Spanish Language School in Antigua (Week 2)

Day 17 (July 15, 2018) - Antigua, Guatemala

We finished our second week of Spanish classes!

After my last lesson with Lhena.

Travis with his teacher, Angelica.

The second week was a bit easier than the first. Part of it may have been that I knew what to expect after already having gone through the first week. I chose to go with another teacher for the second week. We were given the option to change teachers if we wanted and I thought it would be good to learn from more than one person. Travis was getting along really well with his teacher, so he kept the same one for the second week.

This was also the week that we stayed with a host family. This was organized through the language school. During our first week we had met one of our fellow students, Noreen, who we found out was staying at the same house and she said it was wonderful, so we were looking forward to it.

The homestay experience lived up to its name. We had a small room on the first floor with a private bathroom, just outside the kitchen. René and Zincrid are musicians and their household is filled with music all the time. It was quite fun. We even saw them perform on Friday night at Las Palmas, a local salsa club. The host family also provided you with three meals a day every day of the week except Sunday. The food was excellent, and it was a great way to enjoy some home cooked meals.

In addition to language classes, the school also organized some activities in the afternoons and evenings. Almost all were free of charge and you can participate simply by taking classes with them. It was a good way to get to meet people, and also get some encouragement from other beginner students.

Field trip! On a chicken bus barreling along mountain roads with 20 Guatemalan children...

A bit unknowingly, we ended up going on a field trip with about 20 or so kids to an ecological park (the same kids that come to the language school every day for lunch). I never thought I’d be on a field trip again in my life but there we were. We all piled into a chicken bus* and drove up to the top of a mountain where there was a forest overlooking all of Guatemala City. As much as I enjoy kids, their language capacity is much more aligned with my own than an adult so they are good partners for practicing Spanish with. I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed the field trip (again… children) but if this year-long trip is all about new experiences then I will consider this field trip as one of the many times we will check that box. I also hope that was our first and our last trip on a chicken bus.

*Chicken bus: The big yellow school buses that are used in the US seem to all retire to Guatemala at the end of their life. Once in Guatemala they get a paint job, and - I sincerely hope - a tune up of some kind, and they hit the streets as Guatemala’s primary form of public transportation. I can’t imagine how many miles are on these buses as they careen up and down the mountains of Guatemala stuffed with people and packages – the roof and ladders in the back are fair game if the main compartment is full. These mountain roads are nothing to laugh at. I usually tried to avoid looking over the edge of the cliffs running alongside the road.

The chicken bus on our field trip.

The school hosts a very nice dinner on Thursday nights. There is an hour of salsa lessons beforehand, which we avoided, and then dinner starts at 7:30. There is usually a good crowd of students and teachers who attend. The mood is quite festive. They have salsa music playing throughout, serve cuba libres (rum, coke, and lime) and vodka (by which they mean vodka with orange juice), and it even opens up to karaoke after dinner. Despite our best attempts to avoid the dancing, Travis got dragged onto the dance floor by one of the teachers. My teacher for the week, Lhena, was providing the vocals for their dance.

Video of Travis dancing at the Thursday night fiesta at our Spanish school.

After two weeks of Spanish classes I still feel pretty useless, but I certainly know more than when I started. I hope to keep studying over the next few weeks. I was introduced to a lot of information, so I need to review, digest, and practice. There is also a huge difference between doing well in class and using Spanish in real life. On the last day, my teacher told me a story of a horrible earthquake that hit Guatemala City when she was a child. The story was quite tragic, but to my surprise, I was able to follow it. I didn’t understand every word, but I could understand the overall story. I felt incredibly proud of myself because she was using present, past, and future tenses in Spanish and, for the most part, I could notice my progress because there was no way I would have understood that story on the first day of class. But then on Saturday we had a huge lunch with our host family. Lunch is at 1-2 pm and the main meal of the day. The whole family was at the table and they were telling stories and singing and laughing all throughout the meal. I understood maybe five words…. Something about a basketball game, a cell phone, and about unable to find something. It made me realize how slowly my teacher had been talking to me and how she used simple, straightforward words that she articulated very clearly. Which is not how most people speak in real life… I may need about 6 more weeks of classes to get to where I’d like to be, but I’ll try to appreciate the progress I’ve made so far.

Video of our host family playing up a storm at Las Palmas salsa club. The audio from my phone doesn't really do it justice.