THE STORYTELLING

This is the meaning according to the web: Storytelling is the conveying of events in words,images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and in order to instill moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters, and narrative point of view. LINK

I think storytelling is a part of culture because it gives a good sample of the identity or values of each country. Our legends teach in fun, and there are situations that can leave us positive or negative things according to our behavior. For example "la Cegua"; this legend talks about alcoholic abuse that has a negative result in the person.

All storytelling in the end leaves a teaching over all for the kids who hear it. The storytelling is part of growing of each country and the storytellers are wonderful people because not all people can make of a simple story a great listening experience as make Jacky Torrence for example. Her voice is very sweet or mysterious if it is necessary and this makes that we enter in the story according the narration. The art of storytelling is wonderful!!!

JACKIE TORRENCE

TOURIMS IN OUR COUNTRY

Nobody could say that traveling out the country would be a bad experience. Of course! Traveling around the world will be very good, to know many places, many cultures and taste all types of meals, sounds very good, doesn’t it?

My dream is to know The Riviera Maya in Mexico. Ooooh, it is a beautiful place! I affirm that because I've seen a thousand times on television that the Mexican culture, beaches, town and food are unique. Well, that is my dream; someday I will travel to Mexico. My reality is: I live in another beautiful country, who says no? Costa Rica is a great beautiful country, I like to travel to know other countries if I do not know mine?

The tourism in our country increases every year, according to the website Wikipedia. Costa Rica stands as the most visited nation in the Central American region, with 1.974 million foreign visitors in 2007… Since 1995 the tourism is the first foreign exchange earner for our country and since 1999, tourism earns more foreign exchange than bananas, pineapples and coffee combined. How? Well not only our coasts are very beautiful, also the rain forests, every town is so, so beautiful.

The negative, the increase in construction in the Guanacaste mountains is like an invasion, many buildings rather than forests.

This is the only picture I have, but in Guanacaste the mountains are destroyed to construct, hotels and houses for rich people. Our land at this step will no longer be ours.

The negative and very sad: drugs and prostitution in Jaco beach and that people recognize it or see it as normal, it is not normal, it is a problem.

HONESTLY, the foreign travelers take good care of nature and respect it, I've seen it in my rides for the beaches and other places. The tourism may be negative for many reasons, but everything is a balance, and the positive side is better. My personal opinion is the tourism is not negative, not the foreign person, the negative thing is what is offered here to the foreign travelers. The tourism is positive for us in the understanding that generates jobs, money spend in infrastructure, education, health and others for us, in good theory!

THE LANGUAGE

The language is an important part of the culture, the identity of the culture, the people. The language or idioms are very important for the communication. The Spanish is a fascinating language from the Latin language. The English from Northwest Europe is the third most spoken language in the world, after Chinese and Spanish. In the present, English is very important to relate other people of other cultures either visiting or working.
The language has many sounds and the people give different meanings depending on the country to which it belongs, for example in our country “papaya” is a fruit, but in Cuba and Nicaragua the meaning is: female sexual organ, in Colombia: give opportunity for someone (“darle papaya a alguien”). In Mexico the word “pajilla” is slang, have a sexual meaning: is the male sexual organ. The slang is a different and peculiar form of communication used by teenagers or by people, but informally and in our country we use it very often, it is very “tico” to do it. And there is an example created by a Costa Rican boy, the example is in Spanish, but it is a good example of our slang.(LINK).

The language regardless of the idiom or accent is part of the identity of each anywhere in the world.