☑ Program Dates & Details via links in top menu
☑ Spanish Language Requirements (below, click here)
☑ Cultural Immersion Activities in Program Community (below, click here)
☑ Program Activities / Field Trips (below, click here)
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is Field Study versus Study Abroad?
What is Service Learning?
What is Ethnography?
What is Heritage?
Check Chichén & Pisté weather on weather.com
Check Time & Weather in Pisté on timeanddate.com https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@3530977
Learn the correct use of the words "Maya" and "Mayan"
Read about the History & Legacies of OSEA (download pdf)
"Legacies of the OSEA ethnography and Maya language field school (1997–2023)"
Published in Feb 27, 2025 Annals of Anthropological Practice: https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12229
Read why "Yucatec Maya" is not the name of the Maya language or the ethnic name of Maya peoples from Yucatan Peninsula
OSEA Ethnography Programs Require Spanish Proficiency
Spanish proficiency is required to be able to have the best learning and field experience possible. We accept persons based on their self-assessment and external evaluation of your Spanish Proficiency. The specific coursework you may have had in terms of extensive high school classes with or without additional college level Spanish is not as significant as these evaluations. You need to be able to have more than a little of basic communicative skills.
If your Spanish level can use a boost, please consider taking intensive Spanish courses prior to program start. You may enroll in Spanish courses at your university or online during the spring semester prior to arrival or during the break between regular semester and the OSEA ethnography program. We encourage you to consider the OSEA Intensive Spanish 7 and 12 courses. These are competitively priced especially to attract osea participants. We will focus your learning to best suit your needs within contexts of low student to teacher ratios. Typically these classes have can be as few as 1 to a maximum of 4 persons. This is ideal for you to learn. OSEA Intensive Spanish Courses
Spanish is not an eligibility requirement for the Intensive Maya Immersion Program. Immersion in Maya is more successful without code switching to Spanish. Thus, high levels of Spanish proficiency may actually impede your success without dedication to avoid using Spanish. Learning Maya is facilitated by some second language learning experience of a foreign language or even a heritage language.
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Cultural Immersion Activities in OSEA Pogram Fieldsite Community:
Dances, Communions, and Clausuras
The summer is filled with various types of cultural events and activities. For example, the nearby community of Chendzonot celebrates its patron saint day at the end of June. Many families take their homestay students to the dance or may go with other students. The first weeks of July are filled with the clausuras or graduation ceremonies for the 5-6 different kindergarten, middle school and high schools in Piste. Student are often also invited by their homestay families to go to clausuras in Valladolid. The third week of July is filled with First Communion parties. The OSEA programs end with our OSEA Clausura in which over a 100 persons from all host families and other community friends participate.
In addition, during the summer, participants join their homestay families to attend the parties of their extended family or friends. These "private" events are to celebrate birthdays, weddings, and novenas, whether for saints or on occassion of anniversaries of the passing away of loved ones. Even if your family is not invited, you can also be invited based on the social network that you create to conduct your research. Piste persons are warm, open, and love intercultural exchange-- many persons will invite you to attend their party if you seek to initiate a friendship with them. In short, the ritual calendar of the summer can be quite exhaustive!
In 2016 we initiated a tradition to go as a group to swim at Yokdzonot Cenote on the Saturday morning after the OSEA Clausura. In order to participate in this, we recommend that you schedule your return flight to the Sunday after the program end date.
Educational Excursions and Culture Field Trips
Training programs include educational trips to nearby cultural, educational and tourism sites of attraction. There is a group trip to Chichen Itza the first weekend of the program. The nearby community of Chendzonot celebrates its patron saint day at the end of June. Field trips can also include Yokdzonot Cenote, Yaxunah ruins, Yaxuna pueblo. The Seven week program typically includes a full day trip to the Pink Flamingos and salt baths at Rio Lagartos, Tihosuco and the Caste War Ruta de las Iglesias, Ek Balam, or Izamal.
Students often travel with their families or with other students for half day trips to Valladolid. As well, students may also decide to travel to nearby communities, such as Dzitas, San Francisco, Xocenpich, Kaua, or Yaxcaba, to conduct interviews or observations for their specific research project. Group trips, but not individual travel, are covered by program costs and specific trips can vary each year to take advantage of learning opportunities.
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Learn About Previous OSEA Field School Programs
Who Should Consider OSEA Programs?
We are looking for highly motivated, creative, and flexible persons with a variety of skills, experience, training, and interest.
Successful participants in OSEA Ethnographic Training Programs are persons who study or have significant experience in cultural anthropology, photography, video, visual anthropology, theatre arts, staging design, installation, invisible theatre, performance art, studio art, Maya cultures, México and Latin America, Indigenous peoples, history, ethnohistory, art history, epigraphy, archeology, cultural studies, writing, journalism, tourism, museum studies, ESL, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, anthropology of education and the anthropology of art, medical anthropology.
Our programs are appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of all levels as well as persons who have just completed a degree and seek additional fieldwork experience and training before continuing on to a graduate degree program or to a professional position
Training with OSEA provides you tools, experiences, understandings & methods on which you will continue to rely long into the future
The OSEA experience will make a difference in your life
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