DAY 4... FIRST CLASS & MAESTRO JAVIER

one of the outdoor palapa classrooms

DAY 4

Javier and I are in one of the palapas down by the edge of the lake. It is virtually drowned in huge ferns that grow around it and I am like a kid in a candy shop. Just think of it: I have my own Spanish teacher whom I can ask all the millions of questions I’ve had for too long and someone who is just looking out after me and what I need in order to speak this language hopefully well. And do I have someone! This guy Javier is amazing. He my little Guatemalan professor. I see already that I am going to love this guy’s brain. He can step back from a big issue and really explain it and, even more important, devise ways on the spot to get you to dealing with it and to practicing it, getting it into your head and mouth. I am already convinced that he is a genius in his little baseball cap with his ever lively eyes, his ability to love it when you get it right and his absolute unwillingness to let you go astray.

Four hours of this fly by like nothing. That’s a good sign. My class starts at 8am and I get a nice little breakfast at the school at 7:30 and quickly check my email in the common area. Just after 8 all the teachers appear and take their respective students to some palapa or some place for their lessons. I think there must be 25 or 30 students, so that is a lot of teachers. And all the women teachers wear the traditional dress. I thought maybe that was a little touristico, but was I wrong. More on that later. There is a break at 10:00 for what they call refracciónes, snacks, but not botanas or something as it would be in Mexico. And then back to work. And fairly good hot coffee is available all day long.

Forgot! After about an hour today Javier (maybe he spells it with an x?) turns to me and says I want you to take a big breath before you speak, I want you to speak more slowly with great confidence. I sense (he says to me) that you loose confidence in yourself in the middle of the sentence and begin criticizing yourself. I want you to slow down and feel confident. Well, I was a little taken aback! The nerve. And then I realized how perceptive he was. And he is absolutely right. And I don’t know where that insight came from. Ok, but wherever it came from, I will work on doing exactly what he said, because he is way right. And now we flee our palaba because we are having an ant attach and they hurt and they are everywhere and have attacked the nuts I bought from a little boy on the street and a banana bread I bought from a lady balancing a whole bakery on her head.

Have discovered the path along the lake that takes you directly from my apartment to the school without touching real streets. Well, you have to cross one, but that’s all. And right now the lake is so high that sometimes there’s not much room to walk and it’s a little muddy, but beautiful and some how hidden and mysterious.

Need to be back at the school by 5:15 for ‘Conversation Club’. Sounds pretty hokey to me, but I am going to do it all. Also sometimes there are movies and lectures, etc in the evening. Otherwise, I am not really hanging out at the school because there is too much English being spoken by the students. Ayi, my curse!