Just a quick note to say that Spanish school is enormous fun and I would LOVE to come back for a full eight-week immersion course…I just finished my first five hours of class and I´m already at the point of being able to carry on a conversation, albeit a highly selective one, in Spanish. I hadn´t expected it to be this enjoyable–most language classes are pretty boring–but because it´s a one-on-one class, it´s more like an extended conversation than a lesson plan. She´ll teach me one or two things, then we´ll talk about some random topic in Spanish (starting with the grammatical example), and she teaches me the missing vocabulary words as I go. This is WAY fun.
The teacher is actually quite flabbergasted by how fast I´m picking it up–“Estas como una machina!”–and I´m quite pleased as well. It helps to have both French and Latin, of course–the verb conjugations and nouns are nearly identical, and the biggest problem I´m having is pronunciation–I keep reverting to French, English, or Latin pronunciations, which is muy mala. The crash course I did on the plane over has also been very helpful–even though I only got through the first two lessons.
Anyway, I feel like the world is opening up for me, and I´m a bit sorry to be bailing on Guatemala and heading off to Belize. I´ve been told that Panajachel and Lago de Atitlan (an hour or so away) are both quite touristy, and I should be able to get an English-speaking guide there. Dang. I wish I´d known.
Tomorrow I´m going to embark on the next adventure, trying to find the bus to Totonicapan, where I will meet the guy for the textiles tour. I think I´m going to spend the rest of the night brushing up on “Where is the bus terminal?” If I´m really, really, REALLY lucky…I might even understand the answer.
LOL
Tien
“¿Donde es la terminal de autobuses?”
