The Texas group included four Coastal Bend College students and three A.C. Jones High School dual credit students who received a semester of college credit for their two weeks of intensive Spanish study: CBC students were Karen Benson and Christal Gonzales of Beeville, Eloisa Infante of Kenedy and Glenda García of Pleasanton; JHS students included Rachel Ellerbee, Isaiah Montéz and Jonathan Schwindt, all of Beeville.
In addition to those studying for regular college credit, Gayle García of Jourdanton also studied Spanish conversation with the CBC group.
Ramón DeLeón of Jourdanton accompanied the group for several of their excursions.
Accompanying the students were Pleasanton Spanish teacher Gloria García and CBC Spanish instructor Kay Past.
Benson, Gonzales, Infante, García, Ellerbee, Montéz and Schwindt were this year’s CBC Barnhart Cuernavaca scholars, who earned partial scholarships from the Joe Barnhart Foundation for their Mexico studies.
The students attended classes from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. daily at the Cuernavaca language school, then returned to their Mexican homes for a large, home-cooked dinner, the main meal of the day.
In the afternoons they visited places of interest in the beautiful “city of eternal springtime,” which is located in the mountains about 40 miles south of Mexico City. They toured the Cathedral of Cuernavaca, one of the oldest churches in this hemisphere; the Palacio de Cortés, the home built by Hernán Cortés in the 1500s, after he conquered the Aztec empire; Museo Robert Brady, the home of the American art collector who left his extensive collections for a museum in his unusual home; and Jardín Borda, now a museum and park, but previously home or weekend retreat of many famous Mexicans and of Mexico’s French emperor Maximilian and his wife, Carlota.
The group visited the Casa Hogar de Niños, an orphanage for Mexican children one afternoon, where they enjoyed playing games, practicing soccer, reading and practicing their Spanish with the children.
Two evenings the group enjoyed a movie in one of the VIP theaters in Cuernavaca’s beautiful shopping center, Galerías, probably more elegant than most shopping centers in the United States.
On weekends the group made excursions outside Cuernavaca. They visited Tepoztlán, an Indian village near Cuernavaca with a small pyramid at the top of El Tepozteco, the mountain for which the town is named. Most of the group climbed the steep stone steps to the top of the mountain.
In Mexico City, they attended a performance of the country’s world-renowned professional Ballet Folklórico; toured the Museum of Anthropology, where they saw the original Aztec calendar and many other important pre-Colombian artefacts; visited the Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe; admired Diego Rivera’s murals in the Palacio Nacional; visited the huge Cathedral and the nearby ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor.
The CBC group climbed the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan and admired the ancient city’s artefacts, dating from approximately 500 AD. They also visited Xochicalco, an important archeological site near Cuernavaca where Indian priests from several different cultural groups evidently gathered for astronomical observations to adjust their calendars, so that corn planting could be done at the best time for a good harvest.
Taxco, the city of silver mines in the mountains southwest of Cuernavaca, was one of the favorite excursions. Students used their Spanish skills to bargain for the best prices for silver jewelry, and they took pictures of the city’s beautiful church of Santa Prisca y San Sebastián, built in gratitude to God for his riches gained from silver by José de la Borda in the 1700s.
The students enjoyed a farewell dinner with their Mexican mothers’ and their IMEC teachers at the school on the last Friday of classes, when they performed skits for the group and received their diplomas for their studies. They said goodbye to their Mexican families when they boarded the bus for the airport Sunday morning to return to Texas.
All agreed that they had learned a great deal about Mexico’s history and culture, acquired a great deal more Spanish and made many new friends. Several are already planning to return to Mexico as soon as possible.
IMEC looking for help recruiting new Spanish students
Although the publicity about drug violence in Mexico and the swine flu epidemic reduced the number of students who studied at Instituto Mexicano de Español y Cultura this summer, the groups from Fort Worth, Houston and Beeville who made their usual study trips had no problems.
In order to recruit more students for next summer, IMEC director Dalel Cortés is looking for someone with expertise in online marketing to help her link the school’s Web site to many more Internet sites where potential Spanish students might learn about the school. She is offering free room and board, plus free Spanish lessons, to a qualified person. Anyone interested should contact Kay Past at 354-2401 or by e-mail at kaypast@coastalbend.edu.
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