My new (temporary) identity as a full time student kicked off in earnest on Monday morning, 19th November. Breakfast was served at 7am by my host family, and it was better than I expected. I walked down to the Tecún Umán school, and was soon introduced to my tutor, whose name is Lesvia. She is considerably younger than me, and is apparently a college student. I was shown to a desk out in the pleasant and shady patio of the school, where several other desks were dotted around. Lesvia installed herself in the chair on the other side of my desk, and my week of intensive Spanish commenced!
Lesvia started very slowly, using words which I mostly knew, which gave me an immediate confidence boost. Before long I was almost starting to forget that I was listening in a foreign language. The first morning was essentially a chat session, featuring plenty of new words of which Lesvia cleverly found a way to convey the meaning, by context. I had been given a notebook in which to list the new vocabulary, and I quickly starting filling the pages.
Lunch break was long, and I was able to have lunch with my host family as scheduled, and also head to Doña Luisa’s where I met up with Beate again and had a good chat about Tikal.
After an afternoon proving to Lesvia that I am competent with the present tense, I headed off to meet Will for dinner and then go to a bar with live music. Will is also doing a round the world trip, but a completely different route. However he expects to be in Bali, Indonesia, at the same time as me in April, so we agreed to try to meet there, contacting each other using the Post Restante service.
Tuesday and Wednesday have been very studious. Not very much social activity (unless you count chatting with Lesvia all day…). She has been setting me some homework, which I have been trying to do – this is mostly learning the word lists in my notebook…
The BBC World Service is still coming in loud and clear, though I have to tune to different frequencies, depending on the time of day. The ionosphere responds differently to different frequencies, between day and night, and they switch transmitters on and off accordingly. Once tuned in, I can usually hear the signal varying and starting to fade due to the frequency shifting (with the changing atmospherics) but my little radio generally manages to cling on, and track the frequency.
This is typical shortwave reception, during the lead-in to my daily reconnection with the wider world:
The climate seems wonderful here at 1500 metres above sea level: dry sunny and warm. Every day there is a good view of the volcanos that surround the city, though they often start off being partially obscured by morning fog. I’m almost tempted to stay here for a second week, but that would mean taking longer than the one month that I have allowed myself to go through Central America…
I haven’t heard Lillibulero in an age!
The clip from the BBC transmission brought back memories of far flung places around the world from my days at sea. Always there to keep you updated through the crackling and fuzzy static!
I can’t imagine trying to arrange to meet up with a fellow traveler several months in advance and in a foreign country for both back in the “olden days”. I’ll have to stay tuned and see if you indeed met up with him ?