Travel and study abroad
by Anita McDaniel
Mexico visits:
Traveling with students has been a passion of mine since I began teaching foreign language in 1971. My first trip with students was in 1973 to Mexico and we couldn't afford to travel by plane, so we went by bus. We drove from Altamont to El Paso, Texas the 1st day and then crossed the border the next and traveled to Acapulco. It was approximately 18 hours on a bus with 45 people. Stops only for meals, not very well scheduled, and for the security police who tried to take the kids' Walkman and transistor radios as contraband. What an experience! But we wouldn't have traded it for anything. It was the first time we stood on top of a pyramid, saw the Pacific Ocean, and visited the Basilica of Guadalupe, the old one, the new one hadn't been built.
Since that first great trip my family and I have traveled with students to many places. Amber grew up on the road. We have visited and taken photographs and slides of:
Mexico - Monterrey, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Dolores, San Miguel de Allende, Acapulco,Puerto Vallarta, Cuernavaca, México, DF (Mexico City- Chapultepec Castle, National Palace, the oldest cathedral in the Americas, Basilica of Guadalupe, the Latin American Tower, House of Blue Tiles, Zona Rosa, rode the metro. Zochimilco) Teotihuacán- ancient pyramids of unknown origin, Oaxaca, Mérida, Cancun, Cozumel, Islas de las Mujeres and the ancient Mayan Ruins of Chichén-Itzá and Uxmal We also saw the Mexican National Folklore Ballet company at the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts.
I also have gone to Mexico on several workshop travel trips with different companies and educational groups to the places above, taken cooking lessons, photography classes and spoken Spanish in an immersion type situation.
Many of the photographs that we took are housed in my classroom in albums that are available to the students to perusal, as are the albums from the other places we have visited.
Mexico is in peril and has been since the late 1980's with it's economy and the problem with drug dealers, etc. so we made a decision not to travel to Mexico again with students for fear of their safety. It was a difficult decision because we love Mexico and the people are really wonderful. Taking US students to a place where they don't have the same rights they do in the US and getting them to understand that fact was daunting. Needless to say, we began traveling to Spain in 1984.
I would still recommend visiting Mexico in small family groups and meeting the people, enjoying the sights and the food and getting to know our neighbor to the south.
