Being a senior American studies and Spanish double major, I am constantly intrigued by the relationships between the U.S. 和西班牙语国家.
就在去年, I took a class at Occidental during the Spring that included a trip abroad to Spain for the first two weeks of summer. 这门课在西班牙被称为拉丁美洲作家, 由Adelaida教授López授课, 这很神奇! 在旅行之前, we learned about famous Latin American literature that arose in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and we observed not only how this particular society affected their writing, but also how their writing reflected on their position within society. Having the opportunity to then contextualize everything we had learned at Oxy with Spanish professors who had experienced the history themselves in Spain was so exciting. This experience in Spain motivated my decision to explore elsewhere for my semester abroad.
I started talking to other students who had visited countries in Latin America, 虽然我没遇到去过古巴的人, 我被其他班级培养的兴趣所吸引. I had previously learned about the Cuban revolution in my American studies classes; we spoke a lot about nationhood, 的地方, how physical and ideological borders can make people a part of or separate from a nation and how the U.S.’s political and ideological influence deeply impacted national and international perceptions of Cuba’s global positionality, 文化, 和人民. I had also spent a lot of time in other Oxy courses talking about ideas of national and international social movements and revolutions and was excited about the idea of living in a country that still considered itself in a state of revolution ideologically and temporally (all calendars in Cuba state how many years it’s been since the triumph of the revolution in 1959. Ex. 2018年是第59年.)虽然我知道美国的旅行限制.S. citizens to Cuba, this didn’t deter me from wanting to visit such a beautiful country. 我很快意识到，由于这些限制, studying abroad in Cuba during college was the only way I was going to get a real experience of life there—I wanted more than the tourist experience. I felt this was understood by Oxy as our International Programs Office (IPO) were instrumental in helping us prepare the required documents. It was such a stress-free process, shout-out to Julie in IPO who was wonderful!
通过我的留学计划, I was able to take all but one of my courses with Cuban students at the University. Classes included "Contemporary Cuban Society" which centered on international political relations. 这门课, each week professors from all over Cuba focused on different aspects of Cuban society, ranging from religion to government structure to education. 虽然这是我这个项目所有学生的必修课, 包括另外两名奥施康定的学生, 不过，这还是很有启发性的. My other classes were "Bioethics in the Environment" and "Political Economy,它着眼于资本主义和社会主义, and concepts within those structures as compared to other socialist countries. My fourth class at the university was on "Theory and Ideology of the Cuban Revolution.“我们读了菲德尔·卡斯特罗在革命中的演讲, and observed his rhetoric from primary sources-- something that seemed impossible to do elsewhere. The class also 的地方d a huge emphasis on interviewing Cuban residents that were alive during the revolution I loved getting to interact with Cubans and learning their perspectives.
课程真的很酷, 但一周只花了大约10个小时, which is very different from Oxy and definitely not something I was used to. 我有那么多的自由和时间四处走动, 逛商店, 去餐馆吃饭, 坐公交车去探索吧. Our program offered a lot of planned excursions for the exchange students, 使我们能够做一些游客可能做不到的事情, 比如水肺潜水! We ventured outside central Havana to other cool neighborhoods, 去海滩, 特别是playa girón(猪湾). We all took salsa classes with our program director’s husband and since there isn’t much internet in Cuba, 感觉很像一个小, saturated community that everyone is in together in society. There were posters everywhere for different music events, so if we wanted something to do that night all we had to do was look outside.
在寄宿家庭里，我学到了很多. First off, it is super common for three or four generations of a family to live in one house. My host mom was the grandma of the family, and her kids and their kids lived there also. 我总是和他们一起吃饭, 他们会带我去一个所有家庭都会去的公园, 那里有让孩子骑的马, 充气城堡对公众开放, 太有趣了! 至于语言障碍, initially I wasn’t worried about my Spanish at all; I’d taken a few 300 level classes at Oxy already. 然后在我到达的那天, 项目主管的丈夫, 谁后来成了我们的萨尔萨舞老师, picked me up from the airport and I had no idea what he was saying. Cubans speak SO fast, I had never experienced anything like it!
