Studying Spanish in Xela
I've spent the last two weeks or so here in Guatemala, in the city of Xela (prounounced SHAY-la, also known as Quetzaltenango), mostly studying Spanish. The price for classes is absurdly cheap by US standards. I'm getting about 25 hours of one-on-one instruction with college educated teachers, plus 7 days of full room and board with a local family, all for $155 per week. And there are schools that charge even less. I've been very happy with my teachers, although I've heard a few complaints about some of the others at the school, and at other schools as well.
For the most part I like Xela. Although it is in the tropics, it is at a pretty high altitude, and it is rather cold in the mornings and at night, though it usually warms up nicely in the afternoon. It is a large enough city that you can find just about everything, and there are lots of interesting things to see and do within easy biking (or bussing) distance of town. The biggest downsides in my opinion are that it is polluted (lots of smog) and there are a whole bunch of foreigners in town studying, volunteering, etc., which means it is a bit too easy to hang out with other English speakers, when I should be trying to immerse myself in Spanish.
Still, I think the classes have been pretty useful, and I feel my Spanish is coming along pretty well. I'm finally at the point now where I can pretty much understand everything people are saying without having to think about it much (at least when I'm conversing one-on-one with them), although I still have quite a way to go before I'll be able to speak fluently.
I've also been very happy with the family I'm staying with. They have 3 children, and there is often also a cousin or two about. They are all very nice and friendly, and the food has been great. The last couple of weeks, another student from the US has also been staying with them, although he is leaving today, so I think I'll be on my own for the next week. We have talked to various other students from our school and others, and it seems like we got pretty lucky. Our family seems to be much better off financially than most (the father is a bank manager), and so we tend to get more variety in our food, and our house is nicer than most. Many of the other students don't get much more than staples like rice, beans, tortillas, white bread, and eggs. A couple I've talked to don't even have hot water for showers. We get a nice variety of foods, including various meats and fresh fruits, and even got chocolate pancakes for breakfast the other day.
Outside of classes, I've been exploring the city and the surrounding areas, by foot, bike, and bus on the weekends and afternoons. The school also organizes various trips to sites around the city, to nearby villages, beaches, hiking trips, etc. I've been doing some of those, but much of the time I prefer wandering on my own (or with one or two others) instead of in a big group of gringos, as the experience is quite different.
For example, last weekend to celebrate my birthday I rode my bike up to las Fuentes Georginas, some hotsprings not too far from town. It was a beautiful ride through the hills and farmland, vistas of volcanoes and small fields covering the valleys and hill sides. I slowly rode up through the rough, cobbled streets of the village of Zunil, and most of the people I passed greeted me with smiles and a "buenas tardes", and a couple even stopped me to talk for a few minutes. A few days later, I returned to the same village to visit the church and see the figure of San Simon (a manequin "saint" dressed in sunglasses and a weird melange of western clothing, who the locals pray to and ask for favors, leaving color-coded candles, and offerings of liquor and tobacco) with the school, and most of the people just ignored the largish group of gringos wandering through their village.
I also went to a football (soccer) game last weekend, an interesting experience. I'm usually not that into watching sports, but I enjoyed it. Probably because the crowd was as interesting to watch (and listen too) as the game. There were fireworks, and the crowd was very animated, singing, chanting, drumming, and offering obscenity-laden commentary on just about every play. It also helped that my companion for the day, a young american women, was into football and could provide some of her own commentary on the game. Earlier in the afternoon, we had wandered away from the tourist laden center out to the large market, agreeing to speak only in Spanish. We wandered through the huge number of small stalls which were selling anything and everything, sampled a variey of bananas of various types and sizes, and she bought a soccer jersey for the local team, the Super Chivos (super goats), before we wandered back into town to the staduim.
On Wednesday, a group of us headed out to one of the clubs to take advantage of a free salsa lesson. In reality, it was more of a salsa demonstration, a few instructors showing some of the basic moves, and the crowd (mostly foreigners) packing the dance floor trying to follow along. Still, I managed to pick up a bit, and danced for a while. Later, four of us wandered to another club, where we were the only gringos. After a ordering a round of drinks, we headed out onto the dance floor, and were soon joined by a couple of local guys. Actually, a group just about doubled the number of females in the place, since it was mostly packed with guys drinking hard liquor. After a while, we headed to another place close by, this one had a huge dance floor and stage, but was almost completely empty, with maybe two couples sitting at tables, and no one on the dance floor until we arrived. The girls requested various songs and even danced on the stage a bit. We ended the night at a small restaurant with a couple of tacos each.
The next afternoon, three of us from the previous night did an afternoon bicycle ride. They rented bikes for the day and we headed out of town towards the base of the volcano, passing through a small village to a nice viewpoint of the peak and down into a village in the valley below. I spent several minutes talking to a fellow hanging out waiting for a friend, and he told me various facts about the surrounding countryside, including some of his finds of interesting volcanic rocks in the local caves.
Yesterday, I headed out on excursion to Chicabal, a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano. It was a bit of a climb, and I was feeling the altitude, but there was a great vista at the top, a view down into the lake on one side, and a view of volcanoes on the other. We even got to witness a minor eruption, the smaller volcano belching out a smallish cloud of ash. Then we hiked down to the lake, which is sacred to the Maya, and there were several groups performing ceremonies. The beach was littered with volcanic rock, so light weight that it floated when we tossed several pieces into the lake.
Currently I'm planning to take one more week of classes with the school, then take a break to review and study on my own for a week or two, maybe here in Xela, maybe somewhere else. After that, I'm not sure, but I might study at a school for another week or two before I get back on the road to start exploring Central America.
For the most part I like Xela. Although it is in the tropics, it is at a pretty high altitude, and it is rather cold in the mornings and at night, though it usually warms up nicely in the afternoon. It is a large enough city that you can find just about everything, and there are lots of interesting things to see and do within easy biking (or bussing) distance of town. The biggest downsides in my opinion are that it is polluted (lots of smog) and there are a whole bunch of foreigners in town studying, volunteering, etc., which means it is a bit too easy to hang out with other English speakers, when I should be trying to immerse myself in Spanish.
Still, I think the classes have been pretty useful, and I feel my Spanish is coming along pretty well. I'm finally at the point now where I can pretty much understand everything people are saying without having to think about it much (at least when I'm conversing one-on-one with them), although I still have quite a way to go before I'll be able to speak fluently.
I've also been very happy with the family I'm staying with. They have 3 children, and there is often also a cousin or two about. They are all very nice and friendly, and the food has been great. The last couple of weeks, another student from the US has also been staying with them, although he is leaving today, so I think I'll be on my own for the next week. We have talked to various other students from our school and others, and it seems like we got pretty lucky. Our family seems to be much better off financially than most (the father is a bank manager), and so we tend to get more variety in our food, and our house is nicer than most. Many of the other students don't get much more than staples like rice, beans, tortillas, white bread, and eggs. A couple I've talked to don't even have hot water for showers. We get a nice variety of foods, including various meats and fresh fruits, and even got chocolate pancakes for breakfast the other day.
Outside of classes, I've been exploring the city and the surrounding areas, by foot, bike, and bus on the weekends and afternoons. The school also organizes various trips to sites around the city, to nearby villages, beaches, hiking trips, etc. I've been doing some of those, but much of the time I prefer wandering on my own (or with one or two others) instead of in a big group of gringos, as the experience is quite different.
For example, last weekend to celebrate my birthday I rode my bike up to las Fuentes Georginas, some hotsprings not too far from town. It was a beautiful ride through the hills and farmland, vistas of volcanoes and small fields covering the valleys and hill sides. I slowly rode up through the rough, cobbled streets of the village of Zunil, and most of the people I passed greeted me with smiles and a "buenas tardes", and a couple even stopped me to talk for a few minutes. A few days later, I returned to the same village to visit the church and see the figure of San Simon (a manequin "saint" dressed in sunglasses and a weird melange of western clothing, who the locals pray to and ask for favors, leaving color-coded candles, and offerings of liquor and tobacco) with the school, and most of the people just ignored the largish group of gringos wandering through their village.
I also went to a football (soccer) game last weekend, an interesting experience. I'm usually not that into watching sports, but I enjoyed it. Probably because the crowd was as interesting to watch (and listen too) as the game. There were fireworks, and the crowd was very animated, singing, chanting, drumming, and offering obscenity-laden commentary on just about every play. It also helped that my companion for the day, a young american women, was into football and could provide some of her own commentary on the game. Earlier in the afternoon, we had wandered away from the tourist laden center out to the large market, agreeing to speak only in Spanish. We wandered through the huge number of small stalls which were selling anything and everything, sampled a variey of bananas of various types and sizes, and she bought a soccer jersey for the local team, the Super Chivos (super goats), before we wandered back into town to the staduim.
On Wednesday, a group of us headed out to one of the clubs to take advantage of a free salsa lesson. In reality, it was more of a salsa demonstration, a few instructors showing some of the basic moves, and the crowd (mostly foreigners) packing the dance floor trying to follow along. Still, I managed to pick up a bit, and danced for a while. Later, four of us wandered to another club, where we were the only gringos. After a ordering a round of drinks, we headed out onto the dance floor, and were soon joined by a couple of local guys. Actually, a group just about doubled the number of females in the place, since it was mostly packed with guys drinking hard liquor. After a while, we headed to another place close by, this one had a huge dance floor and stage, but was almost completely empty, with maybe two couples sitting at tables, and no one on the dance floor until we arrived. The girls requested various songs and even danced on the stage a bit. We ended the night at a small restaurant with a couple of tacos each.
The next afternoon, three of us from the previous night did an afternoon bicycle ride. They rented bikes for the day and we headed out of town towards the base of the volcano, passing through a small village to a nice viewpoint of the peak and down into a village in the valley below. I spent several minutes talking to a fellow hanging out waiting for a friend, and he told me various facts about the surrounding countryside, including some of his finds of interesting volcanic rocks in the local caves.
Yesterday, I headed out on excursion to Chicabal, a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano. It was a bit of a climb, and I was feeling the altitude, but there was a great vista at the top, a view down into the lake on one side, and a view of volcanoes on the other. We even got to witness a minor eruption, the smaller volcano belching out a smallish cloud of ash. Then we hiked down to the lake, which is sacred to the Maya, and there were several groups performing ceremonies. The beach was littered with volcanic rock, so light weight that it floated when we tossed several pieces into the lake.
Currently I'm planning to take one more week of classes with the school, then take a break to review and study on my own for a week or two, maybe here in Xela, maybe somewhere else. After that, I'm not sure, but I might study at a school for another week or two before I get back on the road to start exploring Central America.
posted by Matt at 19:12
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