Media Credit: Meredith Mason
By Meredith Mason;
Mosaic Staff Writer,
Anastasia Lara is like a lot of students at Salve Regina University. She is diligently working towards a degree in a field she is passionate for, and manages to divide her time between student athletics, and indulging in her love for Newport and the beach.
Unlike most students, however, Lara has to get on a plane and travel 2,307 miles to the place she calls home: Escazu, Costa Rica.
Lara chose to come to Salve because of its great location. She especially loves how pretty the town is. “I love living next to the beach and how everything is close no matter where you are,” says Lara.
Lara says her transition from attending school in Costa Rica to Salve was easier than she expected, thanks to her participation in the International Baccalaureate Program. The IB program is an international version of the Advanced Placement program, that many students in the United States take part in to receive college credit for high school courses.
Lara is studying marketing at Salve and she is also a double minor in Business Administration and Global Business and Economics. She says her favorite class at Salve was World Politics with Dr. Liotta. “He definitely opened my eyes to more issues to become more self-involved with the world because he understood where I came from,” she says.
This year, Lara decided to try out for the tennis team. She says that it has made her semester really enjoyable, and she now has 12 close friends that she considers family. Although Lara plays tennis at Salve, her true athletic passion, however, is equestrian horse show jumping.
Even though Newport has become a second home to Lara, she still misses many things about Costa Rica. Unlike most students, she can’t just hope in the car and drive home to visit family when she is homesick. Lara says, “I really miss my family sometimes, but going to school at Salve has definitely made me more independent.”
