Ojos y Orejas
Día de los muertos
The Day of the Dead is an incredibly significant holiday in many South & Central American countries. A two-day celebration, the Day of the Dead commemorates the lives of loved ones that have been lost. The goal of this project was to choose a family member or close friend that has passed away and create an art piece to represent their life, as well as write about them in Spanish.
Mi abuela se llamaba Joyce Vivian Stensund-Froom. Nació en Duluth, Minnesota en cuatro de mayo, 1924. Murió en Sacramento, California en diecisiete de mayo, 1988. Joyce se casó con John Gustav Froom en uno de febrero en 1947. Ellos viajaban el mundo porque mi abuelo estaba en la fuerza aérea. Se mudó a Colorado Springs, Colorado en 1977 con su familia. Ella tenía cuatro hijos y uno hija: Scott, Kerry, Randy, Keith, y Robin, quién es mi mamá. Mi abuela era un ama de casa, y pasaba un grande parte de su tiempo leyendo. Le gustaba los libros de misterios. También le gustaba flores, particularmente lirios de días. Mi abuela amaba bailar, especialmente con mi abuelo. El mundo del moda siempre era un pasión de su. Mi abuela amaba mantequilla derretida, y coleccionaba cucharas de sus viajes.
Mi abuela murió antes de nací, pero mi mamá tiene mucho memorias de ella. Ella solía puso otro gente delante de se. Mi abuela era mucho cariñosa y amorosa. Ella elegía la persona más callado en el habitación y hablaba a ellos hasta que ellos estaba cómodo. Ella no tenía un trabajo, pero ella se despertó cada temprano del día ver su niños antes de era a escuela. Ella se sentó a la mesa cocina y bebió café mientras hacía crucigramas. |
Project Reflection
This project was really interesting. Día de los muertos has always been an area of particular interest to me, so being able to study in formally in class was amazing. I learned that the Day of the Dead is actually a two-day celebration, and it is similar to Halloween only in the fact that decorative costumes are worn. The Day of the Dead is a celebration of the lives of lost loved ones, and is typically observed in South & Central American countries. I am very proud of the art piece that I created. I think my piece was very creative because it combined multiple mediums (paint, sculpture) and captured the traditional Día de los muertos motifs, as well as exemplified my own artistic aesthetic. However, the art piece also proved to be the most challenging part of the project. Because I chose to do a large-scale piece, it took much longer to complete. I did the majority of the piece in the last few days before exhibition.
periodismo
For this project, we spent a month writing newspaper articles and advertisements about the current events and pop culture of spanish speaking countries before finally compiling them into a real newspaper that included all the writing from the group. As the project carried over from first semester into second, there were two separate components. First semester was focused on individual work. We were put into groups of three or four and chose a country to focus on. Each person then did independent research about the chosen topic of their article. Then, each member of the group wrote an article in Spanish. Second semester was focused on putting the articles that had already been writing into a newspaper format to turn in, or writing smaller pieces like horoscopes to fill space in the paper.
As I am on the editorial staff of the Quill, I was very familiar with the process of writing articles on putting them into layout. I enjoy writing and reading news, and I liked learning about the interesting celebrations in Colombia. The most interesting part of the project was researching the culture of Colombia and understanding the ways that our celebrations differ from theirs. The most challenging part of this project was having to write in another language. Writing news that makes sense with a limited vocabulary and a developing understanding of verb conjugation is tough. I'd also say that it was difficult to find some information, as the websites were in Spanish. So I'd have to translate the information, choose what I thought was relevant to my article, and then translate back to Spanish in a way that made sense for my article. It was a slow process at some points. It can also be tempting to write the article in English and then translate it over to Spanish, but it adds more frustration if something in your article doesn't translate over correctly and you have to change it. This project reinforced that I am a quick worker and am very comfortable in the role of leader. I'm also a very visual learner, so having to apply the knowledge I had about Spanish was the most effective way for me to retain the information. Particularly in the case of conjugating in the preterite and imperfect forms for verbs in the past tense, writing an informative and fact-based piece was a great way to practice that skill and become more comfortable with it. After spending a month researching the cultures of other countries in Spanish, it's clear that an important part of the language learning process is consuming their news. It helps understand their culture as well as illustrates the proper ways to write in a foreign language in a factual and informative way. As a visual learner, having to translate text from Spanish to English forced me to focus on understanding the information the way it would be understood by a native speaker. |
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