Habla espanol?

The embassy community has welcomed us with open arms, bbq cookoffs at the pool, bible studies, adventure shopping, you name it - everything has been overwhelmingly accomodating. We have said that we wish that the didn't enjoy the company of the ex-pats so well, then we would reach out to our Salvadoran friends more often. Another down-side of surrounding ourselves with fellow Americans is that we are not using our Spanish as much as we should. I have been attending a language school in San Salvador for 4 hours every morning, and Chris has a daily class at the embassy. My school is named after a revolutionary El Salvadoran who was martred during the civil war. Chris calls it my "commie school". There have been a few political pitches made and he keeps joking that I am going to start wearing Che Guevera t-shirts.

After returning from the states for the holidays we decided the most effective way to learn spanish would be to go to Antigua Guatemala to study everyday at an official lanuguage school. I enrolled in Francisco Moroquin Proyecto Linguistico for four weeks of 7 hours a day of one-on-one instruction - ALL SPANISH.

The schedule was grueling, start at 8:00am sharp - study new material until 10am, break for 30 minutes to walk around town, grab something to eat, email - resume class from 10:30 to 12:00. Break for two hours - lunch and brain melt, then back from 2:00 to 5:00 to review material and participate in more interactive learning, i.e. shopping around town, playing soccer, or scrabble with the other students. Antigua is a hot spot for intensive language schools, over the past 50 years they have built a quiant little nitch in the middle of central america. There are well over 50 schools nestled into the tiny little town. My school was very nice and one of the oldest schools in Antigua. There were 52 classrooms, and each classroom consisted of a desk and two chairs. Some of the classrooms were in little wooden rooms and some were out in the garden or under the Church arc ruins among the avacado and orange trees..

I was fortunate enought to be able to stay at a near by Bed and Breakfast owned by Roberto and Beatriz Gonzales. There was only one room in the B&B and therefore it was much more like a home stay. We had breakfast every morning at 7am and occassionally lunch or dinner. Chris traveled up from San Salvador (5 to 7 hours) every weekend to visit. Let me know if you want more info on Antigua...