Week 3 & 4 and Our Last Weekend

Week 3 & 4—
Well, our time in Antigua is up! We have just finished Spanish classes today (Wednesday) and we will be leaving tomorrow the 10th for Santiago, Chile. It is a couple of days earlier than planned, but we will be able to attend the church-wide retreat they are having this weekend. The retreat will also be a great opportunity to get to know lots of people in a short time. What follows is a brief summary of our personal experiences with Spanish school for the last two weeks.

Amanda—The beginning of last week was a little difficult at first. I think I was at a different growing point in my Spanish. I am realizing more and more that my brain needs a little time to process the new concepts, and then I am able to use them in conversation. Every day, Manuel and I spend time creating examples of sentences with new verbs. Using these verbs in the context of sentences, while conversing, has proved to be the most beneficial training for me. Saturday, John and I started our 4th week. Since our flight has been changed, we needed to start our new week on Saturday. We spent 5 hours each day on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to complete the 20 hours that we needed. It has been very concentrated, but we are sure this will benefit us as we venture to Chile. For our last day, we took some pictures of our teachers. We will miss them! All four of us have become great friends.

Amanda and Manuel

John and Evelyn

John—The last two weeks have passed rather quickly due the fact that we crammed in all 20 hours this week in just 4 days, with only this past Sunday being our day off. Five hours per day in a row is a lot but we broke up our lesson time by taking longer breaks. Normally we would take 15- 20 minutes or so in the middle of our 4 hours and talk in the break room. This past week or so we actually spent more time on our break, but instead of talking to each other in English, we spent our time visiting with our teachers and each other in Spanish. This was good for me because I tried to use the new verb tenses I had covered in the morning in conversation.

We only had one day off this week because of our flight change, so we decided (or I wanted to and Amanda agreed to after I begged a lot) to take on another volcano. As we’ve mentioned before, Fernando is a guide who rents a room from our host family, and he told us there is another volcano about an hour and a half outside Antigua called “Pacaya” that is much easier and shorter than “Agua”, the volcano we hiked up after our first week of school. So Sunday morning we got up early and loaded a chicken bus with about 20 other gringos (mostly from Europe) and headed out. “Chicken Bus” is the slang term for the old school buses from the U.S. that they use here for public transportation. Pacaya is in a national park so the trail is very well maintained, and there are signs posted along the trail with additional volcano information. Pacaya is actually an active volcano, so it’s only possible to walk up to a small crater, which is just down the ridge from the actual summit. We were able to peer inside the crater but we couldn’t really see much because of the steam coming out. Overall the walk up only took about 2 hours, which included several stops along the way. The only difficult part was the last couple hundred meters leading up to the crater, which was kind of like walking up a black sand dune, very soft and loose. We had a little trouble getting clear pictures because there were clouds blowing through continuously, but we got some decent ones to share. It only took about 45 minutes to walk down, and we were back in town by 2 pm. It was fun to check out an active volcano, and of course, it was much less taxing than our previous volcano adventure.

Overlooking Southern Guatemala

View on the way off the volcano.

We couldn't pass this up...the sign reads "Warning, this is an active volcano. The National Park is not responsible for whatever accident you may suffer. For your safety, stay on the trail." Safety First!

The peak of Pacaya. It was pretty windy up there!

Thanks so much for keeping up with our Spanish school experiences. Very soon, we will be posting some final thoughts and pictures of our time here in Antigua, Guatemala. God Bless!