COSTA RICA: ‘It’s grown to be my second home’

Bald for a cause: Students cut their hair to raise money for cancer research in Costa Rica. From left, Carla Schmidt (Germany), Kseniia Lebid (Ukraine), Haylee Law (New Zealand), Numi Moreno-Belaen (Costa Rica/Belgium), Sophie Sorensen-Wald (US) and Beatriz Gomez (Brazil). Picture supplied

Overseas travel is years away and most of us are stuck in New Zealand. That is unless you are Haylee Law. When New Zealand went into Alert Level 4 last year and many were getting to grips with a new reality, the 17-year-old was preparing for school in Costa Rica in Central America.

“Where else can you go to the beach and see monkeys in the trees and iguanas walking around campus?” said Haylee.

“There’s nature everywhere. It’s just so beautiful.”

After a three month exchange in Germany in 2019, Haylee heard about the United World Colleges programme where she could choose to study at any one of 18 schools worldwide.

Already hooked on travel, she applied after she came home from Germany.

“I ended up coming back to New Zealand with the travel bug,” said Haylee.

She applied to study abroad, was accepted and awarded a full scholarship.

Her only roadblock was a global pandemic.

“I had no clue what was happening, because most of the international schools had sent their students home because of lockdowns.”

She wanted to go back to Germany but was offered a spot in a school in India.

“Very quickly we realised that was not going to happen,” she said.

India has been especially hard hit — in May this year there were days when over 400,000 people were diganosed with Covid-19.

After her options fell through, Haylee worked with New Zealand’s United World Colleges committee to find another school.

Instead of India or Germany, Haylee was given Costa Rica, and said yes. She studied there from last September until this May.

“I went to this country knowing almost nothing about it.

“I knew they spoke Spanish and I knew it was in Central America. That was about it.

“Over time I’ve learned a lot about the place and it’s grown to be my second home and I’m eager to go back.”

Haylee’s Spanish is improving. She can hold down a conversation “pretty well”.

“I can understand things when they’re written or spoken, especially when people talk slowly.

“I still get people who laugh at me, especially my friends from Costa Rica who still correct me and laugh at me but it is funny.”

But life in Costa Rica was not easy.

“There were restrictions — things were very different but it was such a cool experience.”

Tash Allen, Haylee’s mum, said the school was very supportive.

“The school reassured us that she would be safe. They can’t just whip out willy nilly as they like. There’s guards on the gate when they come and go,” said Tash.

“Haylee is very, very on to it. She is level-headed and ambitious like you wouldn’t believe.

“I mean, how do you stop that?

Rather than seeing obstacles, Tash has supported Haylee’s hopes.

“You want her to succeed and you want her to live her dreams.”

She isn’t sure where her daughter’s dreams come from.

“Certainly not from me or her father. Both of us are ambitious and have worked hard in life but these dreams of whipping off to different countries . . . both her father and I have only been to Australia or Raro.”

While Haylee loves overseas adventures, there have been plenty of restrictions.

“Originally you weren’t allowed to go into other people’s rooms without masks. You had to go to the cafeteria with a mask. All the classes were online.’

Her maths teacher lived 100m away on campus but they still had to do classes via the internet.

“But then slowly Covid got better in Costa Rica and after that we were allowed off for one hour a week without supervision.

But then after their Easter break brought tourists from the US things got worse.

“Covid cases spiked and they were the highest they had ever been.

“We had 30 cases of Covid-19 on our 200- person campus.

“Just like that, one day it was prom and everyone was allowed to be in a big social bubble. Two days later we got an email saying you’re not allowed to leave your rooms.”

When the outbreak happened, Haylee’s friends caught Covid, making the young Kiwi a very close contact.

“All my best friends got it and I had symptoms.”

Then came the email: “You’re getting sent to a hotel in half an hour, so pack your bags for two weeks.”

Haylee was picked up and put on a bus of other people with symptoms and sent off to a hotel.

Somehow, after an excessive number of close calls, Haylee dodged the Covid bullet and never caught the disease.

Back in New Zealand to see if she had Covid-19 she had a test for antibodies — none.

But the shocks were not over.

“Coming back seeing groups of people in cafes in restaurants with nobody wearing masks was really different. Being able to give people hugs was really weird for me.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, the exceptional state of affairs in Costa Rica, Haylee will be heading back in a few weeks to her overseas school.

Haylee has another year to complete her International Baccalaureate, essentially NCEA level 3.

At least normality is on the horizon with vaccines rolling out.

“It’s happening a lot faster than here in New Zealand and they are moving down the age bands, so my age group will be able

to be vaccinated within the next few months.”

And Haylee’s travels are set to continue if her exam results deliver her another scholarship.

“Gisborne’s always going to be here, I can always come home and that’s always an option, but I want to see everything, travel, and I love learning languages. I want to do it while I can.

“Of course there’s the pandemic in the way and you have to work around the restrictions and that can sometimes suck and it has its own challenges, but I might as well do what I can.”