Bienvenidos!!

Welcome to our blog as we share about our special journey, sponsored by the wonderful folks at Fulbright. We will be visiting Mexico from June 9th to July 7th, 2012. Our group includes 7 practicing teachers, 7 undergraduates (soon-to-be teachers), and two teacher education faculty. Along with my brave bilingual scholar, Maria Zamudio, we will lead the group as we spend 4 weeks in south-central Mexico. We will be learning about the Mexican educational system along with important social, political, and historical issues in Mexico.

The majority of our time will be spent in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. All of the participants will be living with host families and taking Spanish language classes at CETLALIC, a spectacular language school in Cuernavaca. We will also be taking trips to the following cities: Taxco, Tepoztlan, Puebla, and Mexico City.

Visit our blog to stay up-to-date on our adventures and lessons learned! Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Lunes, 06/25/12


                With every week that passes by we get the opportunity to make new friends and say goodbye to others. Every Monday we take an hour to introduce ourselves and go over our schedule, and today we got the opportunity to welcome a new student to CETLALIC. In class we learned how to properly use all the tenses, such as pretérito, imperativo, imperfecto, and so on. I must admit that my Spanish is not as great as I thought and I must get rid of bad habits.
                After an intense Spanish lesson we gathered as a group and watched a video called: Cartas del Otro Lado or Letters from the Other Side. This video was very emotional for it focused on families being torn apart due to the need of having to cross the border into the United States. As one of the family members in the video said, “Nadie se va por gusto” or “Nobody goes out of pleasure”, which until now has been proven to be true. The three families in the video all had at least one family member who had gone to the United States out of necessity. This necessity has caused a lot of hurt between family members due to the distance and torn relationships. For instance, there was one family whose father left to the United States and later a son/brother, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. The oldest daughter and the mother had a lot of resentment toward the father because he had been gone for a very long time and time after time he promised to return but never did. A huge myth is that once in the United States, there is a lot of opportunity for money but the truth is the complete opposite, making it almost impossible to return to ones homeland (which is always the dream).
                Later that day we returned to school to discuss issues of  “Americanization” and the impact of U.S. music and media on youth in Mexico and concerns over this influence. To do this we broke into groups and met up with a student to simply talk and find out how much of an impact music and media from the U.S. plays in their lives. We had the privilege to talk to a girl named Lucy who might just be the “perfect student”. She is in secundaria or middle school and is very involved in her school and other activities, such as the school play, Wizard of Oz and in a soccer team. We discovered that her favorite music is American, such as, Big Time Rush and One Direction. Her favorite channels are Nickelodeon and Disney XD. She is allowed to use the internet on Fridays and sometimes Wednesdays and usually goes on Facebook. Overall, Lucy seemed to be very influenced by U.S. music and media but she also seemed to have a very balanced life with various activities with her family, school, and friends. 

Melanie and Rebecca 

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