Bruzonic is a preschool Spanish teacher and author of the recently published “Espanol con Cindi y sus Amigos.” She has also traveled extensively through Latin America and Spain.
How did you get into traveling?
After my senior year of high school, I went to Mexico with my mother on a Northern Virginia Community College study abroad. The next summer I was in Costa Rica, and then I went to Spain for a semester and then Guatemala for a summer, and ended up living in the Dominican Republic for about eight months. More than anything, I wanted to be traveling … and seeing new things.
You switched from teaching high schoolers to preschoolers. Why?
I married a Bolivian, and we went to Bolivia, and actually what spurred everything was our plane crashed in Trinidad, Bolivia. We met here, but we were going to visit family, and our plane crashed, and I said, ‘You know what, life’s too short – I gotta get out of this.’ I taught high school for six years, and I guess I was never really happy with the older kids. Not that I didn’t like it, or we didn’t have a good rapport, I’ve just always been good with small children, and I enjoy it more.
What happened?
The plane ran out of gas. My husband’s from the Amazon, a super-small city, and it was raining really bad that day. We circled the place, and that was I think scarier than crashing – turning so sharply to turn around and try to land again. I was freaking out. Probably 30 minutes into the ride, the engines … no sound. Just ‘click.’ Everything just shut off. We just kind of coasted down and crashed in Trinidad.
Was it on land?
It was in a swamp, so it was like, three feet of water. Me and my husband – we’re tall, so we were OK. We were, I don’t know, midthigh-deep, but walking out. Most people were … up to their chest in water.
— David Sherfinski
