The My Culture Project

  English Interview Questions What's your name? What’s today's date? What year were you born? Who are your immediate family? Who were your parents, grandparents, sisters? In what year did you emigrate from Paraguay? How did that trip happen? You left behind everything but your daughters, what was the driving force or motivation for you to drop everything you knew, and go on that journey? Would you say you suffered culture shock? How did breaking the language barrier, in learning English, help you? What is culture? Is it important to have it? What is race? In Paraguay? In the U.S? Historically? What has been your experience with race and racism? Since you first moved to the US, until now, how have your feelings and experiences with race and racism changed? What is ethnicity? In relation to these, how do you identify yourself? Do you still live or practice your culture? How? Do you feel that your sense of culture and ethnicity has evolved to include aspects of the American and th

 Mbeju de Almidon Compulsory Backstory:      When I was a little girl, growing up in the little South American country of Paraguay, Mbeju was not a typical dish I got to eat very often. It still isn't. To be honest, according to my mom's stories, my favorites were the tortillas* my grandma would make. When we'd visit her I'd knock on her door and loudly call out "Yeyeyaa, ta-TA-ta!" Which is toddler talk for "Abuela, Tortilla!". *Paraguayan tortillas are akin to an egg, cheese, and flour omelet.      However, Mbeju holds a very special place in my taste-bud's memories; the powdery, flakey consistency, the way it seems to melt in your mouth and the festivities during which they were common. Las Fiestas de San Juan are held at the end of June, they are a pagan tradition to celebrate the summer solstice which were combined with Christian religion and made into what it is today: a fun fair, full of dangerous games and delicious foods. Have you ever d

   “Leyendas Del Mundo Hispano” (Legends from the Hispanic World), written by Susan M. Bacon, Nancy A Humbach, Aitor Bikandi-Mejias and Gregg O. Courtad is a ten chapter book for Spanish language education. The book uses the technique of teaching through storytelling at intermediate level, accompanied by exercises to enrich the reading and comprehension experience. It comes from the idea that you can't really learn language without learning the culture that molds it, and which it molds in turn.  Each chapter dives into a new tale, some of which are based on true stories and some which are strictly fictional but explain another aspect of a tradition in the country it comes from. The authors could not include every country, but it is clear that they attempted to represent a little bit from each section of the world, where Spanish is spoken. They present the reader with stories from, North America’s Mexico, and the U.S.; Central America’s, El Salvador; South America’s Argentina, Par