One Final Goodbye

Tuesday night's class was a bitter sweet goodbye.  It was really great to learn all about the different countries that the different groups had studied and then presented.  Everyone did a great job and it was all really interesting and the food was great.  However, that's not what this class has been about.
We had one final circle, where we were able to share what we had learned from the class and what we would walk away from the class with.  I will walk away with not only a better understanding of what the world is like, but the importance of me opening my eyes and experiencing it rather than hiding in my own world and missing out.  I have learned to ask questions and get to know others, because by doing so, I open myself up to new friendships, better understandings, and a whole world of opportunities and experiences.  I have learned that things aren't always black and white, and, what I may have been taught growing up isn't necessarily the right way or the truth.  And most of all, I have learned what great people I have come to know.  My class shared with me things about themselves that normally you wouldn't see in a class.  I think the feelings we shared with each other and the whole experience of the class, has left us all better people.  I am thankful for everyone I met and for the things they taught me.  I am thankful for a teacher who put himself out there and let us all experience life and different cultures the way they were meant to be lived.  I walk away from this class continuing on my journey to being a better person.

José Alfredo Jiménez

So, I was showing some of the interns from Colombia, Spain and Bolivia and a parent from Mexico and they told me I had to include a song by José Alfredo Jiménez.  Apparently he is very popular.  When I asked why he was so important, they told me he was like the Bob Dylan of Mexico.  He writes his own music, sings his own music, etc.  It is all from the heart.  They said no blog or cultural class should be without José, so here he is:

José Alfredo Jiménez song Ella

Continuation of a Journey

             Seven weeks ago I started a journey.  I am not exactly sure what I thought would happen on this journey.  I went back and read what I wrote for my first blog.  I talked about the opportunity this class would bring to learn about a society and culture that I totally love and admire.  I hoped that the knowledge would help me breach the barrier that there is in working with the Latino community.  Although this was my first and top most reason of why I took this class, I have discovered that it has become much more than just learning about a culture.             

            This truly has been a journey for me.  Before I took this class, I didn’t really see other cultures, as I should have.  I didn’t open my eyes and broaden my knowledge of things happening around me in the world.  I’ve learned that to truly know someone, you have to put yourself in his or her shoes and walk the roads they walk.  This doesn’t mean I have to literally move to Mexico, Central America, or South America to truly understand someone, I just need to learn to talk to people, find out about them, watch shows I normally wouldn’t watch, listen to music I might not normally listen to, and eat food that I might not normally eat.  How do we get to know people?  We learn from them. 

            My journey hasn’t been about bridging a gap that I thought was there, it has been about building a bridge that brings me closer to other people and other societies that help teach me to be a better person, help me teach my kids to be better people and hopefully help me to be a good example to those that I might come in contact with.  It hasn’t just helped me see the Hispanic culture better and in a new light, I have also learned from my classmates and from the many different cultures that we all share.  I have learned how there are so many great people in this world and I have been truly blessed to be associated with them on a weekly basis.  Most of all, I wanted to have fun, and fun I have had. 

            If I was asked to recommend this class, I totally would.  It was a very unusual class in the way it was taught, but I think that was how I learned the most.  If we wanted to get anything out of the class, we had to work at it and figure out on our own what we wanted to learn from the class.  So, did I learn?  Yes, I learned.  I am hoping that what I learned will help me to be the type of person who is non judgmental, who treats others the way I would want to be treated, the type of person who looks at other cultures as a way to learn more about the world and initiate new friendships.  I am hoping that some of things I have learned will help me on my journey to being a better person. 

Latino Artwork

Here are some of famous pictures that I really like done by Latino artists.  I love how colorful they are and bright.  I also love Frida's picture just because it is so different.

Shakira

Shakira is one of the famous people most of us know, who is from Colombia, the country my group is working on.  I actually have liked her music for a long time.  Most music I have of hers is a mix of Spanish and English.  I thought I would share a song that I like, that is only in Spanish.  Enjoy!!

Loca by Shakira

My class partner and my group

I realized as I looked back at some of my posts that I never introduced my class partner.  This is what I found out the first night in class:

My class partner's name is Julie Leitner.  Julie is from Little Falls, MN and has been in the Twin Cities for 22 years.  She has been married for 5 years.  She has no children, but has some nieces, who I happen to know as they went to school at the Adams Spanish Immersion where I work, and who she is very close to.  She took this class because she needed a humanities class for her bacholers degree in Customer Service Management, that she is working towards.  She works for Donaldson Co. Filters and can not move forward in her work without a degree.  She works mostly with Asian cultures in her work, but she has a couple of customers in Mexico she would like to learn more about and strengthen those relations.  He has already learned some differences between the Asian cultures and Hispanic cultures and their differences through work, but her knowledge is minimal.  She would like to learn the differences within the different Hispanic cultures such as the food, music, and lifestyle.

That is what I wrote from the first night of class.  We sit at a great table with some really great people as well.  Our group includes Barry, Monique, Michelle, Julie and myself.  We have been working on a project about Colombia for our final in class.  It has been great getting to know everyone and learning from them and along side them.  

Spanish Language and Indian Food

Friday night I had the opportunity to have dinner with three teachers from work.  We made Indian food and just sat around and talked.  The reason I am counting this as one of my cultural experiences is because we sat around and talked in Spanish.  The three other people I had dinner with were Spanish teachers, one from Peru.  It was a really neat experience because the teacher from Peru, her little 5 year old girl was there with us.  She is in a Chinese Immersion school.  I think the reason I think this is so great, is because between the 5 of us, all of us spoke English, all of us spoke Spanish and there is one little girl who is learning to speak Chinese.  Did I ever think growing up I would be having an Indian  dinner while speaking Spanish?  No.  That is what is so great about the world of opportunities we live in.  Both my kids have had the chance to learn Spanish from kindergarten on, and my son has taken two years of Chinese.  I never had chances like this as a kid.  I am really thankful for the cultural diversities my kids are growing up with.  I am thankful that I have had the chance to learn Spanish, albeit bad Spanish, and that I work at a Spanish Immersion school.  I would never had guessed that I would have so many opportunities.