Days 63 to 67 - Monday 21st November 2005 to Friday 25th November 2005

I had signed up for a week of Spanish lessons with the Eco-Escuela in the village of San Andres on the Lake Peten Itza, and Monday was the start of the classes. Each morning from 8am I had 4 hours of one-on-one tuition, then I had the afternoon to myself to do with as I pleased. During the week I stayed with a Guatemalan family, who fed and watered me. I had chosen San Andres to study as it is a small village where there are very few people who speak English, hence I would have to speak Spanish for the majority of the time if I wanted to communicate with anyone.

Monday morning came around I turned up ready to learn some Español. The dude who had been assigned the omious task of trying to teach me began speaking and assessing how much I knew and what I needed to learn. After this and a quick written test, he told me that we were going to be concentrating on my grammar.

Thus I spent the majority of the remainder of the week learning how to conjugate verbs within the past and present tenses. This doesn’t sound like much, but after learning the basic form in which to conjugate verbs into the various tenses, there are irregualr verbs that don’t fit the normal pattern and these have to be learned separately.

In Spanish there is also the matter of the verb ‘to be’. The verb to be is separted into two forms, ser and estar. Each form has its distinct format for use. Basically the form ’ser’ expresses permenant aspects of people, places and things, whilst the form ‘estar’ expresses temporary aspects of people, places and things. This works in general but I found it a bit confusing trying to work out what things are considered permanent and what things are considered temporary.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of things, my teacher threw a spanner into the works. Similarly to English, there is more than one expression when you are talking about things in the past. The simplest example I can think of at the moment is when you were talking to someone in the past.. In English you can say ‘I was speaking to him’, or ‘I spoke to him’ or ‘I have spoken to him’. In Spanish there are the also numerous ways to say the same thing, depending on when you were doing the action and how often you did it. One form of past tense is when you did the action one time. Another is when you performed the action over a period of time, or time is not expressed. Anyway I don’t think I’m doing a great job of explaining but I spent the week learning when to apply the various forms of the past tense and for what reason.

Interspersed with the learning of the various forms of verbs, there was a lot of conversational practise. I think this is where I improved a lot during the week, as my comprehension and understanding of what was being said to me grew as the week progressed. By the end of the week I was able to pick up the individual words in the sentences people were saying.

By Friday I was glad the classes were over, my head wasn’t really taking much in and I needed some time to reflect on what had been explained to me and what we had covered during the week. I decided midway through the week to do another week in a different school, but with a break of a week in between, to give myself time to soak up all the information.

Overall I was very pleased with the school, and the method of teaching. Everything was explained in Spanish and all my notes were written in Spanish. I also think four hours per day is enough to begin with. The first few days were pretty easy, but by the fourth day the information began to take a while to soak in and I was glad when midday came around so I was able to go over what had been covered in the morning during my own time.

As metioned above, I had the afternoons to myself. Thus from about one pm (after lunch) I was free to explore the villages of San Andres and nearby San Jose. The two villages are about 2km apart, and I found myself walking between the two most days. This wasn’t really a chore as the walk was along a deserted mud track, at the edge of the crystal clear waters of the lake. Along the way there were numerous clearings where there was the opportunity to take a quick dip, with absolutely no-one around to bother me.

Thus the majority of my time in the afternoons was spent either reading my notes from the mornings classes whilst occasionally taking time out to swim in the lake, or reading a book whilst occasionally taking time out to swim in the lake. Basically my activities revolved around the lake. And why not, after all it was there, and so was I. One afternoon I did manage to catch a game of football on the local pitch.

The villages were perched on the steep hillside at the bank of the lake, and just by walking up into the village centre, there were great views of the lake and the villages on the other side. On the Tuesday afternoon I caught a lancha across the lake back into Flores to sort out my bus for Friday evening. There was the possibility of flying to Guatemala City but in the end it worked out a bit too expensive. That was the only afternoon I didn’t swim in the lake. I was mesmerised by the crystal clear waters.

I found my favourite place was in the town of San Jose around the jetty. Here I sat and sunbathed, before getting too hot and diving back into the water. Of course when I got really hot, there was always another option. For all the people commenting on the beard - a close up for you!

Overall, a great place to spend 5 days. So great in fact, that one of the other students bought a house in the village. It cost about US$12,000, but she was an American businesswoman and loaded, so she could afford it.