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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Maeology

How My Father Shaped My Life in Costa Rica

One of my favorite things about my five-year-old daughter is that before she runs anywhere, she winds up like a cartoon character. She leans...
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How Learning Spanish in Costa Rica Keeps You Young and Laughing

When you’re tuckered out from a long day using Costa Rican slang at every conceivable opportunity, how do you announce you’re ready for bed?...

Costa Rica Cultural Phenomenon: Balancing Humor with Personal Growth

When I worked in English-language education and visited an advanced young-adult class in San José, I asked them what their biggest challenge to language...

Celebrating Valentine’s Day the Costa Rican Way: Love with a Smile

As a U.S. citizen living in Costa Rica, I’m thinking of this Valentine’s Day almost like another Thanksgiving. At a time in history when...

Help The Tico Times celebrate Valentine’s Day by sharing your story

The Tico Times is on the lookout for Costa Rican love stories; share yours and be entered in a raffle for our latest book.

La nave: the joys and mysteries of San José buses

Costa Ricans, looking down the street to see their bus approaching, might say, “Allí viene la nave” – “there comes my boat.” The first time I heard my husband say this, years ago, I was charmed, and I have thought of the city’s buses that way ever since.

5 Parenting Lessons I Learned in Costa Rica

To have a child in another country is to take on an entire nation as your mother-in-law. It’s a new family, or culture, into...

The cure for grumbling expats: un granito de arena

I have lived in the same house for more than 10 years, but I have traveled quite a distance in that time. I have trouble channeling the college student who devoured the country with a ridiculous grin, unable to believe her good fortune, staring in rapture out of bus windows, listening wide-eyed to howler monkeys at night and thinking they were lions, making bioluminescent footprints on a deserted beach, getting lost, being found. Somewhere along the way I moved from “Will you LOOK at THIS?” to “Oh, yeah – that’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Costa Rican Spanish 101: Humorous Comparisons for Expats

If I had to choose, I'd say that the most colorful turns of phrase in the languages I know and love can be found in...

Costa Rica’s Weather Secrets: Birds, Rain, and Unique Sayings

It was still pitch black when I sat up in bed, thoroughly annoyed. “What is that damned noise?” I asked my husband, on whom...

On tweeting and twitteando: Should we resist when languages change?

In English, I'm a crotchety old-school grump. I am an editor and a former English teacher, and happily embody the worst qualities of both, brandishing a red pen and waging a warring battle against change. In Spanish, I have no such loyalties. I have the tone deafness of the second-language learner.
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