Love, Love, Love Granada by Dr. Darla Shaw

I have only been in Granada for one day and I have already fallen in love with this wonderful city. It has incorporated the best of so many foreign cities that I have visited. Here you immediately feel relaxed, comfortable and transported to a magical place.

The colorful, stucco homes with lush indoor gardens, ornate wooden doors and iron gates adorn every corner surrounding the tree laden plaza with a great church and lines of decorated horse carts. The vendors are in the colorful market place ,while families ride together on their bicycles, children wear their school uniforms and the farmers use their horses to pull carts. Outdoor eateries are everywhere and a balmy breeze blows through the ancient cobblestone streets. As the backdrop for this cultural masterpiece sits the active and inactive volcanoes shrowded in clouds.

Equally impressive here in Granada is the program that Dr. Skar is providing for her students. Each morning the students take Spanish lessons at the local academy and then proceed to the schools to work with students in their native language. In late afternoon the students return for a two hour Spanish application session based on ten themes. Each student has selected a universal theme to develop into a product for presentation to the group. The presentation will include the arts, multimedia, research, critical thinking, currents events, politics, and discussion. Each presentation will be unique and fully developed by the individual student.

The students here in Nicaragua are taking part in a life changing experience. No student or professor will go home unchanged. The Global Academy is much more than just a language immersion experience, it involves living with a family, service work in the community, a true understanding of the culture, and constant communication in Spanish.

If we all lived in an ideal world, the Global Academy Experience, as developed by Dr. Skar ,would be available to all students. With such an intensive and focused experience, students would truly be able to make our world a better place in which to live with more understanding, sharing, compassion, simplicity, and service to others.

I am glad that Dr Skar and her students will be presenting their work developed here in Nicaragua at an international conference this fall. More people need to heaqr about the success of the Global Academy and how it can enhance almost any cultural learning program.