Costa Rica Series: The Beginning

Once upon a time (2005), in a land far, far away (Okay, so it was the same land) a girl (me) was just one semester shy of an MBA when she decided to study abroad. She fandangled her way into an elementary education course headed to Costa Rica for two weeks during August of that year.  How?  Luck, maybe, or preparedness. But really, here's how:

1) She and the course professor devised a way to relate the course to her business degree by including a comprehensive analysis of a business in Costa Rica. The Business: Cafe Britt, the most popular coffee producer in the country, the "Starbucks" of Costa Rica. 

The focus: The company's marketing strategies in a well established local market compared to marketing strategies used for recent expansion into global markets, including Peru and Japan, as well as a somewhat penetrated market in the United States (I'll need a five minute break after that sentence).  

Photo Credit: http://www.simplycoffee.com/marketing.php

2)  The girl then pitched the idea to the Dean of the School of Business (SCARY!) She must have answered all the questions correctly because he agreed to count the class as an elective for her degree plan. The girl, excited about her trip, tried to recruit her fellow business classmates. One by one, she got them interested. One by one, they met with the Dean. And one by one, he shot them down.

He only allowed one other student from the School of Business to count the class toward his degree program, provided he submitted the business report at the end. Why? Who knows. Maybe she caught the Dean on the right day, at just the right moment. Maybe it was her winning smile or maybe she had a better plan walking into the meeting than the other students (I like to think it's the latter). This is where the luck v. preparedness comes into play. Either way, the girl got her trip.

And so it was that on the first day of class, the girl met the other students with whom she would spend fourteen days in Costa Rica.  There were two forestry majors, an education/kinesiology major and two business majors.  

Dr. Armstrong, The Professor

Tamberly, The Almost Local

Bruce, The Corporate Slacker

Forgot this guy's name, but lets call him The Forest Ranger

Rodney (I think), but we'll call him The Coach

And that's me.

Welcome to the first installment of The Missing Travel Blogs and the first post in The Costa Rica Series, a collection of posts that will follow our merry gang through a small country in Central America, a land far, far away, once upon a time in 2005.  Beaches, rivers, mountains, volcanos, waterfalls, big cities, small towns, alligators, monkeys and even a little bit of learning... you name it, it's here.  Stay tuned.

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