Co-curricular Activities
The Portuguese School offers an array of co-curricular activities that complement the study of the language. Co-curricular activities are an integral part of the Language Schools. Our third summer, 2005, continues many of the features of the previous years. Students participate in a variety of activities that enhance their linguistic skills while providing valuable cultural background about the lusophone world.
On Sunday, June 12, we held our opening ceremony, culminating in what makes the Middlebury College Summer Language Schools so famous: the Language Pledge. Each student promises to communicate only in Portuguese for the duration of the program. Here you see our director, Carmen Tesser, explaining to the students what they're about to sign.
This summer, our students have the oppurtunity to see many movies from the Portuguese-speaking world, primarily from Brazil. A small handful of these regularly-scheduled films include As domésticas, O que é isso companheiro?, Terra estrangeira, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos, O Auto da compadecida, and O Homem que copiava. In addition to the scheduled screenings, students also have access to dozens more films available through the Middlebury College Media Collection.
Throughout the summer, the students will be able to attend a number of lectures, given by a variety of experts in several fields of Lusophone culture. For more information on these lectures, click on "Lectures and Lecturers."
Aside from the more formal lectures, the Portuguese School has special events to provide cultural background to anchor language learning.
On Saturday, June 25 in the afternoon, students hosted Mestre Beck, of the Capoeira Volta ao Mundo, from Portland Maine. Mestre Beck described the history of Capoeira, and demonstrated some of the game.
After Mestre Beck demonstrated all the instruments and taught us how to play each one of them, he put together a Bateria for the School.
On June 25, the school celebrated its annual "Festa Junina" with a round of the traditional Quadrilha.
You will find more pictures of our Festa Junina here.
On Saturday, July 2, we celebrated Carnaval, with a costume party.
To see more pictures from Carnaval, click here.
We also offer a variety of athletic activities in which the students can participate, particularly the volleyball and soccer games which we play against the other language schools. To read more about these games, click on "Sports."
On Sunday, July 3, we had a visit by another Capoeira master, Deraldo Ferreira, from the Brazilian Cultural Center of New England. He taught the students a different form of Capoeira - Capoeira Angola.
One of the primary goals of the Middlebury Language Schools is to immerse the students not only in the language, but also in the culture of the respective countries being studied. Among other things, students in the Portuguese school learn to dance samba, to sing traditional songs in Portuguese, and learn the movements and history of capoeira.
We were finally able to have a picnic at Lake Dunmore, after two cancellations due to rain. We needed the sun and relaxation.
Some practiced soccer moves:
Others tried their hand at a game of Peteca:
But some worked on verbs:
On Sunday, July 17, we had a special presentation by one of our invited guests, noted cookbook writer and anthropologist Cherie Hamilton. She showed a video of a cooking program on which she appeared in Brazil, as well as signed autographs for our students of the recently-released Portuguese version of her cookbook "Os Sabores da lusofonia: Encontros de culturas" (English title: "Cuisines of Portuguese Encounters").
