Kotzebue High Spanish Club Travels to Spain

MELISSA HEMRY

April 25, 2008 at 10:21AM AKST

For The Arctic Sounder

On April 4 the Kotzebue High School Spanish Club left for a 10-day trip to Spain. I led the group of four high school students: Melissa Williams, Ariel Harris, Jacqui Lambert, and Emma Melton.

These four sold lollipops and Kotzebue community birthday calendars to raise funds for the trip.

The group spent 10 days going on tours in various cities around Spain.

First, we traveled to Madrid, where we visited the Prado Museum to look at original paintings by Greco, Goya and Valezquez.

We also took a sightseeing tour of the city and visited the Royal Palace, which has 2,800 rooms before continuing on to Toledo where they spent half the day visiting cathedrals and mosques.

The tour guide told us that Toledo has 85 churches and mosques; that’s why it is called "Holy Toledo."

Later on that day, we visited a shop that specializes in inlaying weapons and jewelry with golden thread to make beautiful decorations.

We spent the night in Granada, where we watched a gypsy flamenco show.

The third day was spent on a tour of the Alhambra, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, which contains elements of both Christian and Moorish architecture.

We toured around most of the building, but when we reached the giant gardens they discovered that it does rain in Spain.

In Malaga, we stayed in a hotel next to the Mediterranean Sea and took off early in the morning to visit Morocco.

We rode camels, walked through an open-air market in a walled city and tasted Moroccan foods such as couscous and mint tea.

After spending the day in Africa, we went to Sevilla and the site of the 1929 World’s Fair. Also in Sevilla, the girls went to a theatre and saw another form of flamenco dancing.

The next morning, we took a short bus ride to the Cathedral in C uc0u243 rdoba, where they were let loose for a few hours to explore the cathedral on their own.

In the cathedral, there were huge red and white arches that were not painted but were made of an alternation of white stone and bricks.

I explained that it wasn’t just a cathedral but also a mosque and a synagogue all tied together.

Long ago, the three religions lived together in harmony.

From C uc0u243 rdoba we took the world’s fastest train, El Ave, which travels at a speed of 200 mph, to Madrid.

On the last two days, we watched a bull fight, went to a giant flea market and visited the enormous Retiro Park.

The trip was not all tourism and traveling tough. Students were given free time to go shopping and explore the cities on foot as well.

They had a chance to practice the Spanish they had learned during the past few years in the KHS Spanish program.

The students’ first-hand experience of the Spanish language and culture is immeasurable. The girls admitted that they had gained a better understanding of Spain from their hands-on experience than they had in the years they spent reading about it in books.

The Spanish Club would like to thank all those who supported it. Donations for the trip came from the Maniilaq Association, Northwest Arctic Borough and NANA as well as Frontier Aviation, which has provided the Spanish club with round-trip airline tickets to Fairbanks for the past two years.

Melissa Hemry is the Spanish language teacher in the Kotzebue High School.