Español 3
OVERVIEW & BOOK REVIEWS:
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El Ekeko
En el clase de español tres, nosotros tuvimos dos unidads. In our first unit, we learned about Bolivia from the perspective of the book El Ekeko. The book featured a 13 year old boy named Paco who found a statue that turned out to be magic. The statue is a part of Bolivian culture and the Festival of Alasitas where people buy statues and tiny gifts for good luck. The magic is is the statues because they can turn the small items into whole objects. Paco starts to get greedy and uses el Ekeko for himself. He then learns his lesson and decides to no longer use El Ekeko for bad. Through this book, we learned about Bolivian culture. Paco is from a poor family and has to work to contribute. He works to shine shoes which is a common job for kids in Bolivia. Paco and his family live in El Alto which is a neighborhood in the capital city La Paz. This particular neighborhood is the residential area with the highest elevation in the world. During this unit, we also learned about traditional Cholitas who are indigenous women in Bolivia. We learned about their traditional clothing and then watched a documentary about a group of Cholitas that climbed the mountain Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas. Bolivia seems like a beautiful country with diverse regions and is somewhere I would really like to visit some day.
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Testigo
During our second unit, we read the book Testigo which is a true story about a boy named Brayan who has to illegally immigrate from Guatemala to the United States. Brayan has to leave his home country due to gang violence which is incredibly prevalent in Guatemala. To contextualize this current issue, we learned about the history of Guatemala and how poor governmental structure as well as US intervention has made Guatemala prone to government unrest. Brayan witnesses the murder of his friend Alan by a gang member and is forced to leave his home because the gang threatened him. We follow Brayan through his journey from his home, to various Guatemalan cities, to Mexico, and eventually, to the United States. Through his journey, we learned a lot about the immigration process and how inaccessible legal immigration is for many people. The book helped us to understand what the illegal path is to immigration and how hard it is. Despite the unrest and violence that Guatemala, there is rich culture and many beautiful sites to see. The ancient Mayan culture once resided in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Nicaragua and there are still beautiful ruins to be seen there. In this unit, I found it really interesting to learn about immigration and how much time and money it takes from people that don't have much money to begin with.
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PERSONAL REFLECTION
During this year, I feel like I have come a very long way in terms of my ability to read, listen, and speak Spanish. At the beginning of the year, I didn't feel like I could listen and respond to simple questions, but I now feel like I can do that proficiently. I even feel like I can listen to a native Spanish speaker and pick out the main themes of what they are saying. This class has set me up to feel like I could go to a Spanish speaking country and make it by with a base level of the language. My reading and writing has also improved a lot. I feel like I have the vocabulary to write about almost anything even if all the words don't fit perfectly. I would describe my proficiency as; a Spanish speaker could listen to what I say or read what I write and know what I am trying to say. I really feel like I have come a long way. Especially talking to my non Spanish speaking friends or ones in lower classes, I realize how many words I actually know and that not everyone knows them as well. I have moved passed the point of basic Spanish and feel like I am able to understand more complicated words. I am beginning to get better at knowing when to use preterite and imperfect as well as memorizing the conjugations. I want to keep pursuing Spanish and ultimately reach fluency. I will be taking Spanish classes in college and I want to go abroad to a South American country.
