Tico Lingo

Tico Lingo is a Spanish school in Costa Rica that I was lucky enough to work for during the summer of 2022.

I received private Spanish lessons, accommodation with a local Señora and leyenda (Doña Maria), all my food and many free beers 🍻, in exchange for looking after 80 American teens across 4 two-week summer camps.

As you can see from the itinerary below, the camps were non-stop; each day jam-packed with 4 hours of Spanish classes in the mornings, countless activities in the afternoon, and excursions across the country at the weekend.

My jefe Chris, the founder of Tico Lingo, and I refined this throughout the summer, but the basic structure remained the same. On the other hand, despite the awesomeness, there were challenges, and consequently, lessons learnt. So join me on this journey as I share my experience at Tico Lingo!

Contents:

🟨 Itinerary

🟩 Best Moments

🟦 Challenges

🟪 Summary

Itinerary

Best Moments

• Banter with Chris and my co-camp leader Brandon

• My lovely Spanish teacher, Yobeth, and our fascinating lessons; talking about life, work, love, culture, politics and so much more + long bus rides when I practised my español 🚌

• The crazy kids; each group bringing a new set of energetic, interesting young humans. They really did make me laugh and became my friends, especially Grace, Bell, Jack, Hailey, Taylor and so many more. I wish all you guys every happiness in the future 💚

• The beautiful wildlife and food

• Realising how British I am. All these Americans I was looking after tried copying my accent and misunderstanding me so much so that I created ‘British tings’, a list of slang including: ‘blimey’, ‘chuffed’ and ‘faf’ to help them understand me and my culture

• Taking care of myself with some TLC such as getting a haircut and nice gel nails

• Getting to be a kid and enjoy all the activities, especially the water park, which had Go-Karting !!!

All these activities and the Spanish immersion school experience were incredible, and, if I had been a regular paying student, would’ve cost over £10,000!

Challenges

The founder, director and wonderful Chris. Spending the whole summer practically non-stop with one human was bound to leave us getting slightly pissed off with each other.

But that’s putting it strongly, we managed our relationship well. I just couldn’t handle when he kept playing the same god damn cumbia song that made me want to pull my hair out. Likewise, he probably got a tad frustrated with me when I left and then failed to communicate as my poor little iPhone 5 was on aeroplane mode to save battery 😭

He taught me a lot ; basically acting as a mentor and answering all of my questions about what it’s like to run a business, manage people and respond to situations. Eventually, though, his stress and fatigue from being constantly responsible and ‘in charge’ negatively affected my energy and well-being.

We also drank too much, which didn’t help. All this was exacerbated by his friend Brandon, a bar manager from the States, who came along to help as a photographer for two of the camps. Brandon is a character, and an awesome one at that, but there was tension between us which was tiring.

I also learnt that Americans are a rather entitled bunch who are raised in a culture that fosters the belief they are ‘the best’ (understandable given being a global superpower and all). As a humble Brit, however, this was disarming. I found their worldview lacking in awareness of their privilege and sometimes just plain racist.

This was to be expected from the outset and I prepared myself. I reminded myself that they were, in fact, the exception, as they were venturing outside of their comfort zones at a young age; experiencing a different language, culture and way of life.

I would usually process and release these negative emotions, such as insecurity, disgust and frustration via yoga and running, however, with the aforementioned jam-packed itinerary, this was not possible. This energy, therefore, built up to the point where, despite feeling like I should be having the time of my life, I was rather unhappy, primarily because I felt disconnected from myself and my values.

From this, I learnt that balance is vital. You should not always just accept an opportunity because you can save/make money and capitalise on the benefits, because this may not really fulfil you . . .

Summary

So there we have it! My 12 weeks working at Tico Lingo; an unforgettable and wonderful collection of experiences that I will cherish, despite, or maybe even because of, the challenges this job also brought.

Thank you to everyone at Tico Lingo, Workaway, all the wonderful campers and myself for creating this experience ✨