In Guatemala, we found a great Spanish teacher, Nicole, who is helping us with our fledgling language acquisition. The last time we had Spanish lessons was way back in high school and that was only for two years total. Nicole charges us each $5 per classroom hour for her private tutoring and after researching a number of local language schools in Panajachel, we soon realized that she had the best deal in town!
As teachers, we know firsthand that learning styles are very important and we are both spatial and kinesthetic learners. So finding a teacher who understands our individual learning style was important. In addition to classroom instruction we also get some fun "field trip" opportunities where we venture out in the community and put our elementary skills to practice.
We slowly weaved in and out of the market for more than an hour and did our best to practice what we were taught, all while being jostled and shoved this way and that by locals trying to get their shopping accomplished. We were in the way of lots of business deals going on around us! We met with some success and many amusing failures while trying to communicate using real world Spanish but that is all part of the learning process. We will have many more ventures into this incredible culture and hopefully we will be able to communicate better as we build our language knowledge.
*Click on pictures below for a larger image and captions.