Named "Warren Hardy Spanish School" Student of the Year 2012

SUSAN NEULIST  WARREN HARDY SPANISH STUDENT OF THE YEAR – 2012

 “Most people dream of being able to speak Spanish but never get beyond the dream. There are a few who do the work and learn to get by pretty well, and then there is Susan Neulist. When I sat down to interview her for Student of the Year, we were spontaneously joined at our table by a woman from Mexico. For a few minutes we enjoyed cordial conversation.  I didn’t realize that Susan was even speaking Spanish until several minutes into our conversation. She was very engaged with our Mexican friend and for a few minutes I got to watch one of my level 1 students speak Spanish comfortably and almost flawlessly.  My thought was, “Yes, this woman definitely deserves to be “The Warren Hardy Student of the Year.”  So here she is, friends.  Susan Neulist has walked the walk and accomplished the dream. Please, be inspired by the story of how a 65 year young woman went from no Spanish to very fluid Spanish in just two years.” Warren Hardy

1.Tell me a little about your personal history.

I  am an artist and office administrator who with my husband fell in love with San Miguel in 2000. We returned many times, first two weeks, then three, then a few one and two month visits until our retirement. I didn’t speak a word of Spanish until I was 63 years of age. Two years ago I decided to dedicate myself to Spanish.

 2. Tell me about your language journey.

I started at Warren Hardy (www.warrenhardy.com) because I felt that his program would give me a good start. I stayed because I was empowered with the small successes at each Level. I will admit that there were times when I was very frustrated and thought that I would never be able to remember irregular verbs or even use them. The teachers are awesome and always patient and I enjoyed the partner concept as it worked well for me. Having assigned homework helped me and taking the necessary time between classes to do my homework helped to reinforce the classes.

I did repeat one or two of the classes when I felt it necessary. I was motivated because I wanted to devote 2 years of time to the process and see if I could do the four Levels as well as an immersion during this time. I took Levels 1-4 as well as The Soap Opera of Carolina, Storytelling and Intermediate Conversation.

3. Where else did you study?

After I finished the 4 levels at WHS  we began our immersion programs. Our first visit was to Cuenca, Ecuador in early 2011 and then followed that with 4 months in South America at the end of 2011 (2 months back in Ecuador and then 2 months in Peru).

We chose these countries because we wanted to visit them, heard about Spanish schools there and also heard that the Spanish was similar in sound to that in Mexico. We had heard about Cuenca from several friends in SMA who had been there so that was our first stop. We went to a Spanish school 4 hours/day (www.amauta.edu.ec) and lived with two separate families so that I would have to use my Spanish to communicate. It worked out well (though a bit odd for us). We were able to meet every morning as our houses were near to each other and we walked to and from school together. We even had a few “sleep over weekends” at my house! It was a fantastic experience and we recommend this beautiful colonial city to all.

 In Sept. 2011 we returned to Cuenca, again to Amauta and both lived with my original host family. While in Ecuador we were able to travel around and learn so much of the history and the people, and of course, continue our Spanish communications.

We were really happy with our choice of Ecuador as the first stop, and of Cuenca as a great place to settle into. The people are very friendly and the food is great (and extremely reasonable at $2.50 for an almuerzo - complete midday meal). As vegetarians we found loads of delicious meals with many that we had not tried before. The city is so green with one main and 3 other rivers running through town. The fact that we were so close to a big national park (Parque National Cajas) was great for weekend outings and hiking. We were pleased with the choice of a school as the one-on-one teaching was excellent for our level as well as other levels and their weekly activities were also good. There are many museums and cultural activities in Cuenca as well. We also visited Vilcambamba, Alausi, Banos, Quito, Mindo and Otavalo. Each part of Ecuador offers different visual and cultural experiences. We plan to return to Ecuador as we miss our friends and the culture.  We felt very safe there.  

In November 2011 we headed (via several places along the way) to Cusco, Peru and once again attended language school (http://www.centrotinku.com/). Though we were only going to spend one month, we ended up spending two months in a small apartment and meeting many wonderful people – both travelers from other countries as well as local Peruvians. We loved the Sacred Valley and the history and of course, the people of Peru.

 4. Why was total immersion important?

 I love San Miguel but it is very hard to stay in Spanish all the time. We have so many great expat friends and we always revert to English. I think that it is really important to be with people who don’t speak English and be forced to speak Spanish.

 5 .What suggestions would you give to someone learning Spanish?

 First of all I would say to “jump in” and try! That will build the confidence to go on. Secondly I would say to “talk” once you have enough grammar to begin talking.  I think that we all try too hard to be perfect in our speech and waiting until our Spanish is perfect could be a long wait. The best advice I can give is just to speak and not worry all the time about mistakes.

6. What are the rewards?

 The big reward for me is the ability to really feel a part of a Latin American experience by making friends in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru. One of the highlights of traveling in Spanish speaking countries is being able to share the culture with the people. The fact that I can communicate with people wherever I go makes the travel even better. It is a real sense of freedom.

Another reward is the confidence and empowerment of getting older and knowing that I can challenge myself and accomplish new things. Right now we have a new challenge! We are going to walk the Camino de Santiago (500 miles) in Northern Spain in May and June of this year (2012). This is both a physical and mental challenge. Being in Spain will give us more chances to continue our path of improving our Spanish.

 7. Describe your journey.

The journey was a challenge. I am a focused person and once I decided to dedicate some time to the process, then things began to come together for me. I won’t say it was easy, and I still feel that I am on the road to improving my Spanish, but I would like to tell everyone that it IS possible and that if I can learn a language in my mid 60’s then anyone else can do it as well. Just put one foot in front of the other, or maybe one word behind the next and it will happen. Don’t give up, especially if you have already begun. If you have not begun your study of language….there is no time like the present!

I would be happy to talk with anyone who wants to travel to any of these wonderful countries as well as to enthusiastically support anyone who is traveling the language path.

February life in Mexico AND the arrival of baby Sophia Marguerite

Sophia, Joanna and Julian

 I will start first with the exciting news of the birth of our new family member...Sophia Marguerite Mazzella. She is the daughter of Joanna and Stephan and sister to Julian (2 1/2). Joanna is the daughter of Richard's sister Margui who died in June, 1999. Even more exciting is that she was born on Ricardo's birthday, Feb 18th. We look forward to seeing them on Long Island when we return to the states in April.

During part of Jan. and Feb. I took acting classes with a local acting teacher, Eli Hans here in SMA. It was very challenging and there were positives and negatives. I really enjoyed the process of being on stage for our short scene but the memorizing of the lines was difficult for me. It is a challenging activity and an incredible way to "be in the moment". I planning to take it again in two weeks. It has also given me a greater appreciation for actors and plays. We do go to many here in SMA but now I am looking at it all in a different light.  Interestingly, my brother Richard has recently auditioned for a part and was in a play in Boston. Who knew that the Vogels had acting in their blood.

Playing a writer who wants to be rich...
both of us writing plays in a basement apartment
eating ramen noodles every night!

Taking our bows!

We had two weeks between house sitting opportunities so we decided to travel for one of them and stay with our good friends (from Chapel Hill, NC) Barbara and David for the second week (Thanks B&D!).

We traveled with Cindy and Ravi to Patzcuaro, MX...about 5 hours from SMA. It is a small city on a lake with many indigenous villages around the lake. Here we bought new hats in one of the villages. In the middle of the lake is an island which has a statue at the top of the hill.

Island in Lago Patzcuaro

Graveyard on the island

Walking up the statue on the island

We visited several of the villages around the lake as well as the island in the middle of the lake. Together we enjoyed good meals and enjoyed the second place that we stayed - Casa Werma which is a retreat center. We made some new friends, some of which are coming to SMA this week.

Very old olive trees in a small town on the lake

View from a church yard 

Dinner with our friends Joyce and Ralph
from Long Island, NY - in Mexico City
at Cafe Tacuba

Inside one of the many churches in Puebla, MX

After 3 days in Patzcuaro, we took a bus to Mexico City to meet our friends Joyce and Ralph who were on their way to the beach here in Mexico. We know them for over 25 years from Long Island. We traveled with them to Puebla, MX which is about 2 hours from Mexico City and loved this city of about 1 million people. The colors, architecture and people were warm and it felt like a place for us to return to. In fact, we are thinking of returning sometime at the end of the year for a bit longer to get to know the city better. Both Patzcuaro and Puebla are places with little English being spoken so a good place for us to use our Spanish and keep it up.

Puebla, Mexico

Puebla, MX

View from the roof garden
of a hotel in Puebla, MS

Puebla as seen from Cholula, MX

Church in Cholula 

Tiled front of church in Cholula - home
of Talavera tiles

more tiles

Flags flying from a church steeple

The new Suyumaya Museum with
collection of Carlos Slim - the richest
man in the world - in Mexico City

We returned to Mexico City for one more day which included this new museum on the outskirts of the city. It is an amazing building with quite an interesting collection of art and artifacts - especially the Rodin's and Dali sculptures on the top floor.

The sculpture floor in the Suyumaya
Musuem

Now, in our new home for the next 5 weeks...with our usual activities. Richard has taken on several large database projects for several not-for-profit organizations so he is busy with a few meetings and time on the computer. I continue with behind-the-scene activities with a few organizations as well. We are teaching English several times a week with a few students and of course our usual - yoga, Spanish and art. We feel blessed to have this life of travel and adventure.

I believe that I mentioned this in the past, but we are now getting excited for our upcoming adventure which is to walk the "Camino de Santiago" in Northern Spain in May and June. We have already booked our tickets to Spain. We will return to NC in April and then head to NY and Boston before heading to Spain on May 1st. We look forward to seeing many of you during our travel in the US and plan to return to SMA in August once again.

Thanks for traveling with us and love from the both of us.

January 2012 - Back in San Miguel de Allende - an incredible week

Gordon and Faye surprise us

Last Sunday started as a normal Sunday at breakfast with Barbara and David (we miss you Stan/Marcia and Kris/Cedric). Then we were off to the reception at my art show at Magenta Gallery. The show was hung and the guests were arriving.
Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw someone who looked like my cousin Gordon from North Carolina and my mind started playing games....where was I, where am I and how could Gordon be here without me knowing about it.  Then behind him came Faye and I knew where I was...all I could repeat over and over was "OMG" and I was jumping up and down and so excited. The story is that when I sent out the email announcement about this show they both looked at each other and said "Should we surprise Susan and Richard?" and they decided at that moment to come on down to SMA and join the fun. Both of Gordon's kids - Greg and family as well as Michelle have been here.

Good friends - Bob, Meredith and Andrea

So....what a great week it was for all of us. They stayed at a lovely B&B - Casa Maria and we managed to squeeze many activities into our busy schedule as well as delicious meals and breakfasts at Casa Maria.
The show was a great success and made us realize how many great friends we have here in SMA. Always fun to have our friends meet other friends.

Jose's birthday

David plays in concert

Other activities during our first few weeks here included a birthday party for Jose - our Spanish conversation teacher and friend and a music event by VIP Orchestre with David Ziff playing his sax.

First night of film festival with
Cindy and Ravi

The week was also filled as we volunteered with our friends Ravi and Cindy for the first "Satsang Film Festival". Richard was the tech person every night to turn on the movie - the most important job and I took tickets several times during the week.

Here is a sampling of some of our activities for the week including some usual and some new....yoga (both), new database creation volunteer work (R), acting classes (me), art classes (both), exercise with personal trainer (me), gym (R), data entry volunteer work (me), meditation (R)...whew. No wonder I am tired at night. Still need to figure out when to include Spanish conversation into this schedule.  We have a great house sitting opportunity now and another one in mid Feb to the end of March.

Many of you are wondering about our future plans this year. Here is the scoop. We will be in Mexico till early April (with a few side trips) and then to USA for the month of April. We will head to Spain for May and June to walk the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. We are doing loads of planning and buying of lightweight supplies to carry in our new backpacks. Then back to US for July and back to Mexico for August. That is as far as the plan exists for the moment. Any ideas are always welcome for the future.

We are happy to be back "home" in SMA but we do miss all the friends we met during our travels in Ecuador and Peru. How blessed we are with so many swell "peeps" in our lives.

January 2012 - ending in Peru and returning to San Miguel de Allende

 I am writing now from San Miguel de Allende but not wanting to leave out two outstanding events in Peru. We joined with thousands in the Plaza in Cusco to bring in the year. Yes, some were wearing yellow underwear (we presume). I found out that the tradition is that someone has to give them to you and that it brings good luck. Since I bought them for Richard I guess he will have the luck for both of us. We began to walk around the Plaza as the tradition is to run or walk around 12 times to bring luck for travels in the next year. We stopped halfway around as we felt like we would be trampled by many who seemingly had more than necessary to drink.

Thousands in the Plaza de Armas at midnight

The Cusco Flag

On New Years Day we had our goodbye lunch with Telma and Jean-Jacques which was a bit sad but we promised to see each other again in the future. It was the hardest part about leaving...saying goodbye to good friends, even though we were heading back to many equally great friends. I guess that is the life of the gypsies and I can see why many folks stay in one place with their friends so this does not have to keep happening. Later that day we took a 13 hour bus from Cusco to Nasca overnight and arrived early the next day.

Nasca was an incredible place, not for the town which was nothing to see at all, but for the Nasca Lines. Here is information from Wikipedia about the lines. No one really knows to this date why they were made. Again in Peru...a connection to the past in ways that we had never known about before.

The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD.^[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds,spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, llamas, and lizards.

The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the ubiquitous reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals such as birds, fish, llamas, jaguar, monkey, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general they ascribe religious significance to them.

The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars.^[2]

Due to the dry, windless, and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation, for the most part the lines have been preserved. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.

The flight over the lines in a small Cessna seated 7 people. Several (including Ricardo) did not feel well during the flight as the banking from left to right to allow for photos made it very uncomfortable. It was also really hot and we had not really slept well the night before on our long bus ride. However, putting that aside, it was one of the most interesting half hours of our lives. Here you can see the astronaut and the hummingbird (93 meters).

 The next day we went to Lima and spent two nights. Also a chance to catch up with our friends Tess and Cathy and Pavel. We went Gaston y Astrid - a fancy restaurant in Lima serving fusion Peruvian food - they have several restaurants in South America and are working hard to bring Peruvian food to the world, with much success.
It was the warmest time we had during our 4 months and walked along the beach in Lima and as it was their summer vacation - many were enjoying the beach.

And now, we are back in San Miguel with our friends and our full lives. We felt great coming "home" and also so grateful for this last 4 months.
Thanks for coming on this trip with us and you will hear from us again but surely not as often as our lives here are more "regular". Happy New Year to all.

December 31, 2011 Wishing all a Happy New Year

Reverse warrior

 Here we are at our yoga studio...Free Spirit Peru with Al Toth. We went almost every day for the last two months and had a great time. We will miss you Al...your jokes but more than that...your kind personality and comfortable yoga teaching style.

Handstand

We had a great holiday week celebrating both holidays in Cusco, Peru. It is New Years Eve and we are getting ready for the big celebration tonight at the Plaza de Armas at midnight. As we are leaving Cusco tomorrow, this has been a bittersweet time....saying goodbye to some good friends. We are excited for the next adventure, but it is always hard to say goodbye to people that we know we will not see for a long time. We do hope to come back to Cusco again, especially for these friendships.

Here are pictures with captions to explain the happenings this week from just before Christmas to today. I shall have to let you know about tonight's events in a few days.

Finished these earrings for our friend Telma

Clothes for baby Jesus. The day before
Christmas there is a big festival in the center
of Cusco with items for Nativity scenes as
well as garments for Jesus. Tradition
has that one buys new clothes every year.

Our Christmas tree, llama, creche and gifts

Jean-Jacques prepares Christmas eve dinner

Christmas eve with friends at Centro Tinku.
We both spent the afternoon helping to
get ready for this delicious meal.

The Nativity at the Plaza de Armas

The tradition for New Years is to wear
 yellow underwear.We don't know why,
except for good luck

Our anniversary gifts...yellow underwear
for good luck.

 Yesterday, Dec. 30th was our 21st wedding anniversary. We celebrated by joining our friend Gaby with her family in the countryside - about one hour from Cusco. It was a beautiful day and once again, it was difficult saying goodbye to all but we will return.

A view from the mountain top in the countryside

collecting flowers on the hike

watching the rain coming in from the top
of the mountain

Here we are just before the rain came.
We hurried down the mountain.

Tonight we will head to the Plaza de Armas at 11pm. We know that at midnight there will be fireworks but also the tradition for those who hope for good luck and travel in the year 2012...to run around the Plaza 12 times for this luck to happen. We shall surely walk, if not run to insure our luck in travel. Also, as the tradition is in Mexico...each person eats 12 grapes - for good luck each month in the coming year. I have our grapes ready too. We are not sure what other festivities will happen but we will find out tonight. (We will be wearing our yellow underpants). Yellow is the big theme here...people have yellow flowers everywhere and also put yellow confetti around their houses. We saw big yellow eyeglasses and yellow flower necklaces all over town today also. This afternoon we did a few things that we had missed these last 2 months - the Coca museum and the church in San Blas that has an incredible wood carved alter. The Coca museum explains all the uses of coca which is many - both medicinal as well as illegal drug use. It was really interesting to learn about. Richard has been drinking coca tea here every day as most do. (I did not care for the taste). We would have loved to bring some home but are afraid as though it is not illegal, nor a drug....it probably would be frowned upon in Mexico or the US at the borders! 

This has been an incredible 4 months and as you all have followed...we had interesting times with friends in all the places we have been - mostly local with some from foreign lands. We both learned much about the cultures of Ecuador and Peru, improved our Spanish, enjoyed our travel together and hope for more adventures to come.

Tomorrow we shall leave for Nasca and will fly over the Nasca lines on Monday afternoon. Then on to Lima and back to San Miguel on Thursday, January 5th. Thanks for traveling with us and our hopes to all for a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR with love from the both of us.