"David! Rebecca! Desayuno!" This morning she made omelets served with sliced aguacate (avocado) and toast with jam, as well as coffee for me. Similar to what I've experienced in Guatemala, coffee is served sweetened. If you order black coffee, it just means 'sin leche' - without milk. Carmen asked Bex! if she wanted coffee and she replied that she didn't drink coffee but does drink 'te' (tea). Carmen paused, then "Ah. Okay." Then confidently, "Mañana."
We grabbed notebooks and pens - and the handy-dandy English-Spanish dictionary - then said 'hasta pronto' to Carmen and her family. We walked the two blocks to our school, alongside a lot of the children going to their school which was just across the parque central from our school house. We were pretty excited for this. We both feel it's respectful to learn the language while we're here. Or 'try to', anyway.
Of the many language schools in San Juan del Sur, we chose LASS - Latin America Spanish School - because the package they offer was a great deal (one-on-one lessons, home stay, meals). Plus the central location in SJdS was important for our about town activities. If you ever want to attend a school like this, I would recommend this school in this town! www.nicaspanish.org Class would be M-F 8AM to noon, but our home stay was for our entire seven night stay. And, as we would continue to discover all week, Carmen is an amazing cook!
Winner winner, nacatamale dinner!
The school was on the second floor, above a ReMax realty office. We figured we had picked the right place when we saw the stairs leading to class. As we climbed up, we noticed they had Spanish verb conjugations on each riser so we could practice on the way up! On the first riser 'Tener', then 'yo tengo', then 'tu tienes' followed by 'el-ella-usted tiene' then 'nosotros tenemos' and finally 'ellos-ellas-Ustedes tienen'. There were other verbs, as well, obviously.
We were met by Vanessa and she immediately introduced us to our teachers. My instructor's name was Gladys; Bex!'s was Lorgia. There were a handful of other students - a couple from the US or Canada (he seemed interested in learning, she did her nails or left to wander around town), a guy from Switzerland named Pascal and a few others we never really met. We were all in a big room, each pair - student-teacher - at a small table with a whiteboard on an easel.
I won't write about the specifics of our classes each day - it was pretty much the same each day. Suffice it to say that we both made awesome progress in just five days. Between the one-on one tutoring and the home stay, our Spanish kicked up a few notches from where we each were. Bex! is ahead of me (no surprise there, right?) and worked on regular and irregular verbs with Lorgia. Gladys drilled me on the basics - alphabet, days of the week, months, numbers, courtesy expressions. We did two days of that, then started in on verbs. By the end of the week I was a conjugating machine, although which verbs are regular or irregular is a struggle. But I'm getting it and my wife is awesome, helping me whenever I have questions.
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| Ayi, los verbos irregulares!! |
While I won't bore you with class specifics, I will bore you with food - specifically, the deliciousness we enjoyed for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, courtesy of Cocina de Carmen. After Day One of class, we walked back up to our home and Carmen had lunch ready for us. We had chicken stewed with potatoes and carrots, rice, beans, a cucumber & tomato salad, and pitahaya juice. We know 'pitahaya' as 'dragon fruit'. Just like calala, it is fan-freaking-tastic. After lunch, we decided there is no better place to do homework than in a bar on the beach, with a Toña or Piña Colada at hand. This became our daily routine. Not a bad gig, if you can get it.
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| Help me Tom Cruise! |
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| Conjugating juice. |
I should also explain 'gallo pinto'. It's a national dish, and is essentially rice and beans mixed together. It means 'spotted rooster' in Spanish, the name coming from the appearance of the dish - rice 'spotted' with beans. There is usually something else cooked in - onion, carrots, peppers. The dish is not as 'basic' as it sounds, however. It's very good and you see it on every menu, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fun note: both Nicaragua and Costa Rica lay claim to bringing this dish to the world, with arguments and fights breaking out over this, at least back in the day! Nowadays, it's widely accepted that the Africans who were shipwrecked in the Caribbean in the 1700-1800's introduced the dish, and it spread as they married Spanish and Mayan women in the region. I liken it to brawls over who invented the Buffalo Wing, back in the states.
It is at this point (Monday the 28th) that, chronologically, the 'crab in the bed' incident fits into our adventure in Nicaragua. Yeah, reread that post! We still get the heebie-jeebies thinking about it.
What else about school... oh yeah! I will say that, like school kids everywhere and of any age, two of the best parts of the week were field trips! And we didn't even need to get a permission slip signed!
The first one was to the 'acopio' - the fish market. There are four stalls and the fishermen sell to both restaurants and locals, although the former usually snag all the good stuff leaving the less wonderful fresh fish for the everyday folk. Here is a shot of the SJdS acopio I found on the innerwebs:
Our other field trip was to the market. We had reviewed foods and produce in class, so armed with our list and a bunch of new vocabulary, we walked around impressing our teachers with how many of the foods and spices we knew as well as how many of the Spanish names we could remember. Field trips rock!
I think I will sign off at this point. Next post will be about our evening interactions with Carmen and her family, the wonderful meals she prepared for us and our wanderings and explorations in/around San Juan del Sur.
Hasta pronto!
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