For anyone who doesn´t know, CELAS Maya is one of probably about 20 schools in Xela that cater to foreigners who wish to learn Spanish. The program is pretty sweet; for the incredibly low price of $165/week, you are housed with a host family, who provides three meals a day, Monday through Saturday, as well as one-on-one instruction with your own maestro. It is a pretty good deal for anyone, but it is perfect for me, as so much of what I want to do is just to re-learn everything I forgot from four semesters of Spanish in college. So I´m here for four weeks, to attempt to recover my lost Spanish (I´ve been describing it as though my head is a big box into which someone just threw all the Spanish rules and grammar and vocabulary, and now we are taking four weeks to reorganize the trunk!).
Don´t let the outside of the school fool you. It is pretty incredible inside. The center of the school is a beautiful open-air courtyard with lots of trees and flowers. Around the edges are the tables where the students and teachers study. I´ve found that this indoor-outdoor combination is pretty common here, which is very interesting, considering all the rain that we have here.
Right now, there are about 40 students studying in the morning, and another 8 or so in the afternoon. But this changes every week, as everyone comes here on their own schedules, and for their own periods of time. There are adjoining rooms for conferences and other students. As much as I like the main yard, I think I prefer these other areas, because they are less crowded and there are fewer interruptions. Fortunately, I´ve been studying in one of them for the last week.
My instructor for this week (the school recommends changing instructors each week, to learn different accents and to get experience with different styles of learning) is Loyola. She is a very nice and thoughtful instructor. Her first language is actually Q´uiche, which is a Mayan language, but she is fluent in Spanish, and she knows English as well (which is not a requirement). She is very religious (one of her nephews is also studying to be a priest), and we have discussed Catholicism and Christianity, the ancient Mayan religion, some philosophy, ecumenism, and a host of other topics that appear to be of mutual interest to us. I have requested her again for next week, because personally I think that one week is too short for a bounded period (right, Jason? Dave? Maria?).
Abb, if you ever get tired of Milford, now you´ve got another option.
The school is attached to an internet cafe. The cafe serves coffee, cappuccino, sodas, and snacks, and currently is playing Jason Mraz, which just seems like the ultimate appropriate music for any sort of pseudo-hip coffee bar. This is where I have done my blogging, and my few emails. As a student, you are given five free hours from Monday-Friday, but the cost on the weekends and overage during the week is negligable (I´m never sure about the exchange rate, but I think it works out to something like 12 cents an hour). Really, my computer time is limited more by the homework. (Of course, when Loyola asked me if I wanted a little or a lot of homework, I did tell her I wanted a lot, so I suppose that means I asked for it.) But the cafe is handy for us all. (You can also connect via WiFi for free.. I love my iPhone!)
The school also has loads of activities planned for students. This week, there was a tour of the historical part of the city, an afternoon trip to some local natural hot springs, a trip to a local cooperative where local women sell their wares, salsa lessons (dancing, not the kind of salsa I´d be most interested in learning about), a trip to tour a chocoleria, a night-time movie, and a graduation party. The hardest thing to do is to distinguish between the events you really want to go to (because of course, you want to go to them all.. maybe not the salsa one), because the purpose of being down here is, after all, to study. I passed on a multi-day trip this weekend to Semuq Champey, which is supposed to be the most beautiful place in all of Guatemala, first because it would have required missing class on Friday and next Monday, and second, because I am planning on going on the midnight hike up the Santa Maria volcano tonight. So as you can see, you will not be bored when coming here.
One last note. As you can see, I have now purchased an SD-card reader to transfer photos from the camera, so hopefully now there´ll be better images to look at (no improvement on the commentary, I´m afraid). I think I spent about $7 on the device. Either that or $700. It´s difficult to figure out. But now I find that I do have another problem... apparently, Dad, I take after you in my ability (or lack thereof) to take a straight photo without leaning. Ah well!
The school is so beautiful! What a lovely place to spend several hours a day.
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