Sarai Ramirez
Director of Academics, Spanish Experience Center
The Academic Director of the Spanish Experience Center is one of the founding partners in the school and has over a decade of a personal experience teaching Spanish immersion to people from all over the world. For more than half that time, Maestra Sarai Ramirez has been creating, evaluating and overseeing the evolution of SEC’s curriculum.
Sarai was born in the city of Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos. The recorded history of Cuernavaca goes back more than 700 years and in pre-Hispanic times, the city’s name was Cuauhnáhuac, which translates to “next to the trees”. In those days, the name was used to describe the region’s verdant forest, a favorite retreat of the Aztec royalty. About 200 years after the Aztecs first settled in Mexico, the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés, also fell in love with the region, which by then had been renamed Cuernavaca, also known as the City of Eternal Spring, due to its climate and year round blooming flowers.
Sarai was born in the end of sixties, and lived all of her life in Cuernavaca until July of 2005, when she was offered the opportunity to create an academic program and teach Spanish at a new Spanish immersion language school in Puerto Vallarta. Since Sarai and the rest of the SEC team arrived in Puerto Vallarta, her experiences have continued to add to her understanding of not just her job, but of the great people who come to SEC to learn Spanish.
“It has been greatly rewarding to give Spanish classes to, and get to know so many great people from all around the world. The opportunity to explore and understand other ideologies, cultures and customs have made this the best job in the world and the work is never boring.”
With her degree in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language, and over five years experience teaching professionally before coming here, Sarai sculpted the academic programs offered by SEC into the entertaining, effective and relevant program it is today. Since she was a little girl, Sarai wanted to become a teacher, and in her position of Academic Director, she has become that and much, much more.
The atmosphere of Puerto Vallarta’s city life has been fully embraced by Sarai, “I like Puerto Vallarta very much. It’s streets, buildings, beautiful views of the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, it’s all lovely, and it’s so green and full of life!” The palm trees, jungle and nature of Puerto Vallarta make her appreciate living here every day. “It is a wonderful place to live, the vacationers are always so happy, and there’s so much for them to do to amuse themselves.”
Sarai’s own words best describe what teaching Spanish here in Puerto Vallarta has done for her.
“I would like to relate an experience I had as a teacher, since coming to the Spanish Experience Center: In one class, I had a student from Canada, one from the United States, one from Switzerland and one from Australia. It was as if the borders of the world were coming together in Puerto Vallarta. Here we were, the students and I, having come from all over the world, convening in a single place, and sharing a piece of our lives with each other. The experience was enriching for all of us, we learned a lot about ourselves and we became closer because of it.”
Being a teacher has allowed her to know people from as far away as New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Japan, White Horse (a very remote town in Canada), Lichtenstein, Scotland, England, Germany, Holland, Finland, Brazil, France, Italy and the list goes on. Best of all, the list will keep growing!
“One of MY favorite days ever in Puerto Vallarta is the first of June, this is the day Mexico celebrates their Navy and the men and women who serve as officers and sailors. This is an especially big occasion in Puerto Vallarta, where you might be able to actually go on a ship and speak to the Captain and crew. This is their day, and hearing Mexico’s Navy choir, each wearing their crisp, white dress uniforms, singing our Navy’s Anthem backed by an amazing philharmonic orchestra always brings me goosebumps.”
Sarai says her favorite word in Spanish is “colibrí”, which means hummingbird. “It is a very sweet word and when pronounced, it sounds like music.”
“I feel so very lucky person to have been born in Mexico, it is a wonderful country, with every climate that exists in the world, which creates Mexico’s great variety of natural landscapes. Our history is fascinating, and our people are generous of spirit, warm and loving.” Perhaps that’s why everyone greets each other with a kiss here in Puerto Vallarta.