Day 208: Antigua – Guatemala – Jan 11st

Having classes at 8am, we actually managed to wake up at 7am, stop over for a coffee and made it to the ‘classroom’ on time! It’s been a while since we’ve gone to school, and it’s even harder to remember the last time we’ve made it to class at all =P

The classroom, is actually a massive garden on the outskirts of Antigua where numerous other students and teachers gather. A table and three chairs was all we needed, and we found a little corner overlooking the whole garden. It’s actually a really nice place to study, and if all classrooms were like that with a 1:2 teacher:student ratio, everyone would do pretty good and not be able to fall asleep in the back like Alan did.

Learning, for the longest time, was not very ‘pleasant’ as it was difficult to garner a sense of giddiness from studying Pareto distributions and finite difference methods for calculation option prices. Here though, even at the end of a 4hr day, we felt like we learnt a lot, and felt HAPPY about learning, which is awesome =)

Our teacher is a middle-aged lady with two daughters, the sort of cheerful and patient lady with a round figure, the sort whom you’d automatically think would make a wonderful mother and a pretty awesome cook. She was extremely patient with us, and made learning Spanish a bit more fun than we imagined it to be. It was great! And after class, she helped us to find our home-stay. The Spanish-school scene in Antigua is extremely developed, with a lot of classes to choose from, and all offer a home-stay option where you can live with a local family and ‘immerse yourself in the local culture’. Oh, and 3 meals are included too!

Our home-stay is really nice, and we think we may have taken over the master bedroom of the owners! The owners are a very nice Guatemalan couple, with the husband working at a water purification company while the wife stays at home and takes care of her grandchildren and cooks up meals for us. There are several others staying here as well, so it is easy to get lazy and start speaking English!

We spent the afternoon in a cozy little coffee shop… studying!! Haven’t been so hardworking for a looong time!