During her summer Field Period to Tijuana, Mexico, senior Angela Viggiani sought to experience Mexican culture and communicate with the citizens in Spanish.
She achieved those goals and then some.
A political science/history major with a double minor in pre-law and Spanish, Viggiani was nervous going into the Mexican city at first.
That’s why she and her travel companion Abby Brewer '08 took “day trips” into Tijuana, taking the trolley from San Diego to San Ysidro (just north of the Mexican border), Calif., for $1.50 before staying in the city overnight.
“We wanted to make sure that it was a safe enough place to visit and travel,” said Viggiani, whose family and friends sent her newspaper articles detailing crimes in that area of the country.
But she found the majority of the population to be “friendly.
“I got into some pretty interesting conversations and, before I knew it, had spent all day long communicating in Spanish and it was getting dark,” she said. “Someone actually came up to me and told me how grateful they were that Americans would take time out of our lives to sit down and talk with them—I was feeling the same way toward them.”
She felt so comfortable in the city that she even ventured out to experience “the nightlife.
“I noticed that many people from the United States come into Mexico for day/night trips,” said Viggiani, who also traveled to Rosarito on the Baja strip, where she “rode my first horse on the beach.”
This Field Period wasn’t Viggiani’s first to involve travel; in fact, she’s traveled three out her four Field Periods.
At the conclusion of her freshman year, she traveled to China with the women’s basketball team.
“We went to the four Keuka-China Program partner schools and played six basketball games,” said Viggiani.
Sophomore year, Viggiani conducted a Field Period with Friends of El Sol Jupiter’s Neighborhood Resource Center in Jupiter, Fla., where she “taught Mexicans, Guatemalans and Cubans how to speak English.”
Though she didn’t travel far for her final Field Period (after Mexico), the aspiring lawyer and Kent, N.Y., resident garnered plenty of career-related experience working with Orleans County District Attorney Joe Cardone.
“I attended all the night and day courts, wrote plea slips and even helped out on an appeal,” said Viggiani.
Before she begins law school in the fall, Viggiani hopes to make another international trip—this time to South America “for a few months.”
-- Tanya Cornell-Kestler
