Most of you may already know this, but I decided earlier this year to take advantage of a relatively flexible summer by taking an adventure down south for some research. For 10 weeks I´ll be taking 1-on-1 Spanish lessons 5 days a week. Also, hopefully I´ll be able to volunteer and even possibly join a medical mission team and use my paramedic skills.
Here´s my quick soapbox: Why am I here to learn Spanish?
I have felt inspired to make this trip to ¨aprendar¨ Spanish because a) if Christ tells me to love my neighbor, I can´t very well love someone that I can´t speak with. Thus, considering that there are going to be more Spanish speaker then English speakers in the US by 2020, that´s a lot of neighbors! b) In that same vein, it will certainly be helpful from a business stance. c) I already come in to contact with many people who do not speak English in my job as a paramedic, so it will be helpful professionally. d) It is going to make visiting Spanish speaking coutnries in the future way more fun!
So what is Guatemala like you ask? Well, let me tell you.
When you fly in to Guatemala City and walk out of the airport there are dozens of people there vying (sp?) for your attention. However, compared to Thailand where the throng literally presses up against you, here it´s much more relaxed and you can make decisions in your own time. I had arranged someone to greet me with a sign with my name on it and considering the fact that I was 6 hours late, I was amazed when I saw the sign! Mui bien!
The city is not typically a tourist spot. The streets are poorly marked, the concrete is pockmarked, and there are huge metal doors lining most streets. I felt safe where I was but I can imagine it getting a bit hairy in some areas after dark. Not a lot to do during the day, but I wanted to get the lay of the land and buy a phone so I took my time and decided that my next stop would be Antigua.
¨Chicken buses¨ are the cheapest means of transportation within Latin America. I have been fascinated by them thus far for each one has a driver and a hawker/money collector. Sometimes the bus will come to a complete stop for multiple people to get on, but if there´s just one person it will just roll and the person hops on. Now if you can imagine, almost all the buses are literally old American school buses. As I read in some tourist book, this actually makes them ideal for their use here in a country where driving is a sport! They are extremely safe and extremely reliable. Did I feel reliably safe while we were weaving across 3 lanes going uphill while overtaking much smaller vehicles? Oh yeah! Cuz we´re the big dog on the road! Keeping this image of a school bus roller coaster in your mind, now add to that a reality show that turns the bus from it´s old broken down version into a Xzibit-style ¨Pimp my Chicken Bus¨version! Outragesou paint jobs, video and sound systems to show movies or pump some serious accordion, now add 3-4 adults per seat and people filling the aisles with people sitting in your lap in order to let people by, while your glasses fog up because of the humidity and you start to get the picture.After my $1 ride an hour down the road to Antigua I was met off the bus by a guy named Juan. His chipped tooth smile got bigger when I told him, ¨Me llamo Juan tambien!¨ Juan showed me the way through town and led me to an alley and through a metal door. Hmmm, you may be wondering whether you would have followed Juan. Well, you may know that I´m a tall feller, and here in the ancestral home fo the Mayans, people are quite short! So that may be a false illusion of safety, but it makes me feel better. Also, on the walk, Juan has been chatting to me about his Spanish school and his love of Antigua and how I should never leave (again, maybe a comment that you wouldn´t want to hear from someone leading you into a dark room in an alley). But once inside and after my eyes adjusted I met Mama Luvia. A sweet woman with big brown eyes and a warm smile, she and Juan ushered me upstairs to have a look at the rooms. The rooms were decoreated with multicolored fabrics and all had big beds. And in the center of the rooms was a patio where there were 6 people sitting. 2 Englishmen, 1 South Korean and 3 Guatemalan instructors, eating guacamole and drinking rum and coke! Juan suggested that I start learning Spanish immediately and after about 1 second I agreed. So for a cool $90 I had 15 hours of one on one with Jose. Jose es profesor de los idiomas por 32 anos! El habla 5 idiomas: espanol, ingles, german, japonese, y francaise! He was fantastic and gave me a great head start!
Antigua itself was wonderful! A city full of color and motion, it definitely screams, ¨Look at me!¨ Thus there is a booming tourist industry and over 75 language schools. The diversity of restaurants, shops and street stalls rivals big Western cities, though the cobble stone roads are not the most comfortable to walk on, let alone ride a tuk tuk on (still a huge American market that´s waiting to be tapped-tuk tuks, for real!).There are 3 volcanoes around Antigua and the one pictured is the one south of Antigua. Activities surrounding Antigua include salsa dancing, mountain hikes, more Spanish practice, reading-people watching in the lovely Parque de Central, finding sneaky hostel patios with awesome drink specials and general tourist debauchery (it´s quite safe a night, so intoxicated strolls are not very dangerous, but keep your eye on that tuk tuk!).
After my 3 days in Antigua and despues aprendar un poco EspaÑol, yo viajo a Xela.
I´ve been in Xela for 2 nights, but I´ll have to save late for a later date! Gracias por leer mi post! Buenos dias!
how awesome you got one-on-one spanish lessons!! love reading about your adventures
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