Mlo 5: Cultural Praxis
- Pathway 1: By participating in a study-abroad program in a Spanish-speaking country for at least one semester. WLC's Spanish program has exchange agreements with the University of Aguas Calientes and the University of Queretero in Mexico, and the University of Córdoba in Spain. In addition, through CSU International Programs, you can study at universities in Madrid or Granada, Spain or in Santiago, Chile.
- Pathway 2: By living and working in a local heritage community over an extended period of time without interruption for at least two years.
- Pathway 3: By participating in and/or completing 10 of the following cultural learning scenarios with accompanying documentation, in the target language:
- Participate in service learning within a local heritage community for a minimum of eight weeks beyond the actual service learning requirement.
- Make a minimum of three home-visits in the local heritage community to interact and communicate with members of the Hispanic culture regarding topics of personal interest, the community, culture and language.
- Attend or view via media a minimum of 10 cultural events and /or social activities of Hispanic culture.
- Actively participate and/or perform in a school or heritage community event or celebration.
- Participate in a heritage-community project (of some duration) that requires proficiency in Spanish and knowledge of Hispanic cultures.
- Conducting a one hour in-depth interview with a speaker of Spanish, eliciting, in a conversational manner, comments of a biographical nature, cultural and social observations and anecdotal reflections.
- View and comment on 10 movie-length films produced within and about Hispanic culture.
- Participate at least five times in organized sports or recreation activities of Hispanic culture.
- Demonstrate cultural skills by making hotel reservations, ordering meals and shopping in stores or markets in heritage settings where Spanish is spoken. This objective is assessed by faculty.
Response:
As the plane had taken off, I realized that many of my regular conveniences were soon to be left behind. The plane was headed to the Couhaique Balmaceda airport in the northern Patagonia region of Chile. My mission in Chile was to commit a six-month long mountain excursion with a group of fifteen other people. Throughout our mountaineering exploits the group and I would stop at different pobladores campos and volunteer our labour in exchange to have the freedom to camp on their land, while we organized and cleaned up our gear for the next excursion. The farm stays are my most memorable experiences in Chile. I was humbled by the pobladores’ rigorous workdays and the intense, cold and wet weather that they endured happily. I valued the days that I spent speaking and working with the pobladores. The language that they spoke was a beautiful blend of the Spanish influenced Andalusia dialect mixed with the Quechua dialect of the indigenous peoples. In the beginning of my trip, it was difficult to recognize the different sounds and words of the Patagonian people, but as I spoke more, I learned more.
Simultaneously as I journeyed to Patagonia, I also embarked on a quest to learn Spanish. Before my trip, I didn’t know what a dialect was. I was intrigued by the different dialects of Spanish, and I was encouraged to learn them all.