antigua spanish school

In the last 5 months, I have spent 7 weeks in Antigua, Guatemala at the Christian Spanish Academy (CSA).

To give you an idea of what they looked chunk of time looked like, here is my general schedule:

7am - Breakfast
7:30am - Check email at school
8am - Class begins with my maestra Victoria
Noon - Break for lunch
2pm - Return to school

4pm - Finish class for the day, head to the gym

6pm - Get home, do some spanish homework
7pm - Dinner
8pm - More homework and whatever else I want to do...

Yep, it's a pretty full day with lots of class time and then lots of extra spanish speaking time after class. which is awesome and oh so tiring. But I really feel I learned a lot in a short amount of time, so I definitely recommend my program highly.

On both visits, I stayed with the Romero family--Hector, Sandra, Diego & Sofia. They are an amazing family that always made me feel totally at home and helped a lot with my Spanish.

On my first trip to CSA, I was super focused on my Spanish and purposely kept to myself--not thinking I had time for friendships and homework. Not surprisingly, this resulted in some pretty lonely weekends and nights and on my return trip I prayed that I be spared such feelings of loneliness. Well on this visit, I had a fellow housemate named Patrik that was from Sweden & Norway and he was answer to that prayer. Patrik was at my school trying to learn as much Spanish as possible before touring Central America. He was great for me because he actually got me out of my routine a bit and I saw a lot more of Antigua then I would have on my own. He also helped introduce me to people at the school and generally helped me have a much more enjoyable time--whether speaking Spanish or English! Through Patrik, I also met Nick, a fellow American and the three of us spent a great deal of time hanging out in Guatemala. More about them when I finally write about my time at Lago Atitlan.