Jordanne Wood

Coping with reverse culture shock: Coming home after your year abroad

Culture shock is an anxiety-inducing idea that generally pops up lots before you embark on a year abroad. People will tell you that your destination of choice will be so different from life as you know it, the food will be weird, and something about all this will ultimately shock you, likely leaving you homesick or feeling completely out of place. Culture shock may make life hard for many, but the chances are that you know what to expect and do not find your new home culturally shocking, as such, because you’re ready for it!
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Posted Jul. 9, 2019

Travel

Tourism causing trouble: Commercialising Costa Rica’s last tribe

Since the 1970s, there has been great effort in the Americas to conserve indigenous cultures and communities not totally displaced through colonisation, but now rapidly shrinking due to globalisation. Costa Rica is one such country in which tourism initiatives have been developed in an attempt to conserve one of the last indigenous communities – the Boruca community. Nowadays only 2.4% of Costa Rica’s population is indigenous, representing just 120,000 people, and they are dispersed among the 24 indigenous communities around the country.
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Posted Jul. 4, 2019

Travel

Things I wish I’d known before a year abroad

As a finalist studying Hispanic Studies, I spent my year abroad a little unconventionally. I avoided studying or teaching English, and opted instead to live in the Costa Rican rainforest and work in Conservation. It has truly been the best year of my life so far, but there are a...
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Posted Mar. 26, 2019