Ireland, all of our expectations of Costa Rican flora and fauna are met with a stunning and colorful reality.
I didn't know what to do with myself in Costa Rica. It was a two week guilt trip, us walking around in our shirts that said "pura vida," "pura musica," "pura fe," or "pura amor" on that back, two of those being gramatically incorrect. I loved it, I'd never been on a tropical vacation or a choir trip before, and this was both. But I couldn't stand it. I didn't know how to react to the college students we sang for, who sang just as well as we did and were just as intelligent as we were, but who would probably never have the opportunity to come to our country and certainly not with the luxury with and fine treatment we got when visting theirs. It was awkward for me. We were a church choir, our job was to help these people. We were supposed to see the injustice in the world and do something to fix it, not see the poverty and then return to our resort to hang out in the pool. We learned about respect in their culture, about greetings and how to avoid being rude, but it seemed rude just being there, being wealthy Americans who could afford whatever we needed and then giving them some monetary gift that couldn't possibly equal their need, and spending just a couple hours of our lives with these people. They thanked us profusely for our performance, for our kindness, for our gifts, and then we went on with our daily lives and went off to another performance in a 500-year-old cathedral or expensive hotel. 
So I loved Costa Rica. It was warm, it was gorgeous, the people were always friendly, we had fresh tropical fruit at every meal, and any two week tour with a talented choir is bound to be pretty great. But it was also my first experience in a culture so bound to tourism, so dependent on first world countries for its success. And as much as the Costa Rican people appreciated having me there to give them business, I felt that I was doing them a disservice, letting their country of talented workers continue to depend on tourism and exports of tropical plants when they were just as competent as American computer scientists. I guess I still haven't found a solution--I look back on that trip with nostalgia as I do with any other trip, but I also wonder about it. How do you turn a developing country into a developed country when its entire economy is dependent on others? How does a country with a stable government and sound governing structures end up so far behind the developed world that they play maid and street vendor in their own country? Hm. Maybe I'll go into international economics after all.
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