When I first arrived in México on May 29, 2008, I was overwhelmed; I could not believe what I had gotten myself into. I started off the week by becoming extremely homesick. I am from Bloomington, Illinois, so when I went to school at Illinois State I was, in essence, a “townie.” Needless to say, I had never been away from my family for very long. I had been on ten day trips with my church before but never a two month trip to México with people I barely knew. Part of what helped me get over my homesickness was observing in a public grade school our first week there. Observing in that elementary school was also overwhelming at first, I could hardly understand the students and since I was in a fourth grade class, I felt like some of the things they were talking about were too advanced for my limited Spanish skills. I was becoming afraid that I could not fulfill my dreams; that I could not become a Bilingual Education teacher. I told my mom of my fears and she gave me some of the best advice I have ever heard. She said that I just needed to stop worrying, that México was not the place to question my life decisions. She told me to go back to the school and not worry about anything, to just focus on the kids’ smiles and how they were so happy that we were there.
The children were really happy that we were there. They swarmed us at lunch asking for autographs and they all wanted to know about the United States and literally every time I looked at one of them they would flash me a huge grin. My mother’s advice allowed me to see that the children did not care that I could not completely understand them or know all the words to explain something to them, they were just happy I was there. And I realized something; that my time in the school was similar to what I would be doing later in life. I went into the school with some Spanish knowledge but it was still hard for me to understand the children. Children will be coming into my school with little to no English knowledge and I will be responsible for teaching them, but there is a key difference. In México I had no one there who could help me by explaining something in English, but in my future classroom I will be able to help the students by speaking Spanish. Observing in the grade school in Taxco taught me many things, but the most important one was that I actually can become a Bilingual Education teacher.
The rest of the eight weeks in México was spent in Taxco taking classes both through the University there and through the Illinois State professor who came with us, Dr. Alstrum. I placed into the third level of Spanish classes at CEPE, a division of la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which means that I had intermediate Spanish abilities. I had two classes with Mexican professors and both taught differently than the teachers I had taken classes from in the United States. Concepción Reyes, one of my teachers, encouraged and almost forced us to participate by speaking in Spanish every single day. She would go around the room while teaching a concept and ask every person for an example sentence that we would come up with on our own. I have never been forced to speak Spanish in this way before and it really helped with my ability to think in Spanish rather than translating from English in my head. Classes only lasted until 2:30 most days, so we had opportunities to explore the town and Mexican culture.
I was able to make lifelong friends on this trip simply by meeting them every day and exploring the town. We went shopping and out to eat and everywhere we went we were able to interact with the people from Taxco to improve our Spanish. We became good friends with Lety, who owned a shoe store and we even went to a baby shower for the host family of two of my friends. I really enjoyed just walking around town and observing the people and their everyday habits. We also took several trips to Mexico City, Teotihuacán, Tlaxcala, and Acapulco. I really enjoyed seeing the sights on these trips and I especially enjoyed seeing the murals in Mexico City, since art has always fascinated me and murals are such a social form of art. I was amazed when I saw one that I recognized from a textbook that I had used for a previous class, we had talked about the painting in class but I got to see it in person.
I believe that my trip to México enriched me as a person by allowing me to view another culture firsthand. I can now begin to recognize some of the problems that immigrants might have when coming to our country because I have adapted to another country myself. I also believe this trip helped me improve my Spanish speaking skills. But most importantly, this trip developed my self confidence, not only in my future career but in my day to day life as well, because I had to learn how to be independent. I enjoyed this trip very much and it helped me in many aspects of my life.