Liz Tiffany

Buenas! I'm Elizabeth Tiffany, a senior double majoring in Estudios Hispanicos (Spanish) and a Multifield major titled Human Ecology. I'm also minoring in Caribbean and Latin American Studies. I'm from Chenango Forks, near Binghamton, NY. My experience living and studying abroad for a year in Costa Rica profoundly changed me and I hope to help others have similar experiences!

For the fall 2011 and spring 2012 semesters I lived with my host family in San Jose, the capital city of Costa Rica. My number one goal was to become as fluent as possible in Spanish and I had always heard that studying abroad for a year was the best way to do that; a semester just wasn't going to cut it. I chose Costa Rica because I was more interested in expanding my knowledge about the Caribbean and Latin America and I wanted to take my courses with Costa Ricans in a typical classroom setting to further my language immersion.

Costa Rica is the perfect place to travel on the weekends and I was fortunate enough to receive a CIIS travel research grant that I used to travel throughout the country during my second semester, interviewing and surveying tourists and locals about their perceptions of tourism and the environment.

One of the best parts of my experience living in San Jose was participating in the cultural activities at the many museums, the National Theater and other theaters and especially with programs like Art City Walk Tour, ChepeCletas, and La Feria Verde.

There's no better program for complete immersion and Spanish language learning than our Costa Rica program. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at ertiff@gmail.com or ertiff09@stlawu.edu