Teaching and Learning about Perú in Trujillo

Thanks to Dr. Teresa Perez-Gamboa's close ties to the Instituto Cultural Peruano Nortamericano , in Trujillo , three students from our department, Matt Bouillon, Jeff Libby, and Carl Wise, taught English in Peru last summer. Trujillo is Peru 's third largest city and the country's cultural capital with its four universities, numerous cultural centers and museums. The renowned Instituto Cultural has been teaching English as a foreign language to students and professionals for almost sixty years. As native speakers of English, Matt, Jeff and Carl were engaged in a number of activities at the Instituto Cultural : they taught intermediate English, and participated in the Conversation Club for students and the Language Appreciation workshop for teachers. Carl also worked with the newly installed multimedia teaching aids and checked grammatical accuracy.

Their students were of all ages, from children to senior citizens, and all shared a common interest in learning about North American culture. Carl found the staff and students to be “so warm that El Cultural felt more like a large group of friends than a language school, as it seemed like my days were spent simply floating from one interesting conversation to the next. The institute's commitment to its teachers was very obvious – almost weekly we attended parties, banquets, parades, and even a talent show that the school organized for the staff's benefit.”

Matt, Jeff and Carl worked very hard, seven days a week, but found the time to spend with their host families who were generous and treated them like members of the family. After dinner, Matt and Carl discussed politics, culture, language, news, and “whatever else popped into the conversation” late into the night. Matt also found the time to join a professional dance troupe that performed traditional Peruvian dances.

Carl says that leaving Trujillo was very sad. The Instituto Cultural threw a big “going away party” for everyone who was leaving, and his host family did the same with a big traditional dinner of criollo cuisine. Carl did not have to leave everything, however, as four of his friends from the Instituto Cultural (Rosa, Omar, Giovanna, and Martín) all joined our department this year and brought a little of Trujillo back to Athens.

Looking back at his experience in Peru , Matt writes that he was impressed by the sheer spontaneity of life in Peru : “It's precisely a type that doesn't usually concern itself with superfluities.” Matt misses “the emphasis on community in Peru that has developed in order to provide unity where those in power consistently fail. This unity and brotherhood are goals in themselves worth striving for and if I took anything from Peru I hope that it is a heightened awareness of community and the necessity it embodies for all human beings to feel part of something larger than themselves, to find meaning in the small, everyday relations we form over the course of our relatively short lives.”

Upon their return to the U.S. , Carl became a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Spanish in our department, and Matt went to Italy on a Rotary Scholarship where he is currently getting a Masters degree at the Università degli Studi di Siena. At the time this article was written, we had not heard from Jeff; but we hope he is doing well. We wish all three of our recent graduates the very best in their studies and future plans.