Hola from Denver, Colorado! My name is Dani Tanner, and I am a second year student from Cedar Falls, Iowa.  I am majoring in Pre-Nursing Biology and Spanish and hope to become an ARNP (Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner) and eventually work in a NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).  I am extremely excited about this May Term, and I look forward to telling you all about it.

            As a brief overview of what this May Term means for all 10 of us Wartburg students, we will all be participating in individualized internships related to our majors.  In addition to this, we will be discussing two readings chosen by Zak Montgomery, our professor, and experiencing many other cultural activities, such as dance, film, food, hiking, and meetings with elected officials. Today was our first full day in Denver, and we had a blast!  We took a tour of the city and got the chance to see where our placements were, as well as some of the popular places in town. We also stopped at “Taza de Café,” a coffee house with a variety of coffee flavors, such as Mexican Mocha (dark chocolate with cinnamon) and La Taza (caramel and vanilla)…. because what is Latino culture without coffee?! 

            We then had the afternoon free to ourselves to do more exploring or catch up on some much needed sleep or reading.  A few of us explored Washington Park, a great place to spend time relaxing or doing athletic activities, such as volleyball, rollerblading, soccer, or just sunbathing.

            After this, we had a really interesting group seminar with Nelson Bock and Professor Montgomery.  We learned a lot about the history of Denver and the Latinoamerican population. The Southeastern corner of Colorado was originally owned by Spain, and then Mexico, so a large number of Latinos lived there.  Then, once the business of agriculture with sugar beets had its boom, many Latinos moved their families North to the Denver area, and Denver has a quite large Hispanic population  (45%) residing here today.  We also learned a bit about the Crusade for Justice, a civil rights movement for Latinos that was lead by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales in Denver, which ended in the 1970s.  We were able to apply this information to the parts of town that we visited and get a clearer perspective of how cultures mix in Denver and what we will be dealing with during the next three weeks.

            Overall, today was a really great introduction to Denver and an interesting learning experience, and we all really look forward to beginning our internship placements tomorrow! 

¡Hasta luego!