A Summer Internship Gave Me a Deeper Appreciation of Language — and Mangas

“Mira, tiene que comer todo.” — Look, you have to eat everything.

“¿Todo?” — Everything?

“Todo.” — Everything.

Miriam was teaching me how to eat a manga, a variety of mango that is plentiful across Costa Rica and happens to grow on the grounds of the nursing home. With juice running down our chins, we stood outside of the cabinas, the living space for the oldest women at the center, catching pieces of fruit as they fell from our mouths and waving to passersby. 

I came to Costa Rica through Princeton’s International Internship Program. While I was originally supposed to spend my whole eight weeks working at an animal rescue center, plans changed, and I had the wonderful opportunity to work at a government-sponsored daycare as well as the nursing home where Miriam lives. It was definitely the highlight of my experience. If you had told me in 7th-grade that I would be speaking completely in Spanish with a group of vibrant elderly people in Costa Rica in my freshman year of college, I would have been amazed. The cultural immersion and exchange I was able to experience only added to an activity that means so much to me on a personal and emotional level.

These past few years before my grandpa died, I got used to visiting him in his dementia facility in Los Angeles, where I live. I played music and games, danced, and had dozens of conversations, not only with my abuelo but with other residents who were also struggling with fractured thoughts, fading memories, and the loss of physical and mental faculties. The quality time I got to spend with the elderly is something I had been missing since he passed, and it took flying to Costa Rica and accidentally ending up working at a nursing home for me to realize how much I needed it. 

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Making friends at the nursing home — un hogar de ancianos in Spanish — filled this gap I didn’t know existed. My new friend, Alicia, will turn 101 four days before my birthday this September. She has a sharp mind and memory, though she did like to retell the same stories about the farm she had when she was younger. But I didn’t mind. Miriam is 87 — young for the cabinas — and she takes her duty seriously as one of the spryest ladies there, acting as a caretaker for the older women. She helps other residents during mealtimes and often assists the staff in washing dishes and cleaning the area. Claudio is also very mobile and spends his days pruning random plants around the facility. He brought me gifts throughout the day: an avocado, jocotes, some cass fruit. He knew I love fruit from our earlier conversations and never forgot to bring me something on the days I was working. 

Miriam, who taught me how to correctly eat a manga, also taught me something important about the small joys of life. She is a former taxi driver and told me that her love of people and places led her to that job. She explained how lucky she feels to have seen so much of Costa Rica when she wouldn't have had the means to do so on her own dime. She looks back on her career as having served her countrymen and herself and fulfilling her purpose. Her affection for a job that was hard and unglamorous was moving and inspiring to me. 

At the start of the internship, my goal was to have a cultural experience and work on my Spanish in an effort to connect with my roots. Thanks to Miriam, Alicia, and Claudio, the trip was much deeper than I ever expected. My mother’s family is from Spain, and growing up in Los Angeles, I developed a good ear for the language, but it wasn’t until I spent the summer in Guatemala two years ago — and this summer in Costa Rica — that things really clicked. Having the opportunity to improve my Spanish and create relationships with strangers was the most powerful way I could have hoped to spend my summer. Now, coming home and transitioning back to a world with a lot less Spanish and without my grandfather and the community of his nursing home, it’s hard not to miss the connections I formed in Costa Rica. 

On that day in July, Miriam helped me collect more mangas to take home for later, and we headed back inside to help the women in the cabinas with lunch. Something as small as learning the right way to eat a manga from a former taxi driver in Costa Rica is so oddly specific and special I know I will never forget it.