Posts tagged right
Flagler College faculty-led trip to Costa Rica
Jun 5th
This summer, the Flagler College Latin American 
Studies department offered a faculty-led trip to Costa Rica for students looking for a deeper immersion experience in their major.
Studies department offered a faculty-led trip to Costa Rica for students looking for a deeper immersion experience in their major.
The following is an update on the program from Flagler student Adam Krell who is currently on location with fellow classmates Ana Chambers, Diane Cassidy, Matt Garber, Elijah Hayes, Adrienne Gonzalez, and Stephanie Sweeting.
The program is led by Assistant Professor Agnieszka Johnson.
It is not every day you get on a plane to travel to a different country for five weeks. Upon arriving in the beautiful country of Costa Rica, we were greeted by our host families at the airport, who speak no English. From that point on, it has been non-stop Spanish speaking for all of us. It is truly a rewarding experience watching not only myself, but also my friends grow in the language and culture.
Intercultura School of Languages here in Costa Rica strives to provide full Spanish immersion for students so we can fully develop the skills and techniques required for learning a second language. From the intensive Spanish courses and the homestay experience with our Tico (Costa Rican) family, we are building the confidence needed to speak in Spanish.
Each day we wake up early with the sun and eat breakfast with our host families. We converse about what we have planned and make our way to the school. Spanish class starts at 8:30 a.m. sharp each morning and lasts until 12:30 p.m. with two fifteen minute breaks. After taking an hour to walk around and eat lunch, we either have a Costa Rican cooking class or dance class followed by another class taught by our faculty leader, Professor Aggie Johnson. During the cooking classes, we have learned how to cook several local dishes, like Patacones (smashed plantains that are fried, like chips) with guacamole and beans, biscochos (a Costa Rican corn cookie), and empanadas, all while learning our way around the kitchen speaking Spanish. During our Latin dance class, we learn one of three styles of dance: merengue, salsa or bachata. As we move our hips to the beat, we have fun dancing with each other and a variety of other students who also are attending Intercultura.
Our other class, with Professor Johnson, is a Spanish literature course that will eventually end with each of us writing and reading our own short stories. This class is more challenging, as we come to class and discuss a short story completely in Spanish each day. After class, we head home to eat dinner with our host families and talk about our days. It’s non-stop Spanish speaking until we go to bed.
As we are ending our third week here in Heredia, a suburb of the country’s capital of San José, we have experienced many different adventures. From seeing an active volcano, Póas, 
visiting a waterfall garden, taking a tour of the coffee plantation Doka (a local company near Heredia), to taking weekend trips to San José, we are not missing out on anything that Costa Rica has to offer.
In the next two weeks we are going white-water rafting on Mount Chirripó, the highest peak in Costa Rica, and making our way to Playa Sámara for a week. There, we will spend the week with another homestay family and attend classes right on the beach. When the week ends, we will make our way back to Heredia for one night and fly back to the United States on June 11.
As the Ticos say here in Costa Rica, ¡Pura Vida! (which translates to “pure life”)
Source: Flagler College
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” All Right in the End
May 19th
“Everything All Right in the End”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about a hotel in India of that name, but ending in even more words of “For the Elderly & Beautiful,” it is a beautiful, lovely, and funny movie, and it just might be the best movie you will see all year.
Based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, the movie follows seven British pensioners who accept the offer from the hotel’s new owner and manager to travel there and kick-start its business.
In fact, the brochure that persuaded the seven strangers to go to India for a new adventure was Photoshopped to look like what the young manager hopes it will look like, and after they arrive, he adds “Now with Guests” to the hotel sign.
The manager’s name is Sonny Kapoor, he is played by Dev Patel of the 2008 Slumdog Millionaire, and when the new arrivals complain about the hotel’s condition, Sonny assures them with his optimistic philosophy, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it is not yet the end.”
The most well-known actors playing the pensioners, who are all there for different reasons, are Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, and although it is difficult at first to keep them and their stories straight, just sit back, relax, and let them all be as wonderful and enjoyable as the sights, sounds, and colors of India itself.
One of the pensioners has been forced to sell her London flat, another one lived happily in India 40 years ago and is returning to settle a matter that has been bothering him all that time, another one doesn’t like foreigners, but requires a cheap hip replacement, one unhappily married couple lost money in a bad investment, one woman is looking for a rich husband, and the final pensioner is a man who is lonely and just looking for some female companionship.
In the meantime, Sonny has his own romantic problems, because his mother doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and has her own plans for his future bride.
And don’t think that the pensioners will find what they are looking for within their own group.
Remember Sonny’s optimistic philosophy?
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, when it comes to the end, will leave you thinking that everything is all right.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Another beat-down of Denver’s homeless
May 15th
To the surprise of no one, the “Criminalize Homelessness” ordinance put forth by the Denver City Council passed by a vote of 9-4. To call this a “camping ban” is disingenuous at best — camping is something people with houses do.
Council member Montero accused us tonight of being Hit and Run activists. What is really hit and run is the ordinance itself.
If we take the city at its word, and not at the verbiage of this fascist piece of legislation, we are expected to believe that there will be few arrests, and then only after unavailable services have been offered.
Chief White says that the police will have a “light touch.” We would like to remind the city that Denver County Jail is no day spa, in fact we’re quite sure there’s not a hot tub in the building.
The Denver Police claim that this bill will be selectively enforced. What that means, literally, is that if they don’t like where you are, who you are, or what you stand for, then you might be arrested. We remember when the Patriot Act was passed, we were told that it would only apply to terrorists, now petty NSA surveillance, TSA strip-searches, and the death of habeas corpus are an accepted reality to all Americans.
Homelessness is the ultimate symptom of a dying economy. To arrest people for sleeping on the streets because you don’t like the way it looks, is like throwing pumpkin seeds at an oncoming bear.
Lopez was right, “this is class war.”
Unfortunately, the front line is now the most vulnerable members of our community.
