National Foreign Language Week
This week we have celebrated National Foreign Language Week at VVMS. I am really proud of our teachers for promoting this week and global awareness. Our teachers created posters, ads for our messaging system, and a unique idea that I really loved. Our teachers gave each teacher a blank name badge on which we could write something about the languages we speak, the countries we have lived in or where we have travelled. I loved watching students ask their teachers about their badges and it was fun when they were surprised by how many countries I have visited. The students wanted me to list all the countries and why I have been there. After talking about it all day I thought- what a great idea for a blog post.
In high school I travelled with my Spanish Teacher to Spain and it changed my life forever. I lived with a family and toured the country. I loved Spain so much that I took a semester abroad to study at the Universidad de Sevilla while a student at Saint Olaf. I extended the trip for a month on each side of the semester and loved learning everything. I also taught English at a local High School which was a great experience. While I lived in Europe I visited Morocco, France, Switzerland, Italy and England. I have since been back multiple times and hope to one day live there again. We were able to pay it back my wonderful experiences in Spain by hosting a Spanish teacher in our home last year who worked at my children’s school.
After my initial trip to Spain I travelled to Guatemala and Mexico for mission trips with my church. These trips were focused on bringing basic needs to the poorest of the poor. During college I was able to live in Ecuador for a summer perfecting my grammar and accent. I have travelled to Peru with to work with World Vision in remote villages of the Andes Mountains. These multiple trips were wonderful because I worked as a translator. Taking students on a trip abroad was a goal of mine and taking students to Costa Rica was a wonderful adventure. I have since returned to Costa Rica with my family and can’t wait to return again.
I am blessed to have had the opportunity to travel to Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi visiting missionaries and working in refugee camps. It was the first time that my language skills did not help me communicate at all and I had always wanted to travel to Africa.
Most of my students know that I am bilingual in Spanish and English but I laugh out loud every once and a while when they are shocked to hear me switch between languages in the school. I love that our school is a linguistically safe environment for all of our students. We hear multiple languages spoken in the hallways and classrooms. The efforts of my teachers raised global awareness in a fun, easy way. Bravo!