Personal Narrative: My First Trip To Costa Rica

In the summer of 2015, my sister and I took out first trip out of the country. Only the two of us went because my parents wanted us to go to Costa Rica to meet our family and see how life is there. I had never been out of the United States, so I had only heard of how life was in Costa Rica I’ve never experienced it. I had a hard time imagining what Costa Rica looked like even though I had the power to search it on the internet. I just assumed it was just like the United States because that was what I had been accustomed to for seventeen years. However when I arrived, I encountered an environment far different from the one I had been accustomed to. In the United States we are very technology driven. I won’t lie, I am very dependant on technology
We walked around the town, we hiked the mountains, and we visited the beaches. While these activities were fun, I found them an exhausting departure from my typical “easy” lifestyle. I really had to adapt to their way of living. In the U.S, kids have fun by playing video games or hanging out with friends, but in Santa Maria, they hike up mountains and grab fruits and vegetables growing on trees. When my cousins and uncles told me what they did for fun I felt so awkward because my way of having fun felt so boring in comparison. I pushed myself to do everything that my grandma wanted to do and eventually, I came to enjoy going out and doing all these cool things. I never thought that I would be able to experience what my dad used to do as a kid when he lived in Costa Rica. It gave me a live snapshot of his
We decided to go camping up in the mountains. I have never been camping before, so this was my first experience. Now I would truly have to accept the absence of technology. When we reached the mountain it was freezing, though I try to play it off like I wasn’t cold at all. Since it was freezing we weren’t able to sleep outside in tents. Instead we slept in a broken down shack. There was no floor and the beds that were there were ripped apart and almost broken. I’m surprised the bed didn’t collapse while I was sleeping. I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to get through those two days. The shack had open windows so the cold wind would blow in while we slept. However, I did get through the two days by learning to adapt to the situation that was presented to me. I made the best out of it, and had so much I forgot how cold it was. It got to the point where I thought to myself that when I get back home, some of the things that I used to do will seem kind of boring after what I experienced in Costa