Comparison of Spanish Schools and Homestay in Buenos Aires, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru

Postscript-  Comparison of Spanish Schools

I realize that one of the more useful things for many of you would be a brief comparison of the three Spanish schools I attended.  I did the homestay option at each and I can recommend all of them.  The specific family and the specific tutor are probably more important than the school.  I talked to one or two at each school that didn’t work out with their family or instructor.  That is one benefit of a larger program, you can ask to swap. 

I also chose cities to not be overbearingly hot.  I do not like the heat so I tried to pick places that were high up or far from the equator.  All of the cities I stayed in have their charm, and good food can be had in all of them.  I went for three stints of one month in latin America and didn’t get sick once.  Of course they didn’t have American style desserts in Latin America.  So, when I got home, I ate too much dessert and got sick my first week back.  A very 3^rd grade thing to do- but what can I say?  I do like dessert. 

Angies School Bogota

http://constructeca.com/angieschool.com/

Pros

Bogota is big.  There is a ton going on.  The couchsurfing.com meetings were a great place to meet people and practice the language.  I met lots of people that were really concerned about how foreigners experienced their city and they were very helpful.  I was able to find yoga classes and other activities.

Cons

All the big city issues apply.  At first the cops with rifles on every corner are a bit un-nerving, but you get used to them and are glad they are there.   Angie is a great tutor, she tailors things to your needs in real time, but that can slow lessons sometimes.  I also tend to respond a bit better to lessons that are more formatted. 

Terracentro Quito Ecuador

http://www.terracentrospanishschool.com/

Pros

Quito is an excellent city, coming in just below Buenos Aires.  Quito has lots of outdoor stuff nearby as well as the big city amenities.  I hiked and biked the volcanos, visited the equator, did the museum circuit.  I didn’t get to the jungle or the beach but they aren’t far away.  Terracentro was another small school with a bit more going on than Mundo Antiguo.  The cost was in between Guatemala and Argentina.  Sofia, who runs Terracentro, is great and seems to get excellent tutors.  I did my home stay option at Sofia’s family.  They had a separate garage apartment which was relatively quiet and private and was my best experience with facilities.  Overall Ecuador and Terracentro weren’t first on the list in any category but was second in most things making it an excellent value option.


Cons

I was only there for a week so I didn’t really address this.  It was easier for my tutor and I to spend time chatting than to drill on verbs, which is really what I needed.  I didn’t feel unsafe, but people I talked to in the city suggested I stay away from some places after 10 PM, places that were between the house and the city center.  I never felt unsafe, but that is probably a shortage of healthy fear on my part. 

Coined Buenos Aires Argentina

http://www.coined.com.ar/

Pros

Buenos Aires is an awesome city that you can spend a good while exploring.  From just a city standpoint, this was the best city to visit.  Coined did the best with organized events for students.  I spent more time with the woman who organized events than with any one tutor or teacher.  For many the group of 4-8 class may provide a nice social aspect to learning.  The group classes are less expensive.  I worked with around 5 instructors in my 3 weeks.  Several awesome and a couple that weren’t for me.

Cons

My class was mixed Brazilian, Swedish, and Japanese.  While the diversity was cool, the Brazilians were at my level on day 1, but after 2 weeks they were light years ahead due to the greater similarity with Portuguese.  Our instructor was more comfortable teaching more advanced stuff so she tended to cater to the Portuguese and the rest of us struggled.  Argentina is an expensive city compared to Cuzco or Antigua.  This school seems to be even more college kid oriented than the other two.  Which is probably a plus if you are college kid as opposed to a burgeoning old far like myself. 

The Spanish Academy Antigua Guatemala

www.spanishacademyantiguena.com

Pros

This little city is built around Spanish instruction.  They do an excellent job.  The city, food, and the school are amazingly inexpensive.  This was my most effective learning experience.  They also have outings and social activities to bring the students together outside class.  This is especially important if you are the only student with your family as the instruction is all 1 on 1. The school does have a little break each day for group Spanish games.  That is important to break up the day, and the group activity is more fun than the intense 1 on 1 learning.  But the breaks for group Spanish games are not as effective learning time.  Antigua is the safest place in Guatemala.  The tourist police do a great job.  There isn’t the cultural variety of Buenos Aires, but the trek’s into the local Maya enclaves are interesting.  I stayed with 1-3 other students in a large house with a large family.  The house was more of a small apartment complex.  So the social aspect of the 1 on 1 instruction experience was still pretty good.  Those that lived solo with a family seemed a bit lonely, but people got together for the bar scene every night.  If you just want the most effective learning Spanish experience, come here and sign up for an extra hour a day and Saturday class like I did.  Although the immersion into the family wasn’t as deep as the other places, I did get to know them, and they structured their interaction around us to be more helpful with the Spanish.  Usually we got 30-90 minutes of labored chat after each meal.  And they did have to labor to speak with the gringos.

Cons

Antigua is a very small city.  You couldn’t expect this city of 50,000 people (and 80 spanish schools) to keep you engaged on its own for more than a day or two if you aren’t in class.  The city is an 8 block by 8 block grid.  You don’t have the museum scene of the other cities but the architecture is cool.  The night life is filled with English speaking Europeans.  Outside Antigua, especially going into Guatemala city it can be unsafe.  For  being small, Antigua has a touristy feel, but you wouldn’t want to stay for long in a small Guatemala city without touristy amenities.   There are some similarly named schools in the town, so be sure you are getting the one you have read about.

Mundo Antiguo Cuzco Peru

http://www.learnspanishinperu.net/

Pros

You get the small shop feel and attention.  The family I stayed with was the most upper class of the 3 locations.  The travel agency attached to the school is pretty handy for city tour and other things you may decide to do.  The Inca trail is awesome!  Machu Pichu is pretty cool too.  Cuzco is a fairly large city so there is much to see.  Since there was less social interaction with students, I interacted a lot with my family.  They were great.  I went to their office Christmas party, cooked a Turkey for Christmas and took it a few blocks over to Grandma’s house, babysat and had the kids try to talk with me, went shopping with them, visited their fathers house in the valley.  I was really a part of the family on this trip.  All the families were great, but these folks were really embracing.  The Incan history has more to look at here than the Maya history around Antigua. 

Cons

If your instructor isn’t as good for you, it is more difficult to get someone else.  Not that they wouldn’t try to swap you, but they have less roster, and it feels a bit more personal to say someone doesn’t work well for you.  You have to sort of seek out events, there isn’t a standing activities list for the week as at the other larger schools.  My family was farther from the city center so my experience was more suburban, granted suburban Peru was unique in and of itself.  There was less social outlet at this school than the others.  Some people had trouble with the altitude.  The family I stayed with was the most upper class of the 3 locations.

isaac davenport

Happy Trails

I have finished my first full time week back at work.  It is hard to say goodbye to my sabbatical.  At this point, my Spanish is much improved.  It is funny though… I think I speak better than I listen.  Of course people who know me may think “that is no surprise”. 

When I talk I get to choose the words I use.  English similar words are popular for me.  I can simplify the grammar to break my thoughts down into more simple sentences than I would in English.  I can speak slowly.  However, I lose all that control when others talk.  Usually I can’t overhear a conversation and understand it.  I can typically get general points such as the idea that they were discussing a car and something that was expensive, but I typically couldn’t recount to someone what I have overheard. 

So, to develop my ear, I am watching a movie or two a week in Spanish with the subtitles or closed caption in English turned on.  Murray and I watched The Princess Bride in Spanish last night.  Murray cried at the end.  I am typing up this final entry on the same big screen TV I used to watch the movie.  I am telling myself that as long as I don’t attach cable or an antenna to the display, I am not violating my no TV policy.

Murray and I have a trip to Barcelona planned for April.  So the adventure isn’t fully over.  Perhaps I will get another shot at a sabbatical in the future.  If you get the chance, I would recommend it to anyone.

Happy Trails-

Isaac.

Convenience isn’t convenience

In the states, I think we sometimes have that attitude of “modern conveniences, yes they are nice to have aren’t they.”  Being in Latin America has changed my perspective on this.  Frequently these conveniences are actually my time:  The ability to get a drink of water without having to boil it first;  The ability to get a net connection regularly in your home and not have to walk to an internet café; the ability to just have a lock smith come over and change your lock without having to replace the whole system. 

There are other things that aren’t what we would think of conveniences which I miss.  Take for instance the gym I joined.  They had hours of 6-12, 3-9, on their brochure.  They crossed those out and had written in 7-12, 4-9.  I showed up and 4:10 one day and they were closed.  When I asked about that, I was instructed that I should come after 4:15. 

There were a whole string of events like this.  A cab driver who said he had change for a large bill and didn’t.  We drove all over Lima looking for a restaurant that would change my 100 soles ($38) bill.  There was the tour guide who said that Machu Picchu was designed in miniature in a stone model held at the Inca Museum, it wasn’t.  I went to a bank main office who said they couldn’t take AMEX, but their branch office down the street could, they couldn’t.  In the western world, for all the disinformation out there, we are still far more careful about what we tell people and what we appear to be confident of than in the Latin world.  I talked to other western travelers who also found this to be true.

Aside from the frustration, there are other things I want to do with my time.  Each of these events represents a small theft of the time that makes up my life.  I am a pretty patient person, in my own not so humble opinion.  If I lived in Latin America, I might have to rethink that policy.

Isaac with espanol instructor Jimmy above Cusco.  The red tiles remind me of the CU campus.

Isaac - Cusco

A playground area on the edge of Cusco, looks great, smells slimy

Kids

As great as the kids are, being around a 3 year old , and a 6 year old for a month  made me think, “gee not having kids around is nice.” This was even with a housekeeper and parents to watch after them.  The older kid is smart and rather willful.  She takes advantage of people where she can.  I am not used to 6 year olds that don’t quickly move into line when I use the “tough adult voice”.  The first time was when I was trying to figure out Spanish subtitles for DVDs.  For developing my ear, I wanted to buy a bunch of Spanish language DVD movies with English subtitles.  I put in a Spanish version of Lady and the tramp and couldn’t get the English subtitles going.  So I was going to try another movie, but the 6 year old had started watching and wouldn’t give me the remote.  I come from a background where outright fear of adult males is the norm so the situation was a bit baffling at first.  You can’t exactly use force on other people’s kids.   I suspect that her parent’s had use the “scary parent” voice so many times and not come through that she safely assumes adults are usually bluffing.  I had another incident where I was fixing the DVD player in the other room and she had climbed up on the armoire to manipulate the television.  When I tried to pull her off, she wouldn’t let go and was at risk of toppling a large, heavy, old style tube based TV down onto us.  Perplexing. 

I fear for Triny the new nanny.  She is 16 and from the sticks in Peru.  I get the sense she hasn’t experienced the full benefit of a high school education.  She is very nice, very naïve, and to be put up against this 6 year old (who is about to turn 7) for the next few years seems like a recipe for moose turd pie, if not a recipe for disaster. 

One thing in my favor is that the 6 year old was better at communicating with me than Triny- even though Triny spoke Spanish as a second language after Quechan.   The Quechan normally speak Spanish slower which makes it easier for me.  But the 6 year old quickly figured out where my vocabulary and grammatical abilities started and ended and liked to remind Triny that she needed to speak slowly for Isaac. 

At times I would talk to the 6 year old and you could forget she was 6, but later she would throw a tantrum or get hysterical over bouncing a ball in the house.  At Christmas eve, she was given a roman candle.  In Peru, roman candles are 5’ long and last for 5 minutes.  She would start to lose interest and the fireballs would start heading on lower trajectories, which made it more exciting for the rest of us as she was getting more bored holding up the long stick into the sky.

The fam 1

The fam 2

Is there a locksmith in the house?

This is hard for me to fathom, but I lost the house key to the host family’s place three times in two weeks.  The first two times were wrestling with change in my pocket for cab drivers.  In the second incident, I lost by wallet as well.  The third time is a complete mystery as I opened the door at ten that night and in the morning, between the front door and my room, I could not find my key.

Normally in the states, you would have a locksmith come out and change the pins in the cylinder and that would be that.  But in Peru, you can’t trust the locksmiths.  So the way you do it is you buy a new lock box, take the keys out and the locksmith never opens the tumblers so he can’t come back with a copy.  Only their security system, with intercom and phone and remote open button is a Chinese model that no one sells just the lock box for.  So I spent $300 replacing the entire system for them.

I could have tried to find two locksmiths, one to take the box in and out and one to change the tumblers at his shop so he wouldn’t know where to use a key copy if he made one.  But the logistics, time investment and logistical failure risk were high enough it wasn’t worth it. 

I managed to not beat myself up over this mental lapse for too long.  But it does make me wonder:  “Am I getting old?”  “Am I now completely reliant on my habits and systems to deal with day to day life details?”  It has been 20 years since I lost my wallet or keys.  I have put them through the laundry a few times, but the situation has been really frustrating.  And I pride myself on not falling into the frustration trap.  Traveling without ready access to cash is a real pain.  Even though only 2 out of every 100 merchants accepts AMEX in Peru, I must say AMEX has great customer service.  I don’t think our local credit union has much experience in dealing with foreign travel in their card department.

The funny thing is that the wallet I lost was an early Christmas gift from Murray’s sister before I left.  At least Murray doesn’t have to ask me what to get for a valentines day.

Going way back

A couple of things on this trip took me back to my youth.  Not a place I normally like to go, I am quite happy being and adult.  The first had to do with the beds.  Neither was very comfortable; they were worn and concave.  So I took one of the thin foam mattresses and put it on the floor.  This worked well, but I found that with the solid ground just below me I could easily cut off the circulation to my arm if the weight of my head or body were on it.  This time I just rolled over in the night.  This used to happen to me in a bunk bed I had that was too small.  When I was a teenager I would have a recurring nightmare that a boa constrictor was in my bed.  I would wake up in a panic only to go into a second panic to find out it was not a snake but my arm which had no feeling and would not move.  This always corrected itself in a few minutes, but it always took a while to get back to sleep after that.

The other even was trying the local delicacy, Cuy, which is fried Guiney pig.  It had an herb I didn’t like, but the meat, what little there was, was actually good.  It was much better than the squirrel I was forced to cook and eat after a friend and I made our first mammalian kill with a sling shot at a scout camp long ago. 

Cuy and Sarah, quiet the dish.

Not a lot of meat - I didn't realize you were supposed to eat the skin, like at KFC

surreality

Beach at Mirah Flores

So I had two surreal events on the trip home.  I had a 10 hour layover in Lima and headed for Mira Flores.  From a high shopping center you could look down on the beach, but I felt compelled to hike down and around to get the water.  One reason the beach was better from 100 meters up was you didn’t get the smell up there.  But the sunset was beautiful.  It was only interrupted by the sound of a dozen giggling and screaming catholic nuns.

I was sitting there in front of the changing yellow and orange colors when I heard what sounded like a group of school girls running toward the water, getting wet, screaming and running back up the bank.  They were throwing rocks out into the sea to see who could throw the farthest and laughing like it was the new Richard Prior stand up act.  I mean, I am glad that nuns can have such a good time now and then, but it was a strange intrusion into my zen sunset at the beach moment.

The next surreal experience came while I was cleaning up from 7 hours of urban hiking.  I was in a state of half undress in front of the sinks when a pudgy, indigenous guy asked if I worked out.  I admitted that I did, but not very often.  He said I had big arms.  I told him it was mostly genetics.  Then he asked if he could touch them.  I didn’t do the macho flex, so when he touched my arm, it was just a bag of liquid.  I didn’t get a “this is gay” vibe from him.  It was more “I wonder if I worked out a lot if my arms would look like that?”  Then he asked if I had 6 pack abs.  I said no and showed him the good.  He poked them with a tentative finger to see what was fat, and what was muscle. 

I am probably in better shape today than I have been in a while since I have had limited access to deserts other than those I baked for the family.  I do get to the gym more regularly while on these vacations.  Still, I NEVER get the “That guy is buff” response from people.  Perhaps it was the sleeveless under shirt which is a little tight now (my last clean one), or the paramilitary looking nylon “adventure pants” I got in Peru for my hiking trip.  But still, surreal, all in all.

The small "not scary" part of Lima with the American Chain Restaurants