By Liepa Bračiulytė in News
Qualified Clark students ages 16 and up have until Nov. 21 to apply to a trip to Central Mexico during spring break 2015.
Spanish professors Erika Nava and Elizabeth Ubiergo will travel with nine students for two weeks through the states of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Puebla and Hidalgo.
ASCC will provide $1,250 for each student, leaving each to pay just $400 for the trip, said Nava. The $1,650 covers transportation, lodging, museum entrance fees, and any other planned activities. Students also have to bring $400 in cash to pay for their own meals.
Students will be able to decide where they want to eat, whether it be at a market or in a fancy restaurant, said Ubiergo. The “day-to-day interaction of figuring out your food is a great way to use your Spanish.”
Nava refers to the trip as “Cultural Educational Tourism,” since they will be “learning about the history and the culture and the food and the geography of just this one little section of Mexico.” Students will visit the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, see ruins of ancient indigenous cultures, take cooking classes, interact with local children, hike and visit hot springs.
One of the requirements is that students bring just one backpack, since most of the time the group will travel in one van.
“We’re traveling light, we’re being flexible, we’re going to see everything from a 25-million-people city to a couple-hundred-people city,” said Nava. There will be many structured activities, like tours, but there will also be time for students to explore by themselves.
Ubiergo said they want students “that are excited about learning languages, love history, love food, love new experiences, that are flexible, adaptable, that aren’t going to complain if they’re going to the bathroom in an outhouse.”
“We have two ideas of Mexico,” said Nava. Either it’s seen as a vacation spot full of beaches where you can lay “in the sun just being a tourist, or that it’s really violent. We’re going to be in a place where neither of those things are true.”
**Details**
Nava will explain the program in more detail in the Mexico Study Abroad Presentation on Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. in Penguin Union Building 161. Interested students can contact Elizabeth Ubiergo ateubiergo@clark.edu or Erika Nava at enava@clark.edu and request an application. Students can slide completed applications under the instructors’ office doors – either FHL 111 or FHL 113 by Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. Applicants must show proof of either two years of high school Spanish, completion of college-level Spanish 122, or the completion of the Spanish Language Placement Exam with a minimum score of 335.
Click here for the trip’s application form. Mexico 2015 application
