Reception held for exchange students Tusculum's exchange students from Costa Rica are pictured in the Allison Gallery with instructor Greg Dykes. The students are from the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, and will be on campus until the end of the academic block.

Costan Rican student lives out his dream at Tusculum College

Rodolfo Angulo

"This has been my dream since I was a child," Costa Rica's Rodolfo Angulo says of his first trip to America, "and now I'm living my dream."

Angulo is one of thirteen students from the South American country on the Tusculum College campus this block. As a part of the college's exchange program with the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, the students learn English as a second language under the guidance of instructor Greg Dykes, who's also director of Tusculum's travel office.

Twenty-four-year-old Angulo is from a large family: in addition to his parents, he has four brothers and three sisters. His ties to Guanacaste (a province in northern Costa Rica) are strong, and his ultimate goal is to become a high school teacher in his native country. So why is visiting the Tusculum College campus turning out to be the realization of his dream?

"My first goal was to experience American culture," Angulo says as he reveals that he hopes to one day teach Costa Rican students about life in America. "My next goal was to learn more English and improve my vocabulary." In addition to feeding his own desire for knowledge, those goals can be considered professional development for Angulo. He already teaches English to elementary students in Costa Rica, and hopes to move on to high school students after taking his degree from the university.

Having studied English since he was a child, Angulo is quickly arriving at a level of reading that can rival even American college students. When asked what he's been reading, he is quick to name such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Kate Chopin, William Shakespeare, and Paul Theroux, whose writings on life in an African village he especially enjoyed. He also enjoyed learning about the "verbal irony" of American naturalist Stephen Crane.

The only thing Angulo is having some trouble adapting to is American food, which is very different from the food in Costa Rica, he said. "It's the one thing I'm not used to." But, he says, he believes he'll grow to like it after a time. He has, after all, only been here a week.

As for East Tennessee, "I really like it here," he says. "It's very calm. And the students here are very friendly, and that's helped."

He does miss his family, however. Since he is not able to call them directly because they don't have a phone, a neighbor relays messages for him. His father works as a nighttime security officer, and his mother is a housewife.

"They want to motivate me," Angulo says of his parents, since he is the first person in his family to attend college. That's also a big part of why he plans to do well during his time here. "They say that I'm the representative of my family," he said.

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Learn more about the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica (in Spanish)

Tusculum also has exchange programs with Derby University in Derby, England, and Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland.