Learn Spanish in Costa Rica Through Cultural Immersion!
Learn Spanish in Costa Rica While You Immerse Yourself in Cultural Traditions:
At SEPA Spanish Language School and Environmental Protection Center a big part of your Spanish learning takes place off campus with your homestay family. Here you experience our rich cultural immersion through time-honored traditions. When you come to learn Spanish in Costa Rica, you are immersed in our beautiful Spanish language, our beautiful families, and our beautiful culture. Learn Spanish faster by being one of us!
Learn Spanish in Costa Rica Through Christmas Traditions:
We’re a small town but we have our big traditions. Every year we kick off the holiday season with our festival of lights. On the second Saturday of December, our town proudly turns on its Christmas city lights. Next, a colorful parade of brightly lit floats make their shining way past happy people. We wrap up in sweaters for the cool night air while our younger children fight sleep. It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of!
Everybody makes Christmas tamales for the season. Little girls proudly learn this time-honored tradition from their busy moms, aunties and grandmas. Our students learn Spanish as they take part in this popular Costa Rican cooking tradition, and a good time is had by all!
Enjoy Decorating the Traditional Family Nativity Scene!
All around town flashing Christmas lights adorn houses and huge beautiful nativity scenes are set up in a place of honor, strewn with straw and strung with Christmas lights. Many of these nativity scenes are as tall as a five foot Christmas tree with two-foot tall figurines! As a matter of fact, nativity scenes are more common than Christmas trees, since, being imported, Christmas trees are extremely expensive!
On the other hand, some families lay a Christmas wreath on a table where beautiful, fat advent candles burn brightly for a short time each night.
As in other countries, gifts are given out on Christmas Eve (La Noche Buena) or Christmas morning.
La Posada:
Several weeks before Christmas, a fun tradition, called ‘La Posada’ begins for many households. Besides eight days of partying, people really connect to the story of Joseph and Mary trying to find room at the inn through this popular Christmas tradition. Various neighbors take turns hosting the posada.
How ‘La Posada’ Works:
For seven nights people stand outside the ‘inn’ (the home of the host) and a fun, bantering song begins which trades verses between the people inside the house (the innkeepers) and the people outside the house (Joseph and Mary and their supporters asking for room). There is a lot of laughing as the innkeepers tell Joseph and Mary to go away, complain about the noise they are making, tell them it’s too late, and other things.
For seven evenings Joseph and Mary are refused admittance, although after the singing is done, the doors are thrown open and everyone is invited inside for traditional foods and a good time. Oftentimes villancicos (Christmas carols with a Latin beat) are sung.
On the last night, Christmas Eve, the merrymaking takes place at the church, with the innkeepers inside. The singing and bantering starts up again but THIS time Joseph and Mary (and their representative crowd) are welcomed into the stable (the church). Thus begins a moving candle-lit service. Everyone is given candles, even the children.
Aim for the best – Learn Spanish faster at SEPA Spanish Language School Through Spanish Cultural Immersion
If you are looking for a superb Spanish language school and the chance to learn Spanish through Spanish cultural immersion, you have come to the right place at SEPA School. We love sharing Christmas and our Christmas traditions with our students as much as we love sharing our Spanish language. You get to enjoy Christmas ‘Costa Rica style’, from the inside out, living as a family member.
