When Brianna Johnson returned home to Baltic from a study abroad trip to Costa Rica, she knew she wanted to see the world and travel more.
Johnson, a 2006 graduate of Baltic High School and junior at the University of Minnesota Morris, taught English as a second language at two schools in Costa Rica to students in seventh grade and 12th grades from May 17 to June 14 in the city of Tres Rios, about 20 minutes from the capital of San Jose.
“I told my mom after I got back that I want to travel to a new country every year from now on,” Johnson said.
Johnson said that Costa Rica was a good choice for her first time studying abroad because many who live there speak some English because the country is a popular tourist destination. She said it’s also a great place to go because it’s so diverse.
“You can go to one country and see such a diverse amount of things. Part of it is desert, part of it is rainforest and part of it is Caribbean coastline with crystal blue water,” she said.
Johnson said that upon leaving for Costa Rica, she was told that knowing the Spanish language wasn’t as important as knowing grammatical English.
“We were a little bit misled about that. We got down there and my host mom didn’t speak any English,” Johnson said.
Johnson said this made it difficult to communicate, but that it’s one of the best ways to learn a language.
“We pretty much relied on hand gestures,” she said. “I’d like to go back there and learn more Spanish.”
Johnson said her Spanish speaking is minimal, but many of the Costa Rican students spoke some English. By the time they are in high school, students in Costa Rica are somewhat familiar with the language because many of them began learning it in kindergarten.
Johnson said she enjoyed teaching students close to her age.
“The language barrier kind of disintegrated because I was so close in age to the 12th graders. They’re 19 and I’m 20, so they’d talk with me like I was one of them. That was really great,” she said.
Talking with other people wasn’t quite as easy.
“There were some phrases that I had to master,” Johnson said.
Johnson learned to ask bus drivers in Spanish if she was on the right bus.
Johnson’s roommate got lost because she ended up on the wrong bus, miles from where she was supposed to teach that day.
Johnson also learned to ask natives to slow down when speaking so she could try to understand their Spanish.
“It worried my parents that they were out of the country at the same time as I was. They were really worried that if something happened to me, how would they find out,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s parents, Steve and Carol, were in Mexico for a mission trip at the same time that Brianna visited Costa Rica.
They kept in touch as much as possible by e-mail because the Johnsons’ cell phones did not work in Mexico or Costa Rica.
“The biggest feeling we had was that we were out of the loop. We just felt like we were cut off because of the communication. Usually when you travel, you can always call from a cell phone. We felt kind of lost, like we weren’t in control of the situation,” Carol Johnson said.
Brianna Johnson worked about 40 hours each week teaching classroom sessions. On weekends, she had time to travel to various parts of the country. She went hiking, scuba diving and explored the rainforest.
Johnson received six U of M Morris credits for her time in Costa Rica and wrote three papers about the experience.
She traveled to Costa Rica through the English Language Teaching Assistant Program, which is offered to anyone who is fluent in English to go to countries where English is not the primary language.
U of M Morris serves as the hub of the ELTAP program in Minnesota.
Those in the ELTAP program, according to its Web site, are asked to share knowledge of their culture with teachers and students in the host country. A goal of the program is to help people travel to places they would not normally go.
Since the ELTAP program began in 1993, it has had 418 participants travel to 27 different countries.
Johnson is majoring in biology and plans to go to medical school. She is living in Baltic for the summer and is an intern in the pediatrics unit at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls.