The WCHS Spanish Honors Society is a group of accomplished Spanish students who come together to celebrate Spanish culture and host events to bring the community together. On February 22, the group did just that, hosting a potluck at lunch to highlight various Spanish foods. Students gathered together in the back of the cafeteria, each bringing their own homemade dish.
“I brought guacamole to the potluck,” WCHS junior and Spanish Honors Society member Gabby Mariam said. “I made it the night before with my mom and it was super fun to learn the recipe and how my mom has always made it growing up.”
A group of students packed the room and gathered to enjoy their time together eating and discussing the various foods that everyone brought from home. A lot of students were able to try new Spanish foods and others were able to introduce their friends to the food they made, giving everyone new experiences and a greater appreciation of their culture.
“I love alfajores, but a lot of my friends had never tried them,” WCHS junior Natalia Caetano said. “It was really fun to show them to my friends and see what they thought about them cause I’ve been eating them for a long time.”
Although the Spanish Honors Society does not specifically do potlucks often, they do a lot of different events every once in a while to celebrate the culture and bring the group together. They often have meetings as a way to raise and bring interest to speaking Spanish and the Spanish culture.
“We’ve done a lot of similar events like this potluck,” Mariam said. “We had Noche Latina at the beginning of the year where everyone made posters for different Spanish speaking countries and brought things like food and toys from the country for everyone to enjoy. It was really cool to see and try everything from different countries, just like we did at the potluck.
The potluck event was designed to be a celebration of culture so there were also decorations and Latin music playing throughout the whole event. Students danced and enjoyed the decorations as they mingled, ate different food, and talked about what Spanish culture means to them.
“I think my favorite part was just getting the group together,” Caetano said. “It’s always fun because a lot of my friends are in the Spanish Honors Society so we’re all able to hang out for a little and celebrate and talk about Spanish culture.”
Even though these kinds of events during school are relatively casual, they have a much deeper meaning and purpose to them. The Spanish Honors Society’s goal has always been to get students interested in the Spanish language and get them to take the class and learn about it and these events hope to do just that.
“We do these kinds of things to celebrate the culture but we are also trying to get other students interested in Spanish,” Mariam said. “We want students to see us doing things like the Potluck and come to events like Noche Latina and want to learn more about Spanish. We want them to sign up for Spanish or continue to sign up so that the language and culture will continue to spread.”
