I always say that I write this blog primarily for myself and that is very true. This is the kind of post that I like to look back on, one that chronicles a part of everyday life that it’s easy to forget about once you become accustomed to it. Looking at what I eat every day or a snapshot of a week is something I’ve done both when I lived in Honduras and in China (and it still makes me hungry to re-read them!). Food is such an important part of culture and so intrinsic to understanding and assimilating to a new place. It’s a great way to get to know people, to share time with them and build connections. It tells stories and hold history. It’s so much more than just what is put on a plate.

Costa Rican specialties

Over the course of the year I’ve eaten (and also learnt how to cook) many typical Costa Rican dishes too. So let’s dive in! I really like Costa Rican food, it reminds me a lot of Honduran cuisine. They use a lot of the same base ingredients at least but some of the dishes are very different. Costa Ricans are definitely big fans of meat but it’s not impossible to be vegetarian or even vegan here. Once you take away the meat, many dishes are vegan anyway. There’s lots of fruits and vegetables in the diet and as long as you like rice and beans, you’ll be ok! One of the most traditional lunches here is called a casado which has all the classics – rice, beans, some kind of meat, salad and sometimes cheese, plantains or tortillas. The name means ‘married man’ and comes from when wives would send their husbands off to work with this wrapped in a banana leaf.

(L) Pintortilla – This is an example of a very full traditional breakfast, in this case from a restaurant in Cartago called La Tortillería. There’s a big corn tortilla topped with gallo pinto, scrambled eggs, cheese, plantain and a small dish of natilla. This is kind of like sour cream, similar to Honduran mantequilla. Gallo pinto is Costa Rica’s national dish, I would go as far as to say it’s part of the national identity. The base for the dish is rice and beans but gallo pinto is so much more than the sum of its parts.

(R) Tortilla de queso con natilla – I have a favourite cafe near the house called Mist City. I often go for a swim in the morning and sometimes go there for breakfast afterwards. This is my go to. Deliciously cheesy and I love the natilla on the side.

(L) Rice ‘n’ beans and pollo caribeño – If I had to pick a favourite Costa Rican dish, this would be it. It’s a speciality of Limón, the region on the Caribbean coast. Alicia, our GVI cook, is originally from this part of Costa Rica so she makes this for lunch sometimes. I’ve also eaten it in Limón and personally I think Alicia’s is the best! Rice ‘n’ beans, which is the name even in Spanish, does what it says on the tin but is cooked with coconut milk as well. It’s typically served with Caribbean chicken in a delicious, coconut sauce that I could drink straight out of the pan!

(R) Vigorón – This dish has chicharrones, boiled yucca, shredded cabbage and chimichurri (a tomato salsa). I LOVE chicharrones. They can be either fried pork belly or fried pork rinds, one chewy and the other crunchy and crispy. The chicharrones pictured were actually made by my friend and colleague Andrés’ dad!

(L) Chifrijo – The name of this dish comes from the combination of two of its main ingredients – chicharrones and frijoles (beans). As well as the pork and beans, there is rice, avocado, pico de gallo and tortilla chips.

(R) Olla de carne – Literally ‘pot of beef’, this is a beef stew that is very popular. It’s prepared for a lot of special occasions and if you ask many Costa Ricans what their favourite meal is, this is their answer! As well as beef, you can pretty much throw in any vegetables you have, including but not limited to potatoes, corn, green plantain, chayote (a type of gourd that is one of the biggest crops in this area and is like a watery potato), squash and yucca. Andrés’ mum made this for me when I was last visiting his parents after she heard that I hadn’t tried it before!

(L) Picadillo de plátano – Picadillo is a dish of chopped vegetables, think of something like a stew, but there’s a lot of scope within that. This one is a specialty of one of my friends, Naty, and is made with green plantain, onion, garlic, a little butter, evaporated milk, regular milk, spices and some coriander for serving. You wrap it up with a tortilla and enjoy!

(R) Sopa de mariscos – Another soup eaten for special occasions but very specifically at Easter. It’s traditional in Costa Rica to eat seafood for Easter and this soup has a little bit of everything. I’m not the biggest soup fan in general or the biggest seafood fan but I did enjoy the arroz con pescado (rice with fish) that we had at the same time.

Those are some of Costa Rica’s specialties and as much as I love them, that’s not what I eat everyday. Both when I was in Honduras and China, I had a host family cooking for me and while it’s a little different this time, here in Costa Rica I’ve been very lucky that we have Alicia who cooks for us during the week. She still makes a lot of typical Costa Rican food for us with a few other things thrown in there. We very much couldn’t survive without Alicia! Having a great breakfast to start the day, a hefty packed lunch and coming home from project to dinner made for us is invaluable. The following sections will give you an idea of what a more typical day looks like.

Breakfasts

There are about four breakfasts on rotation during the week. From least favourite to most, first we have oatmeal. I don’t normally eat this at home but it’s better when you add peanut butter or Nutella, banana and granola for crunch. Next in line is pancakes, also topped with Nutella and banana. I’m more of a savoury breakfast person so I like it when we have toast and scrambled eggs but my favourite has to be gallo pinto! It’s rare but occasionally we’ve had huevos rancheros, omelette-like eggs in a spicy tomato sauce and it’s always a good day if it starts with that. We also always have coffee (of course) and fresh fruit. Costa Rica has ruined pineapple for me because it’s so sweet and delicious here, I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy it the same way at home anymore.

Lunches

When it comes to lunch, there are two kinds. First of all, there’s the lunches that we take to school. There is a canteen in the school that provides breakfast, lunch and snacks to the kids for free and for a small fee for teachers but we have the resources to bring our own and don’t want to take any of theirs. Like breakfast, there’s a bit of a rotation but sometimes there are surprise entries. My least favourite of the standards is picadillo which can often have meat but ours are always vegetarian. I don’t mind the potato version but I don’t really like the courgette or chayote versions because they’re too watery. Another standard is fried rice, seen above with elotitos, roasted corn kernels, or pasta which is my favourite. Occasionally we have potato salad, Russian salad (like potato salad but with beetroot) or Alicia’s take on quiche. There’s also always salad, whatever lunch is.

The other category of lunches are Thursdays. Our schedule is a bit different on Thursdays, we spend the morning lesson planning in the house before going into school after lunch and staying late for our conversation club. Being at home makes it easier for Alicia to prepare something a bit more elaborate. You can see two fish dishes above, the fish and chips in particular appealed to my British sentiments. Empanadas are also a great option but my favourites are chalupas or patacones. The two middle photos show the chalupas and all of its component parts. It’s a fried tortilla topped with frijoles licuados (beans), a chicken, pork or vegetable topping, cheese, pico de gallo (a tomato salsa), avocado and salad. Patacones involve similar toppings but the base is smashed and fried slices of plantain. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the whole dish but you can see patacones as a side with the whole fish.

Dinners

Dinners are more varied in the house. We have a lot of soups, especially if there are vegetarians or vegans. A typical Costa Rican soup is sopa negra (black soup) which is made with beans and usually eaten with rice and chopped up boiled eggs. I’m not much of a soup person but I love this one. I also really like the white bean soup and we also have chickpea or just general vegetable soup. We can also have a plate that is composed of rice, beans, salad, some vegetables and meat in an always delicious sauce. Again, there’s always salad!

Bonuses!

I’ve been lucky to have learnt how to cook a number of Costa Rican dishes while I’ve been here, some of which I might try to recreate at home and others that might be a lot harder!

Tamales – These are the traditional Christmas dish in Costa Rica and it’s a long process to prepare them. It is made with a corn based dough that is filled with meat, vegetables and rice and wrapped in a banana leaf for cooking. The banana leaves that are used as wrapping have to be prepared before you can use them so they get wiped clean, cut down to size, and the strong centre vein of the banana leaf is separated to tie the tamal. The massa is mixed with spices, salsa lizano (a staple in Costa Rican cooking that is like a thicker Worcestershire sauce) and some of the cooking juices from whatever meat is being used. The fillings can vary but it’s traditionally made with pork as well as rice, potato, onion, carrot and pepper. When it comes to wrapping the tamales, you have to make sure it’s tied nice and tight so that no water can get in during the cooking because that ruins the flavour and texture. 

I first made them in December when a volunteer that we had at the time expressed an interest in learning how to make them and we were invited around to Naty’s dad’s house to do just that! I’ve also made them twice while working with GVI’s group trips as one of their cultural activities.

Arepas colombianas – Again, I have some very lovely and generous friends. Karo is originally from Colombia and we met her through our conversation club. She recently taught us how to make Colombian arepas! The dough is made with cornmeal and then filled with cheese. It’s often eaten for breakfast with scrambled eggs. While Karo oversaw the cooking of the arepas, we had her 11 year old son Felipe (who speaks the most incredible English) teaching us how to fold the cheese into the dough.

Empanadas – Naty has also taught one group how to make empanadas and Andrés taught another group. You can fill empanadas with pretty much anything but the standard options are beans, cheese, chicken, chicharrón, potato or any combination. The trick is just not to over-fill them, however tempting it might be!

Sorry for the clickbait title but ‘why I didn’t renew my contract at my not-so-dream job that I actually didn’t like as much as I thought I would’ just didn’t quite have the same ring to it. That gives you the Spark Notes of what is to come but there’s a lot more to get into. Once again, I’m using my writing and this blog as a way to process one chapter of my life coming to an end and another beginning. The decision to leave this job and by extension Costa Rica wasn’t an easy one but ultimately it was clear what I needed to do. I currently have just over a month left in Costa Rica and then I’ll be moving back to Scotland to start a new job! But don’t let me get ahead of myself.

To go back to the beginning, moving back to Scotland is something that has been on my mind since the end of 2022. At the time, I was living in France but trying to figure out my next move when I finished my job teaching English at a university there. I didn’t quite know what I was going to do when I got there but I wasn’t thinking about it too much as I had a summer of travelling to Honduras, Panama and Colombia first. It was while I was travelling that I got an email about this job and the rest is history. I stand by all of the reasons why I took this job and I don’t regret that decision (apart from the fact that I had to sell my ticket to see the women’s water polo final at the Olympics…). However, it hasn’t been an easy year by any means.

Before I get too far into this, I want to preface what is to come by saying that I don’t want it to sound like I don’t appreciate being here. I absolutely do, I have a lot of love for this country and its people and there have been a lot of highlights. I’m just working through the reasons why I made the decision, the difficult decision, to leave. This job is one that I’ve dreamt about since I was 17. I went into adult life saying that I wanted my future job and career to involve three things – travel, speaking other languages and helping people. In my mind, this job with GVI fits these three criteria perfectly. In reality, it does but there’s also more aspects to take into consideration. From the outside, it might seem like working in Costa Rica is the dream, I mean it’s literally paradise, right? This is true, Costa Rica has some of the most incredible nature and wildlife, beautiful beaches, great weather and the famous ‘pura vida’ attitude. I’m living in the city of Cartago, the third largest city in Costa Rica, just outside of San José. It is surrounded by mountains and has a very temperate climate with cool evenings, both of which I love, but at the end of the day, it’s still a big city. I’m also pretty much as far from the coast as it is possible to be in such a small country. However, not all of that has applied to my year here. Like the rest of us, I’m guilty of sharing more of a highlight reel and presenting the sunshine and smiles to those outside of my immediate circle, especially when it comes to social media.

The side that you don’t see is that for the past year, I have been working almost 24/7. The nature of this job, where I look after volunteers who come to Costa Rica to teach English, is all consuming. From the moment they arrive, I spend the weekend training them to get them ready for project work during the week. Every morning, I’m checking how everyone is feeling, how they slept, if they’re feeling ill. Then we’re all at the school we work in, which for me involves supervising English classes, translating Spanish, guiding lesson planning, keeping track of where we are in the curriculum, liaising with teachers and other school staff, staying on top of all the volunteer’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, organising logistics for the rest of the week and probably more. When we get back to the GVI house in the evening, sometimes there’s more classes or more planning or group activities. At all times, there’s a diverse group of people who are far from home, maybe for the first time, who don’t know each other but are now living and working together.

The intense nature of the job means that it’s also been hard to have a life outside of it. Even when we’re not actively on project, at the school, my free time is not really my own. It’s like being on-call, at any point someone could need something and I have to deliver. It’s a lot to manage and the fact that it’s a live-in role means it’s very difficult to get time to myself. While volunteers stay in dorm style rooms, I do at least have my own room but even that is tainted by the fact that I sleep on a (shitty) mattress on the floor. Any time away from the house and Cartago, in the evenings and even at weekends, has to be coordinated with Andrés, my colleague and technically my manager here, because if there’s volunteers around, one of us has to be nearby. I have made a real effort to carve out time to myself when I can. This is where my swimming and water polo comes in, going to the pool is undeniably me-time. I’ve been welcomed into the club so warmly, by the coaches and players, and included in trainings and tournaments (even if I haven’t been able to participate in most of them because of work). On the other hand, I don’t have many friends outside of the people I’ve met through our projects. That’s not to say I don’t have good friends, I have met some incredible people who I’ll be friends with for the rest of my life. However, I don’t have friends that are completely separate from work and that can act as an escape. I’m a very social person and it’s always been important to me to have several circles of friends and I just don’t have that here. There either hasn’t been the time or when there has been, I haven’t had the energy to go out and find people to make these connections with.

Alongside feeling like my life is completely dedicated to my job, I don’t feel like this effort has really been acknowledged or fairly compensated. I am not and have never been someone who is majorly motivated by money but I am someone who is good at recognising their worth. (On a funny side note, when I started working at the school here I had to do a psychology test and it came out with my biggest weakness being that I don’t like not being in control and my biggest strength being very high self esteem.) This job came with accommodation and the majority of food included but only a very small monthly salary. Obviously, this kind of work is not usually well paid, if it’s paid at all, which I don’t necessarily agree with but is just the reality of the situation. As a short term job, a way to get experience or try something new, it might be justifiable. It might be sustainable if you’re rich or have a large amount of savings. For me, it hasn’t really been either of these things. Even for a year, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively short term, I have found it hard to justify the hours I’ve been working against what I’ve gotten out of it, whether monetary, experientially or personally. I had some savings when I got here but these have rapidly dwindled with having to cover extra costs, emergencies like fixing a smashed phone screen and paying for flights to and from Costa Rica. Any extra travel I have wanted to do has also had to come from my savings. Travel is very important to me, I love being able to explore new places and it’s always been a big reason why I have enjoyed living abroad. I would have loved to be using my weekends, or at least some of them, to see more of Costa Rica and enjoy what it has to offer. In reality I’ve been on three weekend trips in the almost year that I’ve been here.

A few things happened that had me reflecting a lot and having to confront how I was feeling and it led to a lot of big realisations. In March, my grandad fell and broke his hip and passed away about two weeks later. That period was very emotionally fraught and probably the most difficult period that I have experienced while living away from home. I felt like I had been waiting for a phone call like that since I moved to Honduras when I was 18, or at least fearing the moment when that kind of phone call would come. After he passed away, the grief I was feeling made me long to be closer to my family. It wasn’t just about being close during that very difficult time but made me reconsider the fact that I have spent so long living far away. I’ve always been close to my family and I value them a lot but I’ve also always had an urge to go out into the world and experience things in other places that I can’t experience at home. That urge has, up until recently, been the stronger one but that has changed. It’s not just a desire to be close to my family that made me want to move back to Scotland but a longing for the place itself. There is a word in Gaelic that perfectly encapsulates how I’ve been feeling. ‘Cianalas’ refers to a deep seated sense of longing for and belonging to the place where your roots lie, particularly the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Grandad was from the isle of Lewis and grew up speaking Gaelic. I have been learning the language for the last three years, throughout which time I have been living abroad, and it has made me feel so much more connected to my country, my culture and that side of my family. I need to embrace that and be at home for a while.

When it came down to it, I realised that I wasn’t that happy. There were a few catalysts that made me realise that I needed to make a change. Grandad passing away was obviously one of them. With that, I ended up going home twice in the space of a month. I went back for the funeral at the start of May but I already had annual leave booked in for the end of May so I could visit home and also go to one of my best friends’ weddings. The first time I went home, I was very much still dealing with the first wave of grief. I didn’t do much while I was there other than spending time with my family. I wasn’t thinking too much about going back to work when I got back to Costa Rica but at this point, my plan was very much still to renew my contract when the time came in September. I know this because I took things like clothes and a few books back with me when I left. In the two weeks I was back in Costa Rica before going back to Scotland again, a lot changed. By the time I went home for the second time, I was thinking a lot about changing my plans, renewing my contract for a shorter period of time or not at all.

With everything that was pulling me away from Costa Rica, there were still a few things holding me here. I absolutely love working with the kids in the school. As much as I’ve been wanting to move away from teaching, working with kids is still something I enjoy. With that, I also didn’t want to leave Andrés in the lurch. It took several months for my position to be filled in the first place and I don’t want that to happen again. This job is a lot, even when you have a strong team which I think we have been. At the end of the day though, as much as I care about Andrés, this isn’t my responsibility. The most I could do after I decided to leave was to give GVI as much notice as possible and therefore as much time to find a replacement for me as possible. A small point in my mind but one that was there nonetheless was that it would look better in terms of my CV if I stayed longer than a year. While there may be some merit to it, I quickly dismissed it as not being a good enough reason to stay. The biggest sticking point that was making me want to stay (and I’m only half joking when I say this) is that I have a cat here! Taica turned up on our doorstep with her sister Onca about three weeks after I arrived. While Onca decided to unadopt us, Taica is firmly here to stay. I adore her, I’m obsessed with her and even now that I’ve made the decision to leave Costa Rica, she’s still on my mind a lot.

One big benefit of my time here is that it has been a great way to step away from English teaching, or at least take a side step. I’ve been saying for a year or so that I would be open to staying in education but in a less formal environment. I’ve always liked working with young people in the variety of ways that I have over the years. Moving forward, I still want to be involved in their development and education but more through experiences than the classroom. My time living and working abroad may be over (for now) but I’m ready to help facilitate that for others. This all brings me on to what’s next for me. When I was 18, I moved to Honduras for a year to work as a volunteer English teacher with an organisation called Project Trust. I have worked for them twice during summers while I was at university, once as kitchen staff in their residential centre and once doing school talks in London to recruit new volunteers. As I was looking for jobs to apply for, I saw that they had an opening in their recruitment department doing much the same thing as I had done as an intern in London but based in Scotland. To cut a long story short, I got the job! I’m excited to be part of an organisation that I have a lot of love for and to encourage young people to have hopefully as amazing an experience as I did.

I used to think that I wanted my job to be what fulfilled me in life and what satisfied me. I’ve tried that now and I can say that it’s not something that works for me, at least not without better boundaries between my personal life and professional life than I’ve had this year. Moving forward, I want a job that I enjoy and do get some satisfaction out of but that more importantly gives me the time and resources to live a life outside of work that fulfils me. I want to be able to spend time with my friends and family, explore and travel, pursue my hobbies. Essentially I want to work to live, not the other way around. I’m hopeful that this is what is in store for me with this new job.

The role involves working from home with travel around Scotland. This means that I’m going to be based back in Dunblane and Stirling. Other than during the initial Covid lockdown, I haven’t lived there full time since I was 18. This is also the first time I’m going to be somewhere indefinitely. I don’t have an end date in mind for this next chapter in my life. Everything I’ve done since first leaving home has had a time limit on it, first in Honduras, then during university and finally in France. I’ve always had a bit of a complicated relationship with Dunblane, having never really felt like I fit there. This is the first time that I’m actually excited to live there and put down some roots. It’s going to be all about rediscovering the area that I grew up in, with a new appreciation for being close to family and friends. I got tired of missing out on things like birthdays, hen dos, my sister’s performances and one of the things I’m most looking forward to is being there for all of those things.

I’ve been rambling for long enough so I’m going to start bringing things to a close. I couldn’t have gotten through this year without the support of my nearest and dearest, they know who they are but there’s a few people in particular that I want to shout out. Some of my lowest moments this year have come in the evenings at which point most people at home are asleep. Thankfully, just a few months after I moved here, my sister moved to the British Virgin Islands which is only two hours ahead instead of six or seven. Thank you Amy for picking up all my calls! Also to my friend Anna who has been a great sounding block all year and sends me morning texts when she knows I wake up, even though it’s early afternoon where she is. They really make my day. Finally, I couldn’t imagine doing this job with anyone other than Andrés. There’s a running joke that we share a brain cell because we are so much on the same page about everything. While he’s technically my boss, he’s been so much more of a friend, confidante and literal shoulder to cry on, on more than one occasion.

These final few weeks are always so difficult because I feel like you have one foot in two worlds. Half your mind is excited and looking forward to what is to come, making plans. I’m already thinking about rejoining the water polo team that started it all, co-working dates with my best friend, being able to hug my cats and dog (and parents) whenever I want. I’m ready to be back in Scotland which is where my heart belongs and has been longing to be for more than a year and a half. I have an exciting new job that also feels like coming home. But we’re not there yet. The other half of my mind is trying to soak up the here and now of it all. There’s so many lasts to be had that I’m sad about but also so desperately want to enjoy and make the most of. Last classes in the school, saying goodbye to my friends, trying to fit in a few final trips. I’ve felt this before and it doesn’t get any easier. There’s no better word for it than bittersweet and I feel lucky that that’s the case. I feel lucky that I’m looking forward to what’s to come and am ready to move on but also that I’m sad to leave behind where I am now. That’s the (bitter)sweet spot and I wouldn’t have it any other way.