Living with a family
A room in someone’s house, not a room in a hotel
This is the part of the program that does the most work. Every student sleeps in a family home in La Fortuna de Bagaces — not a residence, not a guesthouse with a Costa Rican name, but a house where people were already living before you arrived and will be after you leave.
The classes are not the main thing
It is worth being blunt about this, because it is what people underestimate when they compare programs on price. You have twenty hours of class a week. You have the other hundred or so waking hours, and all of them happen in Spanish.
From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you are hearing it and using it. Breakfast before class. The walk out of the door. Lunch back at the house. The afternoon out with an instructor. Dinner, which is the long one. The neighbour who comes by, the television in the evening, the goodnight at the end of it.
Nobody is teaching in those hours, and that is exactly why they work. A classroom asks you to perform Spanish. A house just needs you to use it.
What that actually means
You get your own bedroom. A bathroom that is often private and sometimes shared with the family — we will tell you which before you come, rather than promise you one and give you the other.
Three meals a day. Most students eat them with the family, which is where a good deal of the learning happens — but nobody minds if you would rather eat on your own, or at a different hour. That part is yours to decide. The kitchen is open to you and so is the rest of the house, the way it is for anyone who lives there. If you want coffee at four in the afternoon, you make coffee.
And almost nobody in these houses speaks English, so there is no switching to it when you get tired. That sounds hard, and on about the second day it is. By the second week it is the reason the whole thing works.
Your place in the house
- Your own bedroom, for the whole stay
- A bathroom — often private, sometimes shared with the family
- Three meals a day — usually at the family table, though when and where is up to you
- Use of the laundry room — washing is not a service the family is asked to provide, though plenty of them end up doing it for you anyway
- The kitchen and the rest of the house, open to you like anyone else living there
- A short walk to class, and a bicycle if you want to get around town on your own
Usually there is one student per family, so every conversation at that table is yours. Couples, friends and families travelling together can stay in the same home.
How a family becomes a host family
Not every house in town can do this, and we don’t pretend otherwise. We keep a few selected homes.
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01
We already know them
These are neighbours, not applicants. We have known these families personally for years, long before any of this started.
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02
We see the house first
We visit before a family joins, and we look at the room you would actually be sleeping in.
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03
They’ve done this before
Most of our homes have hosted many students already. They know what a nervous beginner looks like on day one.
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04
You’re matched, not assigned
We ask about your interests and your habits before you come, and we choose the house with that in mind.
A day at their table
Breakfast is early, before class — around seven, and you eat it with whoever else is up. Lunch is in the middle of the day, between class and the afternoon’s activity. Dinner is around seven in the evening, and it is the long one.
Dinner is where most of the real learning happens, and no teacher planned any of it. Somebody asks how your day was. You try to explain the thing with the horse. It comes out wrong, they laugh, you try again, and this time it comes out right. That is the whole method, and it happens every night for free.
None of it is a rule, though. Eat earlier, eat later, eat on your own when you want a quiet night. It is a home, not a timetable.
After that the evening is yours. Most students end up on the porch anyway.
Getting around
Classes are a short walk from where you are staying. La Fortuna de Bagaces is small enough that most of what you need is within a few streets, and the people between your door and the classroom will know who you are by the end of the first week.
If you would rather not walk everywhere, we can provide a bicycle so you can get around town on your own.
They come back for the family
Students return to La Fortuna de Bagaces, and not only to see us. They come back to see the family they stayed with.
That is the part we are proudest of, and it is not something a language school can organise. It happens because for a few weeks somebody sat at a table with you every evening and was patient while you found the words.
Ask us about the house you’d be in
Tell us a little about yourself — what you eat, whether you like quiet, whether you have done this before — and we will tell you which family we have in mind and why.
Ask us about a week