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COSTA RICA'S LEADING ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER

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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.

La horma de mi zapato: On love and taxis

There are taxistas and there are taxistas. But on the whole, I love the river of amiable, chatty, and well-informed men who have carried me around the city day after day and week after week.
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Costa Rica’s Migrant Crisis: A Paradise for Tourists, a Hell for Detained Deportees

Costa Rica, celebrated for its rainforests and beaches, is facing sharp criticism for its treatment of migrants. The Jesuit Migrant Service of Costa Rica...

Panama’s Gardí Sugdub Becomes a Climate Migration Case as Sea Levels Rise

The laughter of children running through the alleys of Gardí Sugdub is no longer heard. Everything changed a year ago when nearly all of...

Learning Spanish in Costa Rica: Lessons Beyond the Textbook

Learning a new language later in life requires patience, perseverance, and the understanding that, no matter how fluent you become, you'll probably never reach...