Using a grant from my 1997 SDC Recognition Award combined with a 1998/99  SDC funding request, I attended a Spanish language immersion program at Cemanahuac Educational Community in Cuernavaca, Mexico for two weeks, March 22 to April 2, 1999. The trip provided me with a unique opportunity to significantly improve my Spanish language skills by becoming fully immersed in Spanish usage. I spoke Spanish in most of the interactions I had while in Mexico. I quickly cast aside the discomfort and embarrassment I felt with my strictly present tense Spanish while there as I was eager to communicate with my host family and the school employees who spoke only Spanish. I was joined the second week by my husband, Steve Miyamoto, who studied Spanish for one week at Cemanahuac.

I came to select Cemanahuac as my Spanish language school of choice after perusing Vacation Study Abroad, New York, N.Y. 1998/99, LB2376.L432 INFO (and conferring with a bilingual education professor.) I found the program, the class size, and the instructors there all to be very helpful to me to vastly improve my Spanish, reading, writing, and speaking skills. I was more motivated to learn and study than I had been during any of my previous academic experiences studying Spanish.

While at Cemanahuac, as a professional courtesy, I volunteered to copy catalog some of the Spanish language titles in the school library. This project allowed me to become fully immersed in the handling of  Spanish language titles. I found the collection there to be very interesting and the library staff to be very collegial. Before leaving, I trained the supervisor who in turn planned to train his staff to copy catalog the more difficult Spanish language titles. In gratitude for the work I performed, the school provided my husband and me with complementary excursions, a lovely school logo wall clock, and handsome pair of coffee mugs.

My stay in Cuenavaca was very pleasant; the daytime temperatures were in the high 70’s and low 80’s. I walked or rode a bus to school each weekday morning. I never had more than two classmates in a class. The classes were conducted entirely in Spanish. The school cafeteria served delicious light fare during the breaks and after school. Some of the classrooms were cabanas consisting of a thatched roof supported by four corner poles, other classrooms consisted of three solid walls that opened onto the school’s main patio where local artisans displayed and sold their wares during breaks, and the remainder were completely enclosed.

A couple of Mid Western universities have cooperative language programs for their students at Cemanahuac. International students study there with the majority of students coming from the U.S. Cemanahuac has a rural studies program in Buena Vista de Cuellar where students can study Spanish in a rural setting as well.

During my first week, I accompanied my host mother, Lolita Camarraza, on various errands. This provided me with very practical opportunities to use my Spanish. A few more errands of my own presented me with exciting challenges that would have been markedly mundane at home in Berkeley. I needed to have shoes repaired and buy Spanish language and English language newspapers. These tasks provided me with confidence building experiences and interactions. I was thrilled that I could communicate and get by on my own.

Palm Sunday, March 28^th marked the beginning of Semana Santa or Holy Week. That morning, I accompanied Sra. Camarraza to a Catholic mass featuring mariachi music and which was the terminus for a procession through the city. Campesinos from the outlying communities wove beautiful momentos of palm fronds for church goers. I was struck at the lovely simplicity and care that went into each woven piece. After mass, Lolita and I enjoyed our main meal of the day in a restaurant of posole and sopes. All the food prepared by my host mother was exceptionally good and plentiful. I did not have one bad meal and maintained excellent health.

After my husband’s arrival on March 28^th, we each attended morning classes and went sightseeing in the afternoons. On our own one day, we took a bus to Taxco, a mountainside town completely of white stucco buildings with red tile roofs and a labyrinth of winding streets. The town is a colonial historical monument and is known worldwide for its silver mining and fine craftsmanship of all things silver. We were scheduled to visit there again a few days later on an organized excursion with Cemanahuac but decided to go on our own because there would be little time then to shop for gifts and souvenirs. The bus ride to Taxco and our visit to the town itself were both breathtaking and interesting.

A few days later we visited Taxco again to observe one of the evening processions typically conducted during Semana Santa. The procession we saw began in the zocalo (town square) in front of the main hilltop church in Taxco which was filled with hundreds of townspeople and tourists. There were street venders young and old selling souvenirs from glow in the dark crucifixes to ten foot long balloons.

A curious feature of the procession were hooded, barefoot penitent men on whose shoulders and outstretched arms were bound hundred pound bundles of cactus canes and around whose waists were tightly bound ropes over long, full, black skirts. These penitents were accompanied by "spotters" who watched for their safety.

Another curious feature of the procession was float carried aloft with a larger than life-size figure of Christ atop it accompanied by several toddlers clad in angel costumes. Under the float, hobbling in stooped darkness, were 3 or 4 barefoot women penitents whose wrists were shackled to their ankles and whose chains could be heard dragging along the cobblestones as they moved forward. The spiritual expressions of the penitents was difficult to comprehend. To my mind it seemed to hark back to the Inquisition.

On Good Friday we witnessed another Semana Santa procession in the rural community of Buena Vista de Cuellar where Cemanahuac runs its rural studies program. At the head of the procession, there were young men dressed as Roman soldiers followed by veiled men and women penitents carrying heavy cactus poles bound to their outstretched arms. Three men, whose backs were bloodied by self-flagellation, carried heavy wooden crosses in the procession. Next, each remaining town resident passed by carrying a lighted candle; first the men of the town passed and then the women and children. Dispersed throughout the procession were small groups of women with bullhorns leading the townspeople in prayer and song. Immediately following the procession the community gathered near the zocalo to eat, drink, and socialize.

Our last full day in Mexico, my husband and I went on an excursion with Cemanahuac to Teotihuacan. First we visited Cuicuilco at the southern end of the Valley of Mexico where the first inhabitants of Teotihuacan lived until their circular stepped pyramid was covered by a lava flow from a nearby volcano.

Next we visited the Plaza of Tres Culturas (Three Cultures) in Mexico City that featured the juxstaposition of Aztec, Colonial, and modern architecture. Nearby we visited the 1991 monument to the student protesters who where murdered in 1968 while they protested the planned 1968 olympic games. This past May was the very first time that the Mexican government acknowledged the role of the police in the infiltration of the student movement and involvement in the student killings.

We spent the remainder of the day visiting Teotihuacan which my husband and I had visited before in 1987. This tour, led by Cemanahuac’s director, Charlie Goff, made this visit much more interesting, meaningful, and enjoyable. [Photos: Pole dancers from Veracruz, series: 1, 2, 3, 4; Pyramid of the Moon, Relief of Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) from Temple, frescos and reliefs]

I completely enjoyed my two week language immersion program in Cuenavaca at Cemanahuac. I would definitely go again and recommend full immersion language studies. I was able to jump several hurdles that I did not master earlier in my education and came away with more confidence in my ability to speak, write, and understand Spanish.