Antigua Spanish school review

After visiting five different schools in Antigua I decided to choose ANTIGÜENA SPANISH ACADEMY as my first school. Price is little lower end but not the cheapest. Good reviews online definitely the one that's most talked about online. It was difficult to measure which school is best from visiting each school just for information and reading reviews online. So I'm going to take a school per week. 20 hours per week to compare myself and give a valuable voice if my experience to the world.

All the prices in schools presented in USD. It is possible to pay with quetzales but exchange rate is higher than the price banks buy USD.
Banks buy Quetzales for $7.63qz avg. sell at $7.82qz avg. my iPhone app and Internet both tell me exchange rate is $7.8135qz for $1USD and this rate is what schools use if you pay with $USD.

So it is a bit cheaper to pay with USD if you already have them but not worth going to the bank here to exchange.

I was able to negotiate the rate at antiguena to $7.70qz per $1USD.

Class is one on one. Private.

Popular option is to do 20 hours per week, 4 hours a day.
Two options: 8am to 12 pm or 12 pm to 4 pm. Afternoon classes are bit cheaper because morning classes are popular due to students sign up for activities after school. Afternoon school students don't have those options.

I paid $110 for lesson and $60 for local family home stay. Total at $170. The guy gave me higher price and later offered this price.

Money is secondary when it comes to education. Good teachers and amount of information that I retain is priceless and majority of the time it depends on students her/him self.

Since I am taking multiple schools, I am the common denominator and standard for measuring schools and home stay.

Style

Typically for the four hour class,
It is divided into two hours of lesson and two hours of activity.

For my lessons, I learned presente verbos where I learn the verb then conjugate them repeated for different verb. In between teacher explains and practice with me and conversation includes in lesson because once I learned the verb abc conjugation it's time to practice putting into an sentence. Often practice becomes conversation. My teacher moved at fast pace where time was spent more for learning the system of language rather than spending the time for practice. Homework was given everyday so that I can practice and master what I learned each day. My teacher Alejandro was good about not being stuck in one area for too long

Activity
Bancopoly - similar to monopoly
Scrabble- play in group and when a word that I don't know takes place in the game teacher will write it Along with its meaning in English.
Song - listening practice, as well as vocab. There are printed song lyrics in pieces And I put them together as I am listening to the song.
Vocabulary - I describe the word without using the word and other person have to guess what it is.
Walk - walk with teacher outside tags school learn things on the street
Song - Arrange sing. Lyrics from listening.

COOPERATIVA SPANISH SCHOOL

I went to lago de atitlan to take Spanish lesson in San Pedro After one week in ANTIGÜENA.
There are many schools just like antigua. However San Pedro is a smaller and less touristic than Antigua and general prices are cheaper.

There are two top schools, San Pedro spanish school and cooperativa school.
I chose cooperativa because it had better reputation from hearsay.
I asked many questions about school

"how many teachers do you have?"
-fluctuates between 14 to 17 teachers

"schedule ?"
There are options 8am or 2pm starting
Classes divide between 3 hr class to 6 hr classes

"price"
Cheaper than antiguena in Antigua
http://www.cooperativeschoolsanpedro.edu.gt/fees.htm

"experience in teachers?"
Everyone has minimum of 7 years experience. Average of 9 years.

Teacher comparison is the most important because that defined how fast I learned and which school I liked more. There are pros and cons

Teacher
Teacher in Cooperativa showed extensive knowledge in technical terms and systems of Spanish. With lack of study material was replaced with my teacher writing out the text book out of his head. It was incredible how much knowledge my teacher had. His name Luis. Waiting for him to write, I felt inefficient because I had to wait but specifically geared toward my need because he would only write on my soon to be text book notebook on the information I lacked.

Whereas Antiguena school, teacher had copied from text book materials and focused with me on practicing and increasing my skills to get myself used to speaking in conjugation especially with activities and games. (teacher name Alejandro)

My teacher Luis in Cooperativa, generally moved slow and demonstrated less motivation to teach than Alejandro in Antiguena. Two quick practice and move on.

Both schools had 30 min break which I found it to be too long especially in cooperativa where I was taking three hours long class per day.

Materials:
Antiguena has it better.

Activities
Cooperativa has it better. Especially futbol game with teachers and students as well as family visits and coffee farm and its production

Home stay
I liked home stay at Antiguena better because it was actually family like environment and they were eager and want to communicate.
My family in San Pedro were distant and very occupied with their life. It felt more like a hotel service.
However other students told me their family give them more food than they can eat and talk a lot.

Suggestion:
Learn from cooperativa with lots of knowledge which can be overwhelming and then take some time to yourself alone to study materials to really have them in your head then go to Antiguena school to practice with teacher because teacher moves fast, less focus on technical, rather good flow and getting you comfortable speaking Spanish.

It's so true. It's 90% students willingness to learn, 10% school.



PRICES FOR SCHOOLS

Medium pricing I found was Maximo Nivel. Www.maximonivel.com
They have four locations in the world; US, Guatemala, costa rica, Peru
Their Guatemala price is significantly cheaper. They have systems like a real schools with exams, quiz, tutoring, text book, conversation program, certification. Prices are listed online. However it did not match with broacher they gave me.

Cheapest I found was intercontinental.
Their price is not listed online. Just say deposit fee without saying how many days and hours which gives me assumption that price changes frequently based on demand and how much students willing to bargain. $65
5 days, 4 hours a day. 20 hours a week is the standard pricing for majority of the schools in Antigua.
$70 for homestay with a local family includes 6 nights, 7 days. 3 meals served everyday except Sunday.

Biggest school I found was http://www.intercoined.com/content/dates-prices
They are located in 13 different countries. With over 40 locations.
Price they have listed on Internet did not match with information I received there.
20 hours/wk is $115.
Homestay is $95 per week. No meal Sunday

Most expensive was www.learncsa.com
$310 for 20 hours per week including room/board.

Semuc. Champey

Best cave experience ever. I have visited about six different caves in my life which majority them were about sightseeing and walking tour to see exotic sculpture like shapes but this time was full if action

Complete darkness, only candle on my hand, many times required me to swim with candle still in my hand. Climbing the rope through water fall, climbing up somewhat dangerous rocks and jump off for ten meter dive!

Going through very narrow spot where water is flowing really fast, many scary moments, lots of adrenaline and now I'm tired.

It took few hours.

Next time I will come back and do six hour excursion, I must become a better swimmer. Many adrenaline moments came due to my poor swim ability.

Earlier that day was also exciting and exotic experience. 300 meter long of lime stone bridge, beautiful agua azul
Many swimming and diving, sleepery ground and sliding down too

This has been the most exciting perhaps the only adrenaline rushing excursion event, reminds me of SPN excursion trips in Mexico except these were inexpensive and longer.

Met many interesting ppl, many nurses, idealists and couple rationals. Met interesting cambodian Canadian guy who is forty four years old and main mission is to hook up with local girls.

I shared my experience on that part but quickly got bored to continue on that conversation.

Flores and Semuc champey, I had no couch surfing or local experience. All tourists, majority of them from US.
Gave me same confirmation that I don't like it as much, it was nice to see Guilim and marine in Flores and play basketball competitively, now I want a change.

Booked a ticket to Guatemala city to to meet locals and this time I really only messages people I wanted to meet regardless of gender or age, result sucks. No great response for couch offer. Perhaps it is because now its not holiday season anymore.

Since my bus will go through Guatemala city for going to
El Salvador, decided to change my plan to Antigua first. I think it's better since I'm going to get lessons there anyways for espanol. I'm afraid I will face slightly expensive price because it's is most popular tourist destination in Guatemala. I must careful to not speak English too much. But my desire to have interesting conversation. Will most likely win over.

Come to find out more that all tourist y area price is actually more expensive than Mexico despite Cost of living is actually cheaper.
Full meal with a drink in local area is
$15 gz roughly about $2usd. Where as tourist area is average of $40gz, roughly $6usd. Also road condition here is worse than mexico and gas price is as much or more than US, roughly $4.5usd. Mexico pump their own gas, roghly $2usd per gallon. Cheapest gas I've ever seen.

Therefore cost of transportation is more expensive in Guatemala however, in terms of comparing based on travel time divided by price, due to poor road condition, price comparison is similar to mexico for transportation. I have not yet to see fancy full size bus like ADO or OCC in Guatemala. Only combi (van
) as it was described in Internet, Mexico do have superior bus transportation. Both Belize and Guatemala used old US school bus as their big bus which locals often use.

Often see regular truck with back of the truck full of people and they are all standing and crammed in.

Met peace corp person for Guatemala. She is here to teach people for public health because many children do not pass age five and die due to diarrhea. It's sad that they don't have common sense for keeping their body and food clean enough to sustain their loved ones life.

Dealing with citizenship issue brought me heavy stress but I really don't want to stop my journey until I reach Macau picchu. There are some options and things I will resolve as soon as I have I tenet then I will decide. Having a citizenship is not important but bring able to live in and out of USA us tremendous right now as I feel US us the best place to live in the world with best opportunity. However my opinion could change as I discover Europe and life in Korea.

Guatemala - Tikal

Tikal is known for New York City of Maya Ruins and it was true.

Many amazing structures and jungle animals. It was first experience for me to see wild jungle animals. Two different types of monkeys, lots of them and many other birds. Monkeys were definitely the highlight for me. Templo IV had an incredible view. When I got to the top, I couldnt help but say WOW and locals who were working there to maintain just smiled at me.

i walked from 6am to 3pm. with only breakfast, coffee and a bottle of water. it was all good.

night before I met with Guillam and Marine, french who I met in Mexico city. We were very happy to see each other and spent a long time together talking. Now that Marine and I both learned enough spanish to carry on most of our conversation only in Spanish. it was strange experience that we could actually communicate.

we spent two nights hanging out talking, drinking and dining together. it was enough.
we made our promises to see each other in Antigua and it will happen if i stay there to get spanish lesson.

Playing basketball with locals gave me lots of sweats and energy of exercising again. my knees dont hurt anymore since merida 10k run.

learning more about guatemala currency and cost of living.

thinking seriously about playing with currency as well as playing in stock market.

the stock that Weinbaum told me about double since i talked to him last.

If i invested 10,000 .....

i am going to start buying small amount of stocks in companies and playing with it and learn. 

Leaving Merida y Belize

Left Merida. Night before departure I went out to go dance in club, noosfer. Javier who met with me earlier that day to hang out for walk about, dinner, meeting his friends, and ended up buying beer and going over to jale s house. Indian girl or I think it was just. A joke because when we all went over to her house to drink beer and conversing with patents about life death taekowndo Korea my travel Spanish spilling beer over in the floor and her dad going out to store to buy some crackers for us, and learning more about each other I found that they are Mexicans and around 1100 we left so Javier can drop me off in noosefera. I arrived and saw that place was filled with ppl and tables for then to stand next to and nobody dancing
There must have been 200people 100 by 70 excluding bar and bathroom

So I found this front corner to go dance then it got filled with ppl so
I went to main entrance area where was biggest space in the whole place some said my friends are waiting. I said no you are wrong i came here alone. Other guy asked about amigas abd i said no amigas. and dancing hard for a while server guy gave me a free beer.
Then many more by other strangers and I was getting drunk I must figure out my situation clearly as viajando solo .

I get out these group of people recognize me and ask me questions about my whereabouts staying I am then we decide to go party at one of their house then as we are walking I see nelly I was so surprised to her there then she later told me that she came with jarisol and Claudia and Javier told them.

So we go out to local restaurant I eat alone because they already ate. Based in their outfit they came out earlier to party with me and that I had spoken better Spanish would I have left that place. They didn't come in I think because they charge $200 peso entry or they don't like this place. Place was full of clean cut guardians. Not their type. We came back to melts place and I knocked out immediately when I saw the bed. Next day we went to Korean school and there was so many people that I was stuck in a corner. For a long time.

After we including Javier and other girl who sings Korean songs with gifted voice, went out to eat ands drink at eladios, place you only pay for beer but comes with massive amount of food.

Then we come to bid station to buy the ticket. Good byes were special. We did many Korean things sharing one of their passion with Korean songs and drama and popular expression. They gave me 화이팅!! All together.

Now I am in San iganaco. Met a guy on the bus who introduced me to his siter and her friends who are part time locals there and other in USA then they introduced me to anthony, who has very string opinion about Jews is a couchsurfer so he offered me his place and I accepted.

And we have covered many different topics including human instinct women church science astrology animal vegan England red head 911 dogs energy from veggies, mushroom, weed, conspiracy, racism, Jews topic was integrated in 90% of above topics. And my favorite most believed dolphins a s their ways of communication designs image with sand on a drum. It was really cool watching it on YouTube

Now I ask about TED

Merida 2weeks

Lots of Spanish lesson with Javier. Because he is a English teacher and studying Korean it makes our communication healthy and fast interns of education. He is always smiling and positive. I think he is a extroverted idealist and he does make complaints and closed point of view but he means no harm.

Walks with Ekatherina in our first night was special.

Javier told and showed me about history of Merida involving corean immigration and I was very surprised by unexpected news and started my investigation right away. Visited museum, parks and monuments. In 1905, 1200 corean arrived in Merida with hope for new life and healthy because corea was invaded by Japan. Instead they were tricked and lied and became slaves. After five years they were able to free themselves but with no country to go back to they rooted here.

Descendents tried to maintain its culture and language and finally diminished as if this current generation. I do not this for 100% but meeting two Descendents, mix of races, visiting Korean school answer was clear for me.

Girls were going crazy when u showed up to the school because many if them are studying Korean for two reasons: Kpop- korean music and singers and dramas.

It was becoming sensation in US and here too. Met mAny Mexicans for this reason and some of them
Stalking me in FB.

They call it "face" in Mexico.

Llarisol, Claudia, nelly was introduced to me through Javier, later visited belly house in puerto by the beach. They treat guest very well with large amount of fish, other goods and drinks. Great hospitality reminds me if rural area in Korea.

Spent the night. Javier left. Nobody speaks English. Now I am very used to this situation and I can actually communicate at least my point. Listening is still difficult.

Continued seeing Claudia n javier for next days.

Stayed with Ekatherina for three days. Javier a week. Then moved into Ethel s house. None CS. Introduction from Paola in Mexico DF.

She is a excellent host. Everyone have been great hosts in Merida. I think it's because I am hanging out with people my age and they work. :)

I learned more about politics and cost of living for middle class.

Merida really has a healthy government and definitely has feel of different country within Mexico. Like Alaska or Hawaii

Visited uxmal with Ethel. Rented a car again. This time nice new jetta. And next day I drove a lot in the city all over.

Merida mas

Rented a car. Because many of the touristy sightseeing spots are all over an hour away. Wanted to go to chichen itza

From paseo Montejo I rented a Nissan Tauru. Because of my lack of good espanol, this idiot person who was showing me the car treated me like I never drove before.However this isn't first experience. Perhaps he was being cautious and thorough

Upon renting a car, dealing with money, they treated me with respect when I spoke in English.

After I rented, he told me that there was distance limit to 400km when he asked where I would go. I was annoyed but seemed reasonable for one day of driving.

Went for this trip with Ekatherina. So far I have hung out with 5 different people and talked seriously with over ten people in Merida. The biggest significance besides the secure city is that these people don't expect me to pay for them like other places. They treat me as if I am a their guest in traditional way not like rich tourist cruising along. Many of them have a job and taking classes. Feeling of developed environment. It makes sense with better government, when people work hard they get the result back rather than having to blame on shitty government. This is motivating.

I really like and appreciate people who are driven for success. Perhaps that is the culture of the country with no culture, united states.

Chichen itza is the most expensive tourist spot in Mexico. $177 for non national tourist. Another $100 for government maintanence fee, another $100 for two people to get VIP access, but not official, getting back door Mexican way to skip long line.

I was there for about half hour, just walked around main pyramid with feathered snake, decided touch it with Ekatherina s encouragement, police immediately kicked me out. Ekatherina tried to explain but didn't work. For some reason I was ok with. Because that I will never forget and good story to tell. I can see rest in Wikipedia. Only thing I wanted to see was moving snake with shadow and I was already way too late.

After that went for a swim in cenote. It was $50 per person. That was more fun than pyramid. Swimming was fun. Fish was in there many, and they are not afraid. One fish touched me when I was still.