The Chocolate Man

I am really starting to see more and more reasons why my project on media stereotypes the reception of which is so important in Spain....

One day my roomates were sitting in the living room and had the television on, but weren't really watching it, because to be honest Spanish TV is horrible. It really is. then something caught my eye on the television. There was a commercial featuring a black man doing interpretive dance. Since seeing black people in commercials here is not a common occurance, I continued watching. The man continued dancing and moving against a black background. Then he started spinning and swirled into a cup of hot chocolate. After which a Spanish woman proceeded to drink him all up.

Thats what people of color are here in Spain. Hot chocolate.

Another instance occured while I was spending time at the mall across the street from my house. They were putting on a magic show for children but something was oddly different about one of the performers. He had on a mask that was supposed to represent someone of Asian descent with stretched eyes and and a black wig. he proceeded to dance around as if in a modern minstral show. And the people just laughed.

One thing I have gotten in my conversations with Spanish and Spanish minorities is that the concept of racism and stereotypical images has take on a different conotation in Spain. Whereas, for any person the previous two occurances would and should have been offensive, I've been told that because I'm American, I'm too concerned with being politically correct. Racism doesn't exsist in Spain because they can make fun of their differences. Rigggght thats also the reason why the Police can stop me in the street and ask for my papers with no reprecussion, its because they are racially sensitive.

This month i am going to begin interviews with young people about what they see on tv and how it affects them...I am also going to be spending a lotttttt more time at the library in Spain so i can get some more of this research off the ground.

Well Im back from Morocco now, and I had a bevy of experiences there...the Morocco diaries are next!

until,

Sydney

And an extra tidbit.. here are some pictures of my students and I and a video of our attempt to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas

The Holidays are the hardest....

Its finally hitting me that I am not going home for Christmas....

In 22 years this is the very first Christmas that i wont spend on Hornsby Drive and im suffering.

Thanksgiving wasn;t really hard. You cook and eat some food, say what your thankful for, and keep it moving.

Christmas is different. This is the first Christmas I am without my mom and grandmother. My family is gradually getting smaller, and I realize that spending time with them is so much more important than trying to firgure out how stereotypes affect us.

I have a dinky little Christmas tree that we bought from the chinos for 3 euro and some little ornaments. yes we are making the best out of what we have, but it seems so little.

This is the first Christmas I probably wont rush to wake up to open presents because well...theres not going to be much under our little tree.

I am thankful that I have two extraordinarily wonderful roomates to share the holidays with, and my sister and friend are coming to spend the day with me...but its just not the same. i keep telling myself...HEY you are going to Morocco as a present to yourself, but that really doesnt beat being at home around my family. Shoot, I cant even wake up late for church this Christmas because i dont have a church home out here.

have fun this Christmas and remember the true meaning of the season.

Besos y abrazos,

Sydney

here are some pics from my Thanksgiving...and yes, i did cook half of the meal along with my "sister"/ "cousin'/ "african sister" lol Nicole My friend Bea (Madrid) graced us with some Flamenco with dessert.

Estereotipos

I FINALLY got underway with my project with my students on stereotypes by holding an open class forum on discussing some main stereotypes of prominent nationalities and seeing what the students thought. i put the names American and British on the board and had my students call otu what they thought of these groups before they met me.

American

Blond
Blue eyes
Baggy clothes
Baseball Caps
Basketball Jerseys
Fast food
Talk rapidly
polite
McDonalds
Chicken
Move fast
Talkative


British

Quiet
Posh
chic dressers (they said this)
very closed off
not very nice
red hair
blond hair
blue and green eyes

Then I wrote Spanish on the board and talked about and had them comment of some stereotypes that "typical" Americans have of the Spanish

Spanish

Hispanic ( I told them a story of how a friend requested that I bring them back a quesadilla from Spain, to which I promptly responded that I was In SPAIN not LATIN AMERICA)
Bull fights ( they said only old Spaniards watch bullfights)
Flamenco
Maracas (these are also Mexican)
paella
ham
Matadors
skirts and fans (they couldnt believe this one at all)


Then we went through and dissected each of these stereotypes and I asked them about how movies and tvs had influenced where each of theses stereotypes came from.

To lighten the mood we ended with stereotypes of Teachers and students. This is what they had to say:


Teachers
cruel
strict
always want silence
not too young (their other teacher was in the room and they were really afraid of offending her lol)
Don't do anything other than teach
glasses
skirts and suits (essentially bad dressers)
Not fun
and the list goes on :)


Besos,
Sydney

School System support....

So I have been following the recent debates over funding for the Memphis, school system and how it has a lack of funds for books, supplies, and other student support services. We in Getafe are experiencing a similar financial downfall in the schools. My school is in a very working class town so many of the basic amenenties that American students are used to are luxuries to my students.
For one, the students must buy their own textbooks for school, and they only have one. That is their literacy book. Everything else we make loads of copies to give to the students. i think my school uses at least 50 trees a day in paper. One of my main jobs is to take half of the class ,its called dosdoble, in science to the computer lab each day and do a lesson on the computers with them. The problem is that most of the time the computers are broken down, the internet doesnt work, or there is always some conflict with the lab. Even worse, last friday during the middle of the day at school, the power went out and now the copy machine and computer printers dont work which put us at a TOTAL disadvantage and I have been reacking my brains out trying to work around these problems to effectively teach the students.
Now we are finally getting under way with our Model United nations program but we were cut funding for the program this year by Merril Lynch and the University of St. Louis. Now All of the bilingual schools in the Madrid area, only have 15,000 euros collectively to establish the Model UN program at the school and to put on the conference in less than two months. Guess who is in charge of the program for her school, none other than yours truely. So now I have to spend my winter break researching and setting up the model UN program for my school so that as soon as school starts again, I can start prepping the students. This year the conference will focus on infectious diseases and I think my school got the last pics when it came to country choices. I will keep the blog updated on my progress with that.

I also am planning on spending some significant time at the national library to work on my stereotype project which I have finally begun witht the students...more on that later...

Until, Besos

Sydney

El Mike and American Rap

I have been meaning to share this story for a while.


Every Sunday I go to the Afro Hispano center to take African dance classes from a Senagalese man named Pap. At the center there are dozens of people there on any given evening and usually you can strike up a pretty good conversation there. Well two Sundays ago I was headed home from class and one of the kids named Sergio who hangs out at the center ran into me as I was walking to the metro. he saw me with my ipod on and he asked " What kind of music are you listening to? American rap? Heep Hop?". I told him yes and let him see some of the songs that were in my ipod playlist. he got so excited and started asking me if I liked 50 cent, what I thought about TI and JayZ and the like.



Then he pulled out his mp3 and said listen to this, this is my rap song. i am a famous rapper in my country, In a year I will be famous all over Spain. Of course I scffed at him, he's a nice kid but he exaggerates a lot. So I listened to his song. We really have no idea how much our media infiltrates the minds of young kids everywhere. Sergio or EL Mike if you are calling him by his rap name, does not speak English, yet he was rapping in Spanish, English, and French. Now of course most of the curse words were in English and other words were in Spanish and French, but it is amazig how our media and images have taken over every other country. Spanish movies and music are hard to come by sometimes but you can be sure that the lastest American releases are in the movie theatres and dubbed as well as the lastest single from Rhianna, Miley Cyrus or Jayz.



We Americans do not understand the depth to which our culture has become imperialistic, but we also dont realize how bad our image and stereotypes are becoming because of it.
Another example is that while discussing the IRA in English class with my students, we watched the early 90's Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt movie "The Devil's Own". One of the first scenes on the movie is of a black youth running down the streets of New York with the police in hot pursuit of him. The boy ended up not having really done anything wrong, but my students automatically assumed that was typical New York. They even asked me "Is violent crime as bad as it really looks in movies in the US? Do all of you carry guns and knives?" Keep in mind that violent crime here is mostly reserved to the terrorist groups and when it does occur it is not to the levels we are used to in the US. We must be more responsible in our media because if we continue as it is, my students will be too afraid to cross the waters over into the US.

Paris: deux

More about my trip.....

After walking for more hours around the city and trying to remember my phrase je ne com pron pa frances (I don't speak french)... we finally landed at the mothership, the Sephora flagship store!! I thoroughly enjoyed myself there. We then headed to MonteMatre which is a neighborhood of Paris situtated in the hills and sat down to a fabulous french meal. I dined on filet migon (of pork...I didnt know that when I ordered) and we devoured (I must use that term) desserts of creme brulee and a tarte. We ended the night at the Moulin Rouge and in the Red Light District of Paris..I must sya it has nothing on the Red Light district of Amsterdam, but I did get to see Folies Paris where Josephine Baker used to perform.
Our very last day as we tried to find ways to waste time before our flight, we went to a famous Parisian Tea Shop and I bought mountain loads of tea for a few lucky people. Thast about it on Paris...now back to work until Brussels.

un abrazo,
Sydney

Paris and Parisians

This past weekend was a puente weekend in Madrid- meaning a long weekend for a holiday- so my roomate and I decided to find some cheap discount tickets to some place in europe. To my great luck, we ended up going to Paris and now I am enamored. If you have ever been to Paris you would know why. This city is the complete epicenter of any and everything European, chic, and artsy.


We arrived to our hotel/hostal digs on Thursday night but we had forgotten one critical thing in Madrid- we don't speak French. Nicole tried to cram my head with simple French as we were on the bus to the city, but french is not easy to cram. We had the hardest time a) finding food on the first night and b) trying to order what we wanted. Nicole had taken French classes and could understand french perfectly, while I on the other hand just smiled and nodded because I had NO CLUE WHATSOEVER. We walked into a restaurant the first night and basically she had to act as my interpreter and speak for me because it was that hard. SO we decided the next day before we did anything we need to go to a bookstore and get a Paris guidebook and a French phrase book.



The first day was amazing. We walked the entire city on both sides of the Seine River although it was freezing cold, windy and rainy the entire day. First we went to the Champ Elysee whcih is one of the poshest and expensive streets in the world. Then we went to see the Oblesik that Nicole kept reminding me that they STOLE it from Egypt. Next on our agenda was th Louvre Museum. It really is as incredible as it seems. I was convinced that I wanted to do the route of The Da Vinci Code so thats how we attempted to see the museum. One thing that was very surprising was that you were allowed to take pictures of the artwork inside of the museum. Even the Mona Lisa (which is a teeny tiny portrait). It seemed like we were damaging the integrity of the artwork, but I took pictures anyway.





After the Louvre we suffered our way through wind and rain to Notre Dame. Though we never were able to go up to the roof, the Cathedral was amazing and had a spectacular nativity scene. Then we decided after all of our hard work we needed to reward ourselves with coffee and some amazing french onion soup. As we defrosted, we realized...maybe it was about time to get that French phrasebook. Paris has sooooo many bookstores, it was not hard finding one with the books that we needed. At this point I must make a sidenote... Parisians are absolutely the MOST stylish and chic people I have ever scene. Especially black Parisians. unlike many of the Black Spainards I have encountered here, Black Parisians are much more integrated into society and are not really looked upon as much as outsiders and interlopers. Oh and btw they are GORGEOUS and have some of the best beautyshops on this side of the Atlantic.
Back to my trip, after getting the guidebook, we finished the day with some shopping and went back to the Champ Elysee (im talking Louis Vuitton Flagship store expensive) and took pictures of the Arc de Triomph at night.



The next day we met up with my friend Hammd and got some crepes (best thing in France), and went to the Eiffel Tower. I was trying to catch someone getting engaged there because they say at least 2-3 proposals happen every hour. The rest of the day we ate, walked, and went to every single quater of the city!! mORE TO COME LATER.....