Latin American Style
Our forays into learning Spanish now have spanned over 5 years, but only 4 weeks each year, 4 hours per day for 5 day weeks. The rest of the year we don’t speak a word of Spanish! Not really the way if one is serious about learning a new language!
The serious students stay with local families who don’t speak any English and do courses more often. We stay in Hotels or apartments and converse with locals wherever and whenever we can but we are not serious aficionados. And we don’t find it easy!
We started our journey with Spanish in Buenos Aires after we read Timothy Ferris’s book “The Four Hour Workweek.” Probably not a good place to start because they pronounce the double ll and the y as a sh sound which is different all other Latin countries. Also it was not one of our better schools.There are over 50 Spanish Schools in Buenos Aires and you just need to check out the recommendations for them before you decide. It was very hot in December/ January. Barbara lost both her wallet and camera in different incidents in the massive city.
We were in Cuenca, Ecuador for 6 weeks and the climate was spring like perfect. The school was Simon Bolivar Spanish School. It was excellent and we still maintain contact with our teacher, Lucia. We stayed in a small hotel just beside the school which cost about $30 NZ per night. Ecuador is a delightful place and cheap. They use the US dollar as currency. A lunch of soup, a main of rice, vegetables and chicken and a desert of fresh fruit would cost US $2.00. While there we had out teeth done, visited the Galapagos Islands and spent time at a travel writing course at Cotacachi.
Habla Ya Spanish School in Boquete, Panama was our next stint with Spanish. A small town again in the mountains with spring like climate. We stayed about 15 minutes walk away in a place called Valle Escondido. (Hidden Valley) A spectacular place with gym, spa, indoor swimming pool, sauna, restaurant, golf course. Cost about NZ $85.00 a night but it was great.
We did Puerto Escondido (Hidden Port) Mexico the next year at a school called ILPE (Instituto Linguajes Puerto Escondido. Great place for surfing. They have the Mexican Pipeline, one of the great surfing places in the world. We stayed in a hotel only 3 minutes walk from the school, The Arco Iris, an excellent spot with a huge number or Canadian and American visitors who come back every year. Right on the beach and pretty warm but lots of restaurants right on the sand!
This year we spent 4 weeks at IIC, Instituto Intercultural del Caribe here in Sosua, Dominican Republic. It is a couple of minutes walk from a beautiful beach. We are staying in an apartment in Club Residential about 10 minutes walk from school on Pedro Clisante. Dozens and dozens of restaurants here as well.
This year we have booked into Spanish school in Tenerife with Don Quijote in The Canary Islands before putting our Spanish to use in Espana!
Many of the schools concentrate on teaching you grammar rules. I point out to them at every school that babies do not learn to speak and understand a new language by learning grammar! They learn by imitation. We are like babies! BUT they take no notice! Learning should be fun and interesting and exciting BUT no, that is not what they do!
Even the cooking lesson had no Spanish!!!