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5 Tips to Design your Travels Around Language-Learning

5 Tips to Design your Travels Around Language-Learning

And reflections on my love affair with linguistics

Vanessa Li's avatar
Vanessa Li
Aug 14, 2025
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Tomatokind Magazine
Tomatokind Magazine
5 Tips to Design your Travels Around Language-Learning
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I write to you from the second-story balcony of my hostel in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. It is 5:32pm. Light rain mists the air, and the sun has just set.

La Fortuna is a small town known for its hot springs along the thermal Tabacón River and for being the gateway to Arenal Volcano National Park. It is my first day in this beautiful country (although it won’t be by the time you read this). And, in the past 24 hours, I have experienced the magic of its nature (birds, beetles, monkeys, Ceiba and fig trees) as well as the warmth of its community — from a long car ride with my hostel owners (an Argentinian couple who met in Mexico, traveled Latin America together, and fell in love with each other…and Costa Rica) to hiking up the volcanic summit with two new friends from Ecuador.

The wonders of being in a new place dawns on me: new sights, smells, language, and permission to try something different. It is a reminder to re-discover what is really “me” when separated from my routine environments, luxuries, and people. But, also, a fresh cup of *caldosa doesn’t hurt.

*Caldosa is a popular Costa Rican street food consisting of ceviche — most commonly fish — over a bag of barbecue chips.

In this piece, I reflect on my love affair with linguistics and offer 5 tips on how to design your travels around the serendipitous art of language-learning.

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