The day is finally here for Metro's Community College Study Abroad program to Oaxaca, Mexico. This has been a project that began (at least for for me) sometime in November and we have been working really hard to make sure the college would send a group down.
The program is a great experience for any student wanting to learn Spanish. Each student enrolls at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, which is know world-wide for having a great culinary arts program. Students will be in a classroom setting from 9-12 everyday learning Spanish and then have the option to do an exchange program for one-hour. The exchange program is basically sitting down with a Oaxacan local and only speaking Spanish for half an hour and then only speaking English for half an hour. After students have taken a lunch break they have the option of taking several cultural workshops in which they get hands on training on cultural aspects of the region. For instance you can take a course on Oaxaca food, weaving, pottery making, folk dances etc. The rest of the afternoon is for the students to explore the city and mingle with the locals. Each student will be staying with a host family, which in my personal experience is really what gets you "living" in the culture. As part of the program, there will also be two excursions to Mayan and Zapotec ruins. I'm really excited about seeing these. 18 days later, students will return and hopefully have a better understanding of Oaxacan culture and having learned an extensive amount of Spanish. YAY!
There were a few factors that made us think that we wouldn't be able to get enough people to go on the trip. At the beginning of the year there was a lot of bad media about the drug wars that have been happening in Mexico. Unfortunately what many people didn't realize is that Oaxaca is nowhere near those area of danger, in fact they are VERY far away from this particular violence.
Our second concern happened right after we confirmed enough people to make the trip happen (8 people). Swine flu was first reported in the city of Oaxaca. I email our director after I had read a press release about, hunching that it might be something to be concerned about. I was right. About two days later, Swine Flu was all over the media and Mexico City closed schools, business and offices for about two weeks. Luckily for us, the problem has been contained and there isn't much panic anymore, in fact there are now more cases of the flu in the U.S. than in Mexico.
I excited and sad to go on this trip. Excited to see a new city, have this great teaching experience and to be speaking Spanish everyday all day. Sad, because my wife will not be going and I'm going to REALLY miss her. We thought that it might be possible for her to make a 5 day trip, but with her med-school rotations at the moment, it was impossible. This is the first time we will be apart from each other for this long in almost 3 years. I am excited though to write her letters and send them via air-mail. There is a certain romantic process that I love so much about sending a letter in the mail. I remember when we first started dating I would send her poems and letters, even if we were only 90 miles apart. Luckily there is internet now anywhere in the world and a telephone call is just a few cents a minute. So honey, make sure you pick up! ;-)
As I've mentioned before, I plan to write a lot while I'm down there. I'm approaching this trip as almost like a workshop. I have made a commitment to myself to try to create at least 15-20 poems while I'm there. Will all of them make it to the revising stage, probably not, but at least I'm creating and that is what I want to do most right now. Then I can spend the next few months, revising and revising and revising.
Our students will be in class from 9-12 every morning, so I think this is when I will be able to sit down, drink some fresh coffee and just let go... Jorge Luis Borges said something that I just love and think it makes so much sense as to how a writer needs to approach his writing, roughly translated he said:
"When I write something, I have the sensation that it has already preexisted. I know more or less the beginning and the end and then I find myself discovering the middle parts of my work. But when I do this, I don't have the sensation that I have invented them or that they have depended on me. These words they were already there, on the blank sheet of paper and as a poet, it is my job to find search them out.
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