Boston Globe Heading
Sunday, June 16, 1996
By Jeff Kantrowitz Globe Correspondent
SANTA ANA, COSTA RICA-
Tropical birds chirped in the lime trees as my teacher, Olgher Arrieta Alvarez, and I scrutinized the Spanish sentences on the blackboard.
Spanish grammar, Olgher explained with a smile, thrives on repetition: The same indirect object is often included twice in one sentence, such as, "I give to him, Juan, the mango."
Don't try to understand it, he urged, just accept it.
He was right, of course. Custom, not logic, often dictates our speech patterns. Besides, with an afternoon breeze rustling banana-tree leaves and buffeting a mountainside pool, I was not inclined to argue. I spent March in Costa Rica in a Spanish immersion program run by Centro Lingstico Conversa, a language institute, on a former farm near San Jos.
For $1,725 - less than a Harvard freshman pays for one large-group language course - I received three intensive weeks of class, one super-intensive week and a month-long stay with a host family. Classes were small, no more than four students, and results were impressive: I had conversational proficiency and a working knowledge of nearly every Spanish verb tense by the end of the month.
David Kaufman, a former Peace Corps volunteer and language-training coordinator in Latin America, founded Conversa in San Jos in 1974. He opened the nearby Santa Ana campus, where I studied, in 1980 and still runs day-to-day operations on the finca, or farm. I particularly enjoyed Kaufman's weekly lectures demystifying Spanish verbs.
Professionally and personally, intensive language immersion is perfect for people who want to - and can - put their career on hold to gain new skills and explore a foreign culture. My classmates were an eclectic mix of students and professionals, including a Washington trade association official in his 20's, a Florida marketing executive in his 40's and a Nevada pharmacist in his 50's.
My Conversa package included classes with energetic, experienced teachers, three meals a day, weekly laundry service and a nightly cultural exchange with Martha Cspedes, her husband, Marcos, and their daughters, Lucy, 16, and Laura, 21.
A decade before, my French host family in a similar program had lived to eat. The Cspedes clan lived to watch Latin soap operas.
Weekdays, Marcos drove off in his red Hyundai - a windshield sticker proclaiming boldly in English, "SEXY WAYS" - to an office job at the stare-run electricity and telephone monopoly. After cooking and cleaning, Martha turned her living room and front porch into a beauty parlor, filing and polishing women's nails.
Weeknights, Martha, Lucy and Laura gathered around the living room television for the soaps - telenovelas in Spanish - with titles such as "Sweet Enemy" and "Coffee with the Scent of a Woman."
0 We lived on a dusty, nameless dirt-and-gravel road shared by what seemed like the contents of Noah's ark. From outside the 6 by 9-foot bedroom the Cspedes family reserves for North American students, barking dogs, chickens, goats and babies competed for eartime, night and day.
Around San Jos, the houses often have street addresses, but few natives use them. They prefer locating houses with nearby landmarks: Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, St. John of God Hospital. Finding my house inspired creative directions: 100 meters north of Alcoholics Anonymous and 50 meters west of the Aqueducts and Sewers office, past the construction debris.
March was the end of Costa Rica's dry season, and on my street that meant construction season. It seemed as if every family was tearing down walls, installing doors, adding rooms to their houses. I dubbed our daily telenovela "Coffee with the Scent of Dust."
From the time I awoke at about 7 a.m. until I collapsed - literally - after 10 p.m., I spoke Spanish.
Class began at about 8:30 a.m. in the stone and hardwood classrooms, broke for a snack two hours later and resumed from 11 a.m. to about 1 p.m. Snack usually was sliced papayas and pineapple, French toast or blended rice and beans. Lunch featured hearty mainstays such as roasted chicken and chorizo, a seasoned sausage, with rice.
Hardy souls in the super-intensive program stayed on after lunch, studying again from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. By day's end in my toughest week, even potent Costa Rican coffee couldn't revive me. Cold, imperialistic Coke sometimes worked.
I have Conversa and the Cespedes family to thank for my rapid progress. I went from functionality to proficiency in just four weeks, and I am now ready for a lifetime of practice in Spanish. At least I'll remember to wear shoes the next time I see Bill Clinton...

- Jeff Kantrowitz

** JEFF KANTROWITZ is a journalist and virtual author based in Cambridge, Mass. Kantrowitz, who specializes in coverage of food, ethnicity and grassroots community groups, has written articles for The New York Times, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the American News Service.