Connecting with Hispanics

Un viaje a la mitad del mundo

By Alexandra Hernandez, Spanish tutor at Spanish Blackbelt language school, Northern Virginia.

Yo vengo de un pais en el cual puedes encontrar algo encantador y asombroso en cada ricon. Tu no podras creer lo que tus ojos estan mirando cuando veas sus paisajes y su diversidad.

Ecuador lleva su nombre por estar ubicado justamente sobre la linea ecuatorial. Algo muy interesante de este pais es que puedes estar en el hemisferio Norte dar un paso y llegar al hemisferio Sur. O tambien una persona puede estar en ambos hemisferios al mismo tiempo.

Unos de los lugares mas atractivos y que es muy monumental es la Mitad del Mundo. Imaguinate poder estar ahi y poder experimentar cosas que en ninguna otra parte del mundo suceden .

Uno de los fenómenos que ocurren es que justamente en la linea equinoccial se puede balancear un huevo en la cabeza de un clavo. Y esto es por que la fuerza magnética trabaja de manera mas fuerte alli.

Otro fenómeno es el drenaje del agua. En la mitad del mundo se demuestra que en el norte el agua rota de una manera y en el sur rota de manera contraria por el efecto Coriolis, ademas que en todo el centro o en la linea equinoccial el agua cae sin vortices quiere decir que no rota, si no que cae todo directamente hacia abajo.

Algo que tambien es muy intersante que ocurre en este lugar son los solsticios. Del 21 de Junio, que es el día más largo en el norte del planeta, así como en los equinoccios del 21 de marzo y 23 de septiembre. Es cuando el sol cae perpendicular y no existe sombra alguna.

Hay muchos lugares que ver y que visitar en Ecuador. Este es un pais unico en sus paisajes. Tambien tiene mucha diversidad en su comida y su clima. Hay otros lugares que mientras estes alli te recomiendo visitar: Quito, Mindo, las Islas Galapagos y los Volcanes como el Cotopaxi.

Algo que podido apreciar es que, al visitar un pais de Habla Hispana tu experiencia sera enriquecida al comunicarte en el lenguaje de su gente. Imaginate poder tener una conversacion con personas que viven de una manera muy diferente a la tuya. Y poder contemplar el mundo desde una perspectiva más amplia.

El saber español es divertido y puede llevarte a diferentes lugares. Al conectarse con sus personas y al hablar con ellas es una gran ventaja, se nos abren puertas para poder descubrir mas de nuestro planeta y poder asombrarse de sus alrededoreres.

Tambien te ayudará a entrar en un mundo que te proveerá de múltiples oportunidades. Tendras experiencias intrigantes y emocionantes desafíos. Y podremos entrar a un mundo nuevo de culturas. Desde Espana hasta Sur America, Centro America y El Caribe.

Todos tenemos algo fascinante que contar acerca de nuestro lugar de origen. El haber tenido la oportunidad de haber crecido en un pais habla hispana me ha ayudado a aprender mas de muchas culturas que son similiares a la mia.

Estoy muy feliz de poder compartir acerca de algo que es nuestro, que es de todos! Realmente es algo hermoso que hemos heredado.

El Espanol nos ayudara a valorar mas nuestra identidad y la identidad de otros.

Adapting to a new culture

By Juan Rosa Melendez, Spanish tutor at Spanish Blackbelt language school, Brooklyn, NY

My passion for art, dances and languages has given me a lot of satisfaction and the chance to meet people from all over the world. That allowed me to become familiar with different cultures and their gastronomy, music and traditions. It also made possible for me to meet people and socialize with them, but also to have better job opportunities and to expand my dreams.

Before coming to New York, I had been living with my extended family in Venezuela for more than 7 years. Living in Venezuela, far away from my close family, was the first experience I had immersing in a country with a mixture of cultures. I now think that experience well prepared me, a traditional Peruvian girl, for my cultural immersion in NY, this time alone, a few years later.

As a Latina and Spanish Blackbelt tutor in New York, I now feel very proud to teach the Spanish Language. Every class is a journey. My Spanish students and I enjoy an atmosphere of intercultural exchange. Some students talk about the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River while I talk about Macchu Picchu and the Urubamba River in Cuzco, Peru. Some have given me lists of many good restaurants where to eat the best pizza in New York and I have encouraged them to eat at the best Hispanics restaurants and try some sangria and “pollo a la brasa” from Peru.

I celebrate my students’ interest in my language and culture. I see satisfaction in their eyes when they are finally able to communicate their ideas in Spanish and understand aspects of my culture they didn’t know before. It reminds me of my own journey. In my case, for example, all my effort and dedication to learn English while I was in Peru and Venezuela was rewarded when I was finally able to communicate my ideas, feelings and thoughts to others, in English, here in the United States. Learning English opened doors for me to get to know the American culture. And the more I learned abut the culture, the more I got involved into the language.

Learning about other cultures is an adventure. The most important thing is to always respect each other and embrace our differences. Everybody is proud of their roots. For example, in New York, the diversity of people from all over the world is huge, but we all fit together in this great City. The Spanish community is growing in a fast pace and many people are now involved in Spanish lessons, not only to socialize but also to get better opportunities in life. No matter where I go, my culture will go with me, and is both, an honor and a responsibility, to always show the best of my beloved Spanish Culture to others.

Teaching Spanish, dancing and having appreciation for other cultures has given me a lot of smiles and joy in my life. I just wish now the same to my students. 

My Experience With Cultural Immersion

By Guilianna Zamora, Spanish Tutor at Spanish Blackbelt Language School, Boston, MA

     The experience of getting to know another culture can be exciting and rewarding, but it can also be very difficult. How can you best come to understand and fit into another culture? How can you share your own culture with others? As a Catholic Peruvian woman married to a Jewish American man, I ask (and answer!) these questions every day. Intercultural marriage takes a lot work, dedication and commitment. As part of an intercultural marriage, I constantly work hard to understand and fit in with another culture, but along the way I’ve learned a great deal about myself and my own culture.

            When I first met Jon in my hometown of Cuzco, Peru, it was exciting to see that we had more similarities than differences.  Even though it was very obvious for the rest to see we were very different.  I will always remember my first conversation with him talking about our families. Jon told stories about his family with great love. He affectionately described each member of his family. So I realized that family values for both of us were essential. Among other things that also captured my attention were  his passion for his studies as a mechanical engineer, and his enthusiasm about climbing and hiking in the mountains of California.  While I had these conversations with him, I noticed how interested he was to learn about my culture and my language. 

          In some cases, there are real differences between our cultures that are difficult to adapt to. For example, while Americans consider dinner the most important meal to share with family, Peruvians treasure lunch as an opportunity to bring families together and share a feast. In the morning before lunch each day, my mom used to cook delicious dishes such as papa a la huancaina, ceviche, arroz con pollo, lomo saltado, ají de gallina and other traditional Peruvian dishes. At two in the afternoon my dad would walk home across town from work, my brother from school, and I from the university, and we would eat together over lively conversation. After that each of us would return to our duties. When I moved to the United States I found that the tradition was very different. Here lunch is a meal of convenience. It’s very common to eat a sandwich, a slice of pizza, salad or a burrito and have just a few minutes to eat it. People often commute long distances for work and would never consider coming home in the middle of the day. While this is a cultural difference that I am not used to yet, Jon and I decided to integrate our cultures. For instance we often cook dinner together, sometimes Peruvian food (one of Jon’s favorite foods). We pray before the meal and we share our stories of the day, sometimes speaking English and sometimes Spanish.

            Over time we have learned that life can be fun when we embrace each other’s culture and enjoy our differences. This was exemplified by our wedding day in which our families united in a celebration with both American and Peruvian traditions. Our wedding was held in an ancient mountain town called Yucay near my hometown of Cusco, Perú. The priest who led our ceremony invited my father-in-law to say traditional Jewish prayers in Hebrew. During the reception, our fathers gave their speeches in their own language one line at a time, giving Jon and I time to translate for our American and Peruvian guests. It was fun to watch our American and Peruvian friends manage to communicate with each other despite their language differences, to see our American friends enjoy a Peruvian feast, and to dance to popular songs in both Spanish and English.

            After almost ten years together we have had many fun cross-cultural experiences. Jon was thrilled to go to a huge soccer game in Lima with my family, and I got to celebrate when Jon’s home team won my first Super Bowl. I took him hiking in the Andes while he took me hiking around Lake Tahoe. I showed him around Lima, while he gave me a tour of Washington, DC. Jon learned to dance salsa while I learned to dance hip hop. Furthermore speaking different languages ​​has given us a great asset because it has made us ​​bilinguals. This has allowed us to integrate and interact very easily in  various social situations as well as in our professional fields. For instance Jon was working last winter on a project in Colombia where he used his Spanish extensively. I have worked in the hospitality business for many years and studied in United State, and have found it essential to speak English well. As Spanish tutor I feel very fortunate to teach my language and my culture to others as I did with my husband.

            Immersing yourself in another culture is not easy. It requires extra effort and major commitment. We have learned in our marriage, though, that every challenge we overcome strengthens our relationship. During our time together, we have learned a lot about each other and the cultures we come from, and we keep our eyes open for fun and rewarding ways to bring our cultures together. We have learned that the difficulties involved in getting to know another culture are worth it.

Growing up in Miami

By Elizabeth Hernandez, Spanish tutor at Spanish Blackbelt Language School, Baltimore, MD.

As a child, I always thought of my life being the same as the life of any other child growing up in America.  I attended school, spent time with my family and a few friends, and enjoyed playing outside and watching Saturday morning cartoons.  It wasn’t until I grew up and moved from Miami, Fl. to Columbia, Md. that I began to realize how my upbringing was indeed quite different than that of most of my American friends. 

My family had migrated to Spain and then Miami after fleeing the communist regime in Cuba in the seventies.  We were a small family and had to work hard for everything we had.  My parents were usually working and I was raised mainly by my grandparents; neither of them spoke a word of English, so naturally I didn’t either.  It wasn’t until I began attending elementary school that I began to learn to speak English.

 My school was a bilingual school, my mother was very adamant about me properly speaking both Spanish and English fluently.  In my class, there was only one or two black and white students, everyone else was Hispanic.  I would say 50% of the students and faculty were Cuban and 50% were South American.  Our choir presentations were often comprised of songs such as “De Colores” and our school dances on Wednesdays in the cafeteria usually consisted of many chaperones separating 5^th graders grinding to Miami Bass and Booty Music (Something unheard of to my Md. friends)!  Oh yes, 2 Live Crew, Tag Team, and Vanilla Ice were among the popular favorites for your average elementary school student in Miami.  Needless to say, parents did not fully approve of these dances and they were soon after discontinued.

At home, my family was very overprotective of me and my brother and made sure we were supervised by an adult at ALL times.  Everyday after school the bus would drop us off at my grandparent’s house until my mom got off of work and took us home (which was a five minute or less drive away).  My grandparents would do their best to ensure that we did our homework, bathed and ate before my mom arrived to pick us up.  We would usually have a snack like some butter crackers with guava and cream cheese, or a papa rellena that my grandfather would make from scratch by the dozens to sell at his friend’s cafeteria and our favorite beverage was Tang!  A very sugary orange flavored powder that only needed water added to be enjoyed! It was rare to have dinner without rice and black beans, my grandma would often make bistec empanizado, ropa vieja which I would call ropa sucia on accident, (a shredded beef dish called “old clothes”, I’d call it dirty clothes) tostones, or platanos maduros, and of course ensalada de aguacate.  When moving to Md. I realized there were a lot of dishes that were not as common for us to have regularly or ever such as stroganoffs, pot roasts, or even hot dogs.  Hot dogs were usually saved for grilling or BBQ’s which my grandparents and most of my family even the kids, would pronounce “bab- bee- qyou”.

As far as the language was concerned we spoke a combination of Spanish and English growing up, also known as Spanglish!  Often times the majority of a sentence would be in English with a few Spanish words here and there.  It was the same way if the sentence was mainly in Spanish, you would hear an English word every so often.  Something that was also very common was saying an English word with a Spanish accent, which was often the case with my grandparents.  For example, “Happy Birthday” was always sung in English but with a very Spanish Accent!  It was more like “Happy Berday”.  We never referred to cake as “torta’ or “pastel”, instead it was “kay”.  My cousins and friends also spoke the same way; it was how we spoke not only within our family but also among friends.  Even to this very day it is my favorite form of communication.  I feel this is probably very common for people who were born in the U.S. and have Hispanic parents.  I imagine it is probably annoying to those trying to learn Spanish or English however.   If your goal is to learn Spanish you might have to remind us to stick to one language at a time!  My advice to those trying to learn Spanish is to use it at every opportunity that arises.  If you are ordering food somewhere and notice that the employees are Hispanic, don’t be afraid to sound silly, just go for it! They will be happy to see that you are making an effort to communicate with them in their native language even though they are the visitors or foreigners in your native country.

There are more pros than cons to being raised in an environment as I was.  The cons being that Hispanics born in their native countries view me as American, and Americans view me as Hispanic, I am ok with this, but I can see how this might cause some sort of identity issues in others!  But you can also see this as a blessing and being able to enjoy the best of both worlds.  Knowing two languages is definitely a pro and can only help and benefit you in life.  Overall I am very proud to be part of this minority of people who can relate so much to two cultures.  I am grateful to have been raised the way I was and by the people who did and would never wish it was any different.  I encourage everyone to learn about another culture aside from your own, learn a language new to you, and enjoy and appreciate the things that make us different from one another.