{"id":128,"date":"2006-07-07T13:06:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T17:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/?p=128"},"modified":"2021-01-11T19:57:57","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:57:57","slug":"a-hampden-sydney-man-in-tiajuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/2006\/07\/07\/a-hampden-sydney-man-in-tiajuana\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hampden-Sydney Man in Tiajuana"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bryan Hicks ’06<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>You can do anything with a degree from Hampden-Sydney College.\u00a0 That is only partially true; a Hampden-Sydney Man can do anything.\u00a0 Along with eleven high school students and five other adults, I spent a week in Tijuana, Mexico, at the end of last July. During this week, we built a house and a retaining wall, and we also spent two of the days working at a local orphanage.\u00a0 Working in the orphanage gave us the opportunity not only to work with the kids in the orphanage but also in the surrounding community.\u00a0 The orphanage system in Mexico greatly differs from that in the United States.\u00a0 The Mexican system runs under the one strike policy which means that if the government takes children from unfit parents, the children stay in the orphanage until they are 18.\u00a0 As a result, many parents voluntarily turn their children over to the orphanage in the hope of retrieving them when the parents’ lives become more stable.\u00a0 Although these children live in less than desirable situations, they have a tremendous spirit of hope as their lives in the orphanage are better than their lives would be in the community.<\/p>\n

My experiences on \u201cthe Hill\u201d enriched my time in Mexico.\u00a0 I took with me the Hampden-Sydney tradition of saying “Hello” to everyone you pass.\u00a0 A smile and the simple word \u201cHola\u201d go a long way in attempting to cross the language barrier.\u00a0 The other Hampden-Sydney experience that paid off in Tijuana was the numerous hours spent in Bagby Hall learning Spanish from Professor Iglesias.<\/p>\n

On our second night, we visited a local area church to participate in worship. On the way home, our van got separated from the rest of the group and we found ourselves lost in downtown Tijuana.\u00a0 I resorted to my Mesa de Espa\u00f1ol days in trying to pick out key terms in order to understand what was being said.\u00a0 Although the only directions that I could make out from the man at the gas station were, \u201cYou need to ask the taxi driver at the Chinese restaurant,\u201d we were still able to find our way back to the church where the rest of the group was waiting.<\/p>\n

It is the liberal arts education that I have received at the College which makes life outside of these gates so promising.\u00a0 An example of this promise is my brother Justin, a 2003 graduate and the youth minister of the church whose members went to Mexico.\u00a0 It is the experiences in and out of the classroom and the knowledge of broad and diverse topics that allows one to thrive in the world.\u00a0 The ability to understand the struggles people are facing because of NAFTA, the ability to communicate with those of a foreign country, and the ability to be an example of a \u201cgood man and good citizen\u201d are all things that come with studying on \u201cthe Hill.\u201d\u00a0 It is not the degree he receives that makes a Hampden-Sydney Man, it is the experiences he receives while earning that degree that prepares him for the future.<\/p>\n

July 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bryan Hicks ’06 You can do anything with a degree from Hampden-Sydney College.\u00a0 That is only partially true; a Hampden-Sydney Man can do anything.\u00a0 Along with eleven high school students and five other adults, I spent a week in Tijuana, Mexico, at the end of last July. During this week, we built a house and a retaining wall, and we also spent two of the days working at a local orphanage.\u00a0 Working in the orphanage gave us the opportunity not only to work with the kids in the orphanage but also in the surrounding community.\u00a0 The orphanage system in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32,49],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-experiences","tag-hicks","tag-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2745,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/2745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}