Yesterday was my last day of Spanish school in Antigua (for now), and I realised that I haven’t written much about how it works. Every morning for the last four weeks, after a quick breakfast, I walked along the cobblestone streets for a bit less than half an hour to reach the garden. My teacher was always there before me with the table set up. We had two hours of lessons before the break, but we could easily take up half of that chatting about poor service at banks, his views on feminism, cooking, music or Marvel films. It was usually listening practice for me, which was really useful, but I got some opportunities to discover how many words I don’t know how to say.
The lessons were entirely on verb conjugation (present, future, past, imperfect, indirect, conditional), which was frustrating. I know from learning languages in the past that I can get my message across with a base vocabulary and that once I’m having real conversations, I pick up the correct conjugations by osmosis. Here, I felt I was spending far too much time on the conjugations and finding that I don’t know enough words to get my message across so knowing the conjugations didn’t get me far.
I was going to give this feedback to the school, but then realised that I can learn vocabulary on my own, and really need a teacher to understand the conjugations, so I’m taking the next week off for self-learning while I explore the towns around Lake Atitlan.
The students all gathered in groups during the break to eat cheap tostadas, prepared by a local family, and to give our minds a break. The second, shorter session, consisted of more chatting, more conjugations and usually finished up with an activity to stop me falling asleep. My teacher had had me reading flash cards, playing scrabble in Spanish, practicing addition while playing Uno, and transcribing a Spanish song. By the time noon came around, I was ready for the walk home to have lunch.
We threw the usual schedule out the window yesterday and he took me to Earth Lodge, up in the hills above Antigua. Riding pinion without a helmet on his motorbike over the cobblestones was more than a bit frightening, but we got to the Lodge and enjoyed a couple of hours playing on their slack line, lying in hammocks and drinking their home made lemonade. There was nothing particularly cultural about the place, but it was in a beautiful setting overlooking Antigua and it gave us a chance to chat without the threat of conjugations hanging over me.
I learnt that he and his wife have two children and two parents living with them in a fifty square metre space. I already knew that he was happier now earning only a small wage than he’d been working at an international company earning lots but never having time to enjoy it, but I didn’t know that he had plans to extend. I learnt that he had another student in the afternoon. I have many more questions about his life, but I’ll need to come back when I’ve expanded my vocabulary.