International

International Experiences

My first international experience was a brief Easter vacation tour through southern Spain with my 10th-grade Spanish class, and needless to say, it whetted my appetite for more extensive international travel. As a sophomore music major at SUNY Cortland, I decided to spend the fall semester of my junior year at the University of Salamanca, Spain's first university, founded in the 13th century, and the experience changed my life.

Several decades later, as a college Spanish professor, I am an enthusiastic advocate for study abroad. Immersion in another language and culture is potentially one of the most transformative and empowering experiences that one can have as an undergraduate student. As international exchange students encounter new sets of cultural values and practices, they learn a tremendous amount about their own cultural assumptions and beliefs. Those who fully engage in the immersion experience develop a better sense of who they are and acquire a series of attributes and skills that will be invaluable to them in the future--self-reliance, tolerance and appreciation of cultural differences, language proficiency, an enhanced ability to analyze problems from different perspectives--at the same time that they establish lifelong friendships and have adventures that they will someday share with their children and grandchildren.

Since my semester in Spain in 1979, I have traveled to Spain and Latin America as much as my finances and family responsibilities have permitted, and have made at least one trip a year since 1995. My longest and most transformative stay was the fourteen months (1984-85) I spent in Costa Rica between my masters and doctoral studies at The University of Texas. I taught 8th-grade English and worked as a guidance counselor at the Colegio Metodista, a private bilingual school, and also taught English and Spanish as a Second Language at the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center. In addition to the wonderful experience gained from the teaching and living with a family of Nicaraguan refugees, I also made some great friends through my participation in a musical group, Hosanna, which sang contemporary Christian music, much of it composed by group members.

For more information on my international experiences, you can check out the Teaching and Professional Development of my curriculum vitae. Included below are some images and a bit of information from three recent trips which I have organized for faculty and student groups. On my Scholarship page, you will find more information on my faculty exchange at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in the spring of 1998 and my sabbatical in Spain in the spring of 2001.

1997 Fulbright Group Travel Seminar in Costa Rica
I served as the project director for this month-long seminar on the topic Culture, Ecology, and Democracy in Costa Rica. Fifteen non-specialist secondary and college educators participated in this program initiated by Juniata's Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. The experience included Spanish language study, presentations by specialists in the three subject areas, visits to governmental offices and non-governmental organizations, field trips which focused on the topics of sustainable development and ecotourism, and each participant conducted research on a specific topic which they had submitted as a condition of their participation in the program. Included below are a few of my favorite images.

	This photo, shot with my camera pressed against a telescope eyepiece, was taken during our field trip that focused on ecotourism. The quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, is nearly extinct there, but can be observed a little more readily in Costa Rica.
	Pictured here, Bernardo Aguilar organized the sustainable development field trip for us, and took the group to this model project for sustainable logging practices. This particular station provides information on the design of roads which will permit the access of heavy logging trucks throughout the year with a minimum of negative impacts upon the natural forest environment.
	Following four weeks of intensive study, we took a day trip to Jacó Beach, the closest of Costa Rica's many beautiful beaches on the Pacific coast.
	Taken at the same Jacó Beach hotel where we ate lunch, the group looks considerably more bronzed than when we began our adventure four weeks earlier.
2000 Spring Break Service Learning Trip to Honduras We set this trip up with the collaboration of Jenn Ungemach '98, who following graduation was working as a volunteer at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, an orphanage outside of Tegucigalpa, and Andrés Thomas Conteris, who had worked in Honduras for the Christian Commission for Development for five years in the mid-90s. I met Andrés in the fall of 1999 when he visited Juniata as interpreter for a Honduran indigneous activist who spoke on conditions in Honduras one year after the devastating onslaught of Hurricane Mitch. Our group spent the first half of the trip at the orphanage, where we led a series of group games and activities that we had prepared for the kids, and Andrés guided us during the second half of the trip, which included meetings with a series of non-governmental organizations and community based organizations as well as a visit to the spectacular Mayan ruins of Copán.
	The kids were a lot of fun to play with, and we were very impressed with the quality of the care and the services provided to them by the orphanage.
	Some archaeologists have referred to Copán as the Paris of the Mayan world, a very refined city which possesses exquisite cultural artefacts dating from the late classical period.
	Overlooking the ballcourt, where the Maya celebrated their sacred ritual of cosmic renewal
	The group with our guide Tony, a fixture at the Copán ruins with a great sense of humor, who told us some fascinating stories about the ballgame and other aspects of Mayan life and history.
2003 Spring Break Service Learning Trip to Guatemala For a lot more information on our partner Colegio Miguel Angel Asturias, check out my Guatemala Partnership page. This spring break trip was to date the best service learning experience with which I have been involved. We did extensive pre-trip orientation on a weekly basis for six weeks preceding our week in Guatemala, integrated extremely well the study and the service portions of the trip, and the students did an excellent job of processing and presenting their experience upon our return. In addition to meetings with community based organizations and NGOs such as Rights Action, The Committee for Peasant Unity, HIJOS (Children for Identity and Against Forgetting and Silence), Education and Hope, and U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project, students taught English and led a variety of activities for three days at our partner school, Colegio Miguel Angel Asturias. Here's the link to their PowerPoint presentation, which includes some wonderful images and useful information.