Antigua

We quickly found a good double room at a cheap hostel. Just minutes later a guide started talking to us and we asked him if he knew any good Spanish schools. Tired as hell after the never ending bus trip we still decided to follow him to the school. We met the owner and it sounded good so we bought it… One lesson learned. Never do business early in the morning.

Why? The man who runs the place lies probably more in one day than Pinocchio does in a year. For example we paid for 40 hours of Spanish lessons but the day after it turns out we will only get 34 hours because of pauses that apparently was included in the 40 hours… After arguing with him he says “I forgot to tell you…” Apparently he’s done the same to other students but we will get our 40 hours after having argued with him about it.

We have now studied Spanish here for five days. Almost fluent now. Our teachers are great! Mine has never heard of Google and neither of them has been outside Guatemala. My teacher doesn’t speak any English so I’m literally forced to learn Spanish.

We are living with a Guatemalan family together with some other students. One happy old man from Texas that loves the cerveza, sings every dinner and loves the expression "Ya man". There’s also a guy in our age from Nottingham staying here, also travelling down to South America.

And what else? Yeah, we have tried salsa. It takes a lot of cervezas or tequilas to even think you can do it.

Now we have finished our week of intensive Spanish studies and to catch up the 5-6 hours that was lost in breaks but he forgot to tell us about we had to do 7 hours on Saturday and Sunday and unfortunately we also had to change teachers since our teacher refused to work during the weekend since they probably wouldn’t get paid. So Steffi got a good teacher again but I (Chris) ended up with something not as good. Not only did she have zero patience and very bad English (my Spanish is not as good as Steffi’s so when I asked about a word in English she just said “si, si” even when I knew that it was completely wrong.)
She also had 4 breasts 2 in front and 2 in back and was telling me that her entire paycheck went to trying to feed her 3 kids. (She actually sounded like that was a good thing.)

I managed to get most of the important grammar out of her though, so now I can at least try to have a conversation with someone in Spanish. It might take me awhile before I get the verb right but it’ll get there. =)

Some of you might be wondering what happened to Honduras since according to our plan that’s where we are supposed to be right now.
Unfortunately the old president has returned to Honduras and after he urged all of his followers to join him in a demonstration in the capital the ruling government decided that it was best to close the ports, airports and also the border at some crossings. This meant that we probably could not go diving on Utila or Roatan in Honduras so we decided to skip the whole country (Except when we have to pass through a small part going from El Salvador to Nicaragua.)

We still have to go back to these wonderful countries one day, since every day we discover something new that we would like to see or experience. There is so much more than one could ever imagine when looking at pictures or reading guide books.

This ended up being a really long post but now we are off to Nicaragua by bus and just stopping for a night in San Salvador to stretch our legs. As Lonely Planet beautifully expressed it San Salvador is like when you're telling a woman she's got a nice personality. Not that beautiful =)

Buenas Nachos amigos!

Stefanita y Christóbal

written by  Steffi & Chris on October 12, 2009 from Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
from the travel blog: 212 days
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