School Daze

Xela, Guatemala

One week gone, one to go...

Spanish language school has been pretty intense but worth it.  We have almost adapted to our new schedule, and we like our instructors very much - Ana for me and Carlos for Susanne.



Home

School

Our host family (Berenice, a single mom, and her two children) provide our room and board, including 3 meals a day (except for Sunday).  Each day begins with breakfast, ready for us by 7:30AM.  Then we walk the 3 blocks or so to the ICA school, where our lessons begin promptly at 8AM.  The instruction is one on one, just you and your instructor in a small room, facing each other across a small desk.  We get a break from 10:30 until 11, then back to the classroom for another 2 hours.  Our lessons are over for the day at 1PM, except for any homework that the instructor might suggest.

After school, we walk back to Berenice's home, where lunch, the largest meal of the day, is usually ready and waiting for us when we walk in.  The afternoon is supposedly ours but the school offers some sort of optional activity each day, usually starting around 3PM.  One day we took a walking tour of the city.  On another, we took a tour of the local cemetery (not quite as strange as that might sound).  On Thursday, we went to a viewing of a movie at the school - a fictional account of a small village during the time of the revolution.  Between these activities and some further exploring around the town, our time is filled until Berenice serves a light supper at 7:30PM.  We try to fit some studying into each day before we collapse into bed around 10PM, with dreams of verb conjugations to keep us company until we awake to repeat the whole sequence again the next day.



Rent-a-crypt

So far, we have seen a lot of the city.  We have been to all 3 of the major markets, as well as the upscale mall at Centro Commercial, with a Walmart as the anchor store.  We are really enjoying this town and are very glad we chose it for our studies.  It seems to be a much more laid-back place than Guatemala City, and certainly less touristy than Antigua.  Not many people here speak English, so it forces us to try and interact in Spanish, in spite of the fact that we still don't seem to have a real handle on the language.  By next week I am sure we will be speaking like natives!

School is only 5 days a week, from Monday thru Friday, so the weekend is all ours.  We probably should be studying, but that would not be any fun at all.  Yesterday afternoon, Friday, after lunch we wandered down to the Parque Central where we listened to a band and just sat around soaking up the festive atmosphere.  Strangely enough, we met someone we knew, Arturo, our friend and tour guide from Chiapas in Mexico, here in town for a cultural and touristic exhibition - what are the odds?

This morning, we met Arturo for breakfast at an upscale coffee shop near the central park, then spent the day doing some hiking to the outskirts of the town to get a view, listening to some marching bands around the park, studying some Spanish in the comfort of a coffee shop, and ended the day with a meal at an incredibly good Indian restaurant (Naan bread and curry dishes like we hadn't seen in a long time).  Tomorrow will probably be more of the same.

 

The combination of a 3-day cultural festival going on, plus the celebrations surrounding Mother's day (a very big deal here in Guatemala), have made for a very lively time around Xela.

Nice but pollution is a bit of a problem