Spanish Connections

  Learning a Second Language!  There are many reasons why it is an excellent idea to learn a second language. For example, bilingualism improves listening skills, as the brain works harder to distinguish between different types of sounds and linguistic rhythms. Such duality reminds me of my youth living in Mexico City when I met an Italian lady who had just immigrated to my neighborhood and offered Italian classes.  I loved the language, especially since my only exposure to Italian was through the opera recordings that I listened in the mornings with my father and some Italian movies with Spanish subtitles that my mother saw on television from time to time. I had grown up with only one language, however I had a good memory, so taking lessons helped my cognitive abilities. When one knows more than language the brain is constantly choosing the language in which to express yourself.  Sadly, I ended my Italian classes after a while without ever practicing with anyone except my teacher.

                                  It could be said that puppets are in every culture and in every community around the world. Sometimes they have a religious or ritualistic context. Other times puppets are used for storytelling and entertainment. In regions such as India, Africa and Southeast Asia, puppets and puppeteers generally engage in ceremonies or rites. In Europe it has a more theatrical, or musical context. In the Americas, especially in Mexico, puppetry has existed since pre-Columbian times, and was used to narrate and preserve the memory of daily life. In these early stages puppets were clay dolls articulated directly with the puppeteers hands. In addition to serving as vehicles of oral history, puppets were used to represent religious texts, usually accompanied by a song or dance. At the time of Independence in Mexico, puppetry flourished in the realm of performing arts and enjoyed great popularity. Puppets even began to be used to educate the population about basic public

                                         photo by Carlota Roa  ©        Art is a powerful tool to learn a language through cultural expressions! For more than six consecutive years, Spanish Today has developed courses to harness the pedagogic spark of art. Such fusions of creativity and language have been offered in a variety of institutions such as the Montalvo Art Center in the City of Saratoga. For the summertime, we have curated Spanish courses that aim to encourage and motivate students to converse in Spanish through innovative problem-solving and observation. By engaging in sculpture, paintings, handicrafts, musical performance, and dancing, our students form deep connections between their experiences and their environment. When students participate in what we like to call “transcendent-learning”, they can more easily connect with the target acquisition - in this case the Spanish language. The stimulation of both cerebral hemispheres causes genuine emotions and exalted sensation

                                                                     I remember the lackadaisical summer afternoons visiting my favorite cousin in the City of Tlaxcala, in central Mexico. My cousin Martin and I had a lot in common - the love of playing all day in the street, horseback riding, playing as young entrepreneurs engaging in small “businesses” that would earn us enough money for all the ice cream we could eat, or better yet, going to Lucha Libre, the idiosyncratic art of Mexican wrestling! Free-style wrestling is practiced in Mexico with its own unique style. It truly is a mixture of raw athleticism and theatrical sequences. Wrestling remains a very popular spectacle nationwide, and in the summer season the league went to the City of Tlaxcala. It is said that this sport was introduced in 1863 during the occupation of the French Empire in Mexico. In 1933 the  Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre  (Mexican Wrestling Enterprise) company was founded. The founding of that organization