Reflection about México -- 8 Feb 2008

Before leaving the states, I thought it would be important to contextualize my experiences with traveling and studying abroad.

Last year was the first time I was out of the country, and it was exciting! I studied in Cuernavaca, México with Universal for 3.5 weeks and then travelled to México City for a week before returning home.

The experience was quite good for several reasons. After studying Spanish for several years, I feel it really helped me develop a different linguistic and cultural understanding of the people behind the language. You can learn how to translate every word of another language, in fact computers can do this; what separates a fluent person from a computer is that we can go beyond the literal translation and make sense of the cultural metaphor, which is in essence how we communicate.

Take for example two particular events from the trip. First La día de la Virgen Guadalupe, or Day of the (Patron saint) Virgin Guadelupe. Virgin Guadalupe became the patron saint after a miracle was formed. This is perhaps one of the most spiritual holy days for Mexicans. Most Mexicans go to mass on this day, prepare special foods, and put rose petals on the graves of loved ones.

Another example is the tradition of Las Posadas. Posadas is a great tradition I also learned about in High School Spanish. The weeks before Christmas each local parish and/or street (depending on the town/city) reinacts Mary and Joseph's sojourn to Bethlehem. In many parishes, its a special honor for a the girl in the town to be chosen as Mary. This celebration becomes a social celebration for the town block. The young and old come out together and join the Posadas parade, followed by the ceremonial breaking of the piñata and drinking poncho. (Poncho is a hot cider-like drink with spices, fruit and sugar cane in it.) This is another example of how the Mexican community comes together as a group or family for celebrations.

For both of these examples, I recall learning about this holiday when I was in my High School spanish class (taught by on of my favorite HS teachers Sra. Shuey). She always included culture in the study of language. Even though I was aware of the holidays and could tell you a lot about them, I never was able to "understand" their full purposes before I experienced them.

I think this gets at the heart to why it is good to study abroad: Books can only teach you so much about a given topic, what we each need to learn something fully is to experience the world. This changed my perspective on the world, I process the world through a different lense.

I think it also taught me another valuable lesson about respecting other people's lives. I think all cultures to some extent are centered on our lives and our way of life. While this can be helpful, I think we need to push beyond our culture and push towards a cultural understanding of acceptance of difference. We may be have different cultural identities such as American, Mexican, Argentine, or Nepalese, or different religions, but at the end of the day we're all humans. We're all on this planet together. At the risk of sounding like a bleeding heart (which I probably am), we need learn about each other, understand our differences and similarities, and accept every person for their own unique characteristics we each bring to the world. If we could do this, the world would look very different.

As I challenge myself to engage in another cultures social quirks head-on, I challenge us all to acknowledge the differences between us and celebrate them. After all, if we were all the same, this nation--and world--would be boring.

Address in BA

Address for mailing me will be the following:

NAME
c/o COPA Argentina
Institute for Study Abroad
San Martin 948, 1°
C1004AAS, Buenos Aires
Argentina

Limit clothing and electronic items because I will have to pay HUGE customs fees. Send me some letters, they're fun!

Saludos...

Tengo suerte!

For non Spanish speakers, the title to this post means that "I have luck". I hope that's an accurate statement as I embark on a very interesting journey since I will be leaving for Buenos Aires, Argentina in about two weeks. I'm very excited since for the past year it has been my goal to study abroad in South America. It's almost surreal that my goal is finally coming to fruition.

Studying abroad was always something that I wanted to do. I believed before I went to college, that it would be an opportunity for me to learn about another culture, hone my language skills, and, hopefully, come back to the United States with a deeper understanding of the world in which I live. Even though I am a science major, I feel this experience is essential for my future career in the States. It's long been my assertion that the problem with the US is that we say we want to compete in the global marketplace and we say we want to understand other cultures, but we don't end up doing it. I think a large part of this is in direct result of not spending time in the countries that we profess to want to understand.

Last year whetted my appetite for extended study abroad when I went to Universal during the last week of December and into mid-January. I went to Universal mostly due to the recommendation of Off Campus Studies (OCS) because of their great language immersion program. I took Intermediate Spanish I (201) at Universal and I feel it re-inspired me to continue studying Spanish. It was a perfect learning environment being situated in a medium sized city, Cuernavaca, and immersed in Mexican culture. The best part of the program was the home stay; it really complemented the academic program by providing an environment to learn to effectively communicate in Spanish. I hope to add more reflections on this experience from last year in the future.

After 2 more semesters of Spanish at Gettysburg, I am ready for my next challenge. I am excited to learn the ins and outs of the Argentine dialect and ready to work hard in the program. I am attending Butler University's program for Buenos Aires, Argentina, which will permit me to take classes at 4 different Argentine Universities (more on that later). I will be staying with a family during my semester there on Lafinur Street in Palermo, which is a section of Buenos Aires.

This past week I had the opportunity to visit campus. It's strange that all the students are back and in session while I'm not. I planned my visit around a committee meeting that I serve on (the Diversity Commission) and was able to catch up with Rebecca Bergren (OCS director) during that time and also catch up with different committee meetings. It was great to see all of my friends, but strange since I'm not leaving for another 2 weeks.

The excitement is building. In 2 weeks, I will begin my journey in Argentina.