There was shocking news Thursday morning, 22nd November, when I tuned in to the BBC World Service. Maggie has been forced out of office and has quit as Prime Minister!! The Thatcher years are finally over after over 10 years… I spread the word round the other travelers / students at the school – nobody else seemed to have heard the news.
Throughout the week I have felt that I have been progressing rapidly – the total immersion (no English) was working, and I had never needed to fall back on English . There was one point when finally, after 3 days, there was some detail I just didn’t quite get. I asked Lesvia what the equivalent was in English, and she looked genuinely surprised, and told me she didn’t speak English. This was quite a shock! – the sudden realisation that I had got to know someone, exchanging all manner of thoughts and ideas, completely in a foreign language!
Thursday afternoon I had a different teacher, who spoke faster than Lesvia, and made me think harder – good practice, I’m sure, for the months ahead….
Antigua does seem a very tranquil place, great for relaxing and studying in. However it is a little sad. The earthquake damage to the older churches is severe and several seem to have been left exactly as they were – as dangerous-looking ruins. The 1773 earthquake seems to have been what caused most of the trouble. This, and the proximity of the nearby volcanos (Fuego and Agua) resulted in the national capital being moved from Antigua to the present Guatemala City.
Back at the house that evening, I took advantage of my temporarily “domesticated life” to catch up on some letter-writing, before my final day as a student, and the resumption of my globetrotting.
Lesvia was once again sitting opposite me, at my desk, on Friday morning, and went over combinations of tenses. I checked out of the house after lunch and took a final photo of the little patio where the family hung the laundry to dry.
A final few hours chatting to Lesvia and suddenly it was all over. I became a backpacker once more, not an “Antigua student”. But I am now a backpacker who speaks Spanish with more confidence than I had ever felt with French, even after 5 years at school.
I caught the bus to Guatemala City, and found the backpacker’s hotel, a colonial style place with a pleasant courtyard in the middle, called “Pension Meza”. The courtyard is evidently “the” meeting spot for backpackers in “Guate” – there are a dozen relaxed looking folk sitting in a circle, passing something round that is letting off some curiously pungent smoke…
There isn’t supposed to be anything to keep me in Guatemala City, so I plan to head for El Salvador in the morning. But it doesn’t have to be an early start, so I can probably afford to be sociable for a little while, join this little circle, and see who is going where…
You are really making me want to backpack in Central America. Maybe if it didn’t have such a reputation for being so dangerous. And I think I needed Lesvia in my life!