Hi Everyone,


Here is some information on Espanolandia:

http://www.nmu.edu/modernlanguages/node/60 - This is the NMU website with links to how competitions are judged and what goes on...

 http://www.nmu.edu/modernlanguages/node/55 - This is another NMU page that has NMU students talking about their experiences running the program and what they helped out with

http://www.dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/503195.html?nav=5001&showlayout=0 - and this is an article about a high school group's day at Espanolandia


Basically, they have a very large conference room at NMU that they turn into a mini-town.  Students are given a passport that they must get stamped at every location such as the bank, the clinic, the market, etc.  If students speak in English there are "police officers" who take them to jail for 5 or 10 minutes.  I believe that it was always free and then high schools could practice their Spanish while college students ran the thing.  The prizes that were given away were old textbooks and children's books, bookmarks, and posters in Spanish.  I was thinking that we could use it as a way for both Native English and Native Spanish speakers to help each other.  Have it be a half-day of Spanish and a half-day of English - Spanish speakers can run the Spanish Espanolandia while English students can run something similar for the other part of the day for Spanish students to practice their English.  We could start it out as something small and maybe even grow it so that other area schools can participate.  It would be good for both groups to see their strengths in their own language and practice each others' languages.

What do you all think?   I think it would take a lot of work to get started, but it would be easy after the first year or two.