Latin and Spanish culture are optional language courses to learn in Kamloops. I had the opportunity to learn Spanish in my high school in grade 10, instead of French. I thought this would be a great opportunity as my family would be going to Mexico over Christmas break and I wanted to learn some of the language.
What I did not expect to happen was to love learning this new language. I wanted to learn more and more about how to say different things and various phrases. The teacher that I had was very enthusiastic to teach us as well, which helped a lot. In grade 11 I enrolled in Spanish 11 and continued my Spanish journey. My teacher integrated a lot of Latin culture into this class. We learned cultures from various Latin countries and how these countries celebrated different holidays.
The holiday that we learned about the most was Day of the Dead, which Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, and a couple more celebrate.
photo from: https://matadornetwork.com/read/us-cities-day-of-the-dead/
It is celebrated on November 1st-2nd , and is a celebration for honouring deceased family and friends. It is an actual celebration with food, music and bright colours, not a somber event like how we in Canada or the US would act around the deceased.
My family and I went to Puerto Vallarta three times over various Christmas breaks. Each time I felt more and more confident in speaking a little bit more Spanish than the next, as I enrolled into Spanish at Thompson Rivers University. I took both first-year courses, and then I stopped. My interest for the Spanish language and culture is still very much a part of me, and I would love to pick it back up and continue to learn more about it.
