Trips to Latin American countries can be amazing experiences. At the same time, they can provide you with a wonderful opportunity to practice your Spanish and learn a lot culturally. Here are a few handy travel tips to help you get the most out of your trip to Latin American and avoid potential problems. For a complete set of travel vocabulary (including: Rent-a-Car, Bank, Exchange Rate, Hotel, Shopping and Medical Emergencies), please look up section 12 of your complete Visual Link Spanish™ course; there are both interactive computer lessons as well as audio CD lessons for use in your car. If you perhaps do not have the complete course, click here for more info, or to purchase. Now, let’s move on to our travel tips:

1. Take every occasion you have to speak with the natives. Since you have been studying with our course, you have most likely learned great deal of Spanish up to this point. Speaking to native speakers is a very important step towards higher fluency and will help boost your level of Spanish like nothing else.
2. Try to put your money in a hidden pocket; under clothes is preferable. Money belts that go underneath the clothes are particularly ideal. In some areas, pickpockets can be a very common occurrence and this guideline could save you a lot of money! If you must carry a purse, be sure to keep both hands on it in all public places. Remember, money belts are really ideal to keep your money safe.
3. It is best not to wear expensive jewelry or watches; you may not come back with them. Relatively harmless pick pockets may possibly become somewhat aggressive if they see you have a nice watch or jewelry. Inexpensive jewelry can be a great solution to remedy the problem. When I went to live in Latin America, I bought an very inexpensive $10 Casio digital watch that lasted the entire two years I lived there. As you can well imagine, nobody really wanted to take a “$10 Casio”.
4. If you decide to drive or rent a car, be sure to carry money if you happen to be stopped by the police. In the United States, it is illegal to give police officers money to let you off, but in Latin America it is more or less expected. The amount to offer can vary region to region, but I would suggest carrying at least three ten-dollar bills.
5. Do not ever leave your luggage or valuables unattended. Keep track of your things because if you lose something, it is gone forever.
6. For the most part, most tourist locations are really very safe, but it you go off the beaten path, be sure to stay in well-lit areas at night.

  To learn more about speaking Spanish, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

In English, when we say “She is young” or “She is a youth”, it means that “she” is most likely a teenager or younger. (Those in England and Australia, please let me know if it is different there.) In Spanish, when you say “She is a youth”, it means that “she” can be anywhere from age 1 to age 29.

To demonstrate this point, when I was living in Latin America at age 19, I was talking to some people and began to tell them a story. I started off the story by saying, “When I was young.” Much to my surprise, they all started laughing and said, “You are still young!” I said “What do you mean, I am still young.” This made them laugh even more and said “You’re young.”

Because it was a cultural difference, at first I did not understand what they meant — in my opinion, I wasn’t young anymore. During the next couple of months of observation, I realized that when a native Spanish speaker talked about a “young person”, or “being young”, or “a youth”, they were referring to someone who was either a child, a teenager, or even into their late twenties.

Another example of this is from when I was in my late twenties; I went to a company called Autoliv to give some ESL (English as a Second Language) placement tests to native Spanish speakers. I was about to test a Spanish speaking lady who was perhaps in her 50’s. She was smiling and seemed to be a very happy and sociable person. When she came to sit down at the testing table, she said “Hola joven” [oh-law ho-ben] – or in English “Hi youth.” I said “Hola” to her and we began the session. As we continued, she continued to call me “joven” (young person or youth) about 6 or 7 times. She would say things like “OK joven”, or “muy bien joven”, or “está bien joven” and so forth. It is quite common for Latin people in their fifties or older to call people in their twenties or younger “joven”.

The moral to this story is this: In Latin America, until you hit age 30, you are younger than you think. This is a fun little tidbit of culture that I wanted to share with you this week.

To learn more about speaking Spanish, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

For more Spanish Words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

Last week’s newsletter we focused on sweeping dirt in Latin America and the reasons they do it. I love when we get responses from you (our readers). Last week Deborah responded by e-mail with the following message:

“Dave: In poor areas in Mexico I saw family wash hanging out and was so impressed at how the whites are so white. Families built homemade speed bumps in front of their homes to keep cars from going too fast and kicking up dirt. The dirt is so fine and dusty that all their work washing clothes would be for not if they didn’t either sweep and wet the dirt, or build speed bumps.

I enjoy your travel observations. Deb”

Thank you so much for your comments Deborah!

I just wanted to do a quick follow-up with last week’s newsletter and talk a little more about the activities that are done on the dirt roads in the pueblos. Since cars rarely pass by in the lower-income pueblos, the streets are converted to a sort of play place for young children and teenagers. In most of Latin America, as soon as a little boy can walk, they learn to kick a soccer ball. In fact, they seem to be almost everywhere in the streets kicking soccer balls and playing soccer. When the very little boys are not playing soccer, they like to play with marbles or with string tops called trompos [troam-poes]. Girls likewise use the streets for a play place. As soon as they are around age of say eight or nine, in many regions, they play volleyball in the streets. They set up nets from one side of the narrow streets to the other and if any cars happen to pass by, they simply lift up the net.

It is fun to watch the culture of the Latin streets and see everything all the events that goe on. The boys and girls are quite good at soccer, volleyball, marbles, and “trompos.” In fact, the first time I tried to play soccer with them, to my surprise, they kicked the ball right between my legs. I was a little embarrassed as everyone laughed at me, the “Gringo”, who did not know how to play soccer very well. Needless to say, I practiced my soccer playing and now enjoy it very much.

The sports played can vary region to region. For example, in the Dominican Republic, many of the boys participate in baseball instead of soccer. However, soccer is still the most widespread sport throughout Latin America.

To learn more about getting to know someone better or conversing about sports and hobbies, be sure to learn “Section 8 – Becoming Acquainted.” If you do not have the complete course yet, and would like to order it, we have a current sale going on at: www.spanishprograms.com/store.htm

To learn more about speaking Spanish, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

Just quickly, I want to address a question that a lot of people have had about our complete Visual Link Spanish™ course.  Many people know that we have wonderful interactive computer lessons from all of the demo lessons on our site. What many people do not realized is that there are 10 audio CDs also come with the course. The benefit from this is that you can learn the lessons first on the computer, and then review everything in your car, while exercising or walking the dog, etc. The more exposure you have to the Spanish language, the better you will learn and retain it. Most courses have just one or the other, but Visual Link Spanish™ has both computer CD-ROMs as well as audio CDs (not to mention the great pocket-size conversation manual that contains every word in the course)..

Now let’s move on to our topic for the week. It is my understanding that around the world; generally many people have brooms and sweep the dirt and dust in their homes to clean them. Some may even sweep the sidewalks and walkways that are around their houses. Growing up, my mom gave me more than ample opportunities to sweep out the kitchen or our little patio where I would play basketball.

In some parts of Latin America, the people quite literally sweep their dirt. When I had first arrived in Latin America, I stayed the first couple months in a lower income pueblo [pweh-blow] living among the natives. A pueblo can be best described as a small city. In most of the lower income pueblos, the homes are made of adobe bricks and the streets are sometimes sand but mostly are dirt. Because not too many people own cars, the streets of the pueblos are generally pretty calm. Most of the homes in pueblos do not have any type of yard; when you step out the front door, you are on the street.

Anyway, when I had first arrived and starting walking the streets of the pueblo my first few mornings there, I saw one of the most interesting cultural sites I have ever seen. In the front of just about every home, housewives were pouring buckets of water on “their portion” of the street and were sweeping the dirt streets.

This was a truly amazing morning ritual for me to see.  As I would see them pour buckets of water on the streets and sweep them, I was somewhat perplexed and a little amazed. For me, the purpose of sweeping dirt is to get rid of the dirt and you do not have any more dirt. These wonderful dedicated women would sweep, and sweep, and sweep again, but would never get to the bottom of the dirt because the streets were made of dirt. The more they swept, the more the dirt appeared. This fascinated me for many, many months. I thought that maybe their brooms had not come with instructions, or perhaps it was a morning social outlet, or possibly this was how they did their morning exercise or aerobics.

This, for me, was a real cultural phenomenon. From my cultural perspective, I could not make any sense from it. The next few months, I became so accustomed to seeing the women sweep their dirt in the morning, that I had almost forgotten that in other parts of the world, they do not sweep their dirt (literally). Finally, after living in Latin America for almost a year, I remembered that I had not grown up with this custom and was resolute about getting to the bottom of it. I spoke to a few people and finally found out precisely why they sweep their dirt. When it is windy there, the dirt blows around in the streets and can be a nuisance. The women put water on the dirt and sweep it to help better pack it down to reduce the amount of dust in the air. Finally — it all made total sense to me!

I bring up this story to hopefully enlighten your perspective when looking at the all of the world’s different cultures. Sometimes we jump too quickly to conclusions and can create all sorts of strange ideas about a certain cultural difference. If we speak with people and find out more about their culture, the things they do usually make a lot of sense and help us to bridge cultural gaps. We will even come to appreciate and love their culture.

To learn more about speaking Spanish, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

To learn more Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com

In English speaking countries, and especially in the United States, there is a distinct separation between church and state. Often it gets to the point where people simply avoid talking about religion altogether. In Latin America, this is quite different. I have experienced this first hand because I was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, during a two year period, in a few Latin American countries. I lived among the native people and did not have any full English conversations for all but two months that I lived there. This is one of the chief reasons I have come to love the Latin people, culture, and Spanish language so much.

In regard to the religion of Latin America, I would guess by my experience that about 90 to 95% of Latin Americans are of the Catholic faith. In Latin America, they take their religion quite seriously. Many are devout church-goers (I would guess more so than in the US) but there are still many who claim to be religious who only go to church a few times a year. Many Latin Americans claim to have dreams and visions about the Virgin Mary and several other Catholic saints.

Unlike the United States, in Latin America the Catholic Church is very involved in the government, the schools, and other civic organizations. There is not a clear separation of church and state like in the U.S.

One of the things that surprised me the most is that in some Latin American countries, they celebrate “mes morado” [mes more-daw-though], or translated into English — “purple month”. Every year in October, some of them dress in their purple “habits” (robes) and wear them during the whole month as a symbol of their religious devotion.  Not many of the population do this; I would say about 5 to 10% of the people wore them. Basically, enough people wore them to catch the attention of a foreigner like me.

Another interesting cultural note is that some of the more religiously dedicated people go on “campañas” [com-pawn-yaws] maybe once a year with their religious groups. A “campaña” is a type of religious trek they take. I talked to a few people personally who had been involved with “campañas”; they said they would hike for a few days with a large group of people usually up into a mountain to some sort of religious shrine and then they would pray and worship.

Even though I was a missionary for a different church, I came to respect the Catholic Church and the many Catholics I became good friends with (not to mention all of the people from other religions as well).

Now to change the topic just a little, I saw on the news a while ago a story about a Latin American family living in the U.S;  Mixed in with the story was a little Latin girl who claimed to have a vision about the Virgin Mary. To some people not familiar with the Latin culture, the story may have sounded very unusual.  However, knowing the Latin culture, you would now realize that this is a fairly common occurrence.

To all of our international subscribers, please write in and tell us about religion in your countries. We would love to hear from you!

To learn more about Spanish culture and Spanish words, please visit our website www.spanishprograms.com