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Writing retrospectively of the events of October 17-23, 2007 —

An Introduction to Antigua

where the volcanoes are omnipresent

I’d read of Antigua’s reputation as a favourite for Spanish classes amongst travellers and when I arrived I saw that it was true. The small colonial town of Guatemala (not the Caribbean island of the same name) is the mecca of the all-inclusive Spanish school combining study with day and weekend trips, immersion social activities and accommodation with a Guatemalan host family. However, having stayed there for some weeks at different intervals during my months spent in Guatemala to take both Spanish and salsa classes, I would say it’s difficult to get a genuinely Guatemalan experience in Antigua. Because Antigua is a bubble teeming with foreigners, and you’ll find yourself very much in your comfort zone. It’s like one big party where you meet people from all over the world and it’s a whole lot of fun, rather like Ibiza without the beach, but if all you see of Guatemala is Antigua and you base your impressions of the entire country on it, then you’ll have a very false picture. The truth is: having seen Antigua, you’ve barely scraped the surface of this humbly magnificent country, at the very least because Antigua faithfully retains its architectural colonial Spanish roots despite repeated earthquakes, whereas the rest of Guatemala looks nothing like it.

Having said that though, a trip to Guatemala without Antigua wouldn’t be complete. Antigua, listed as a UNESCO heritage site, is a colonial treasure. It heralds your welcome by making your teeth rattle as your tourist van turns off the highway onto cobblestone streets, flanked by rows of houses and shoplots that huddle low to the ground, each one hand-painted a different colour – red, brown, yellow, peach, pink, green – all warm colours, none garrish. And amidst the colourful rows rise the survivors of history and natural disasters: old churches, monasteries and public buildings that still retain their colonial character from the days of the Spanish conquest, that charm and hold their heads high even as they crumble at the edges. But by far the most beautiful, though hardly fortuitous feature about Antigua is its location in a cradle formed by three volcanoes: Agua, Acatenango and Fuego, the last reportedly still active at a low level. Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water) is the most dominantly visible, and the most frequently photographed through the famous Arch of Santa Catalina.

The Arch of Santa Catalina

A view of Volcan de Agua through the Arco de Santa Catalina

Grey skies descending on colourful Antigua

My Homestay Experience

Unlike most travellers, I arrived in Antigua by a near stranger’s borrowed chaffeur. Feng Tai, la Doña of the muy simpaticos Cantonese family who had taken me under their wing in Guatemala City had refused to let me take the chicken bus, saying it was “just too dangerous” for a young girl travelling alone, and had insisted that their personal driver send me the hour away to Antigua, with their son Fernando playing chaperone. They weren’t a particularly rich family though they were certainly comfortable, but they had a personal driver due to what I gathered more to be safety concerns.

Upon arriving in Antigua I went straight to Ixchel Spanish School, which I had earlier looked up online, and enquired about their all-inclusive Spanish classes. Immediately they found me a host family to stay with and arranged my classes to start that afternoon. Then Fernando and the driver sent me to my host family’s address and there I said goodbye to them without fuss, thanking Fernando for accompanying me. I had signed up for only a week’s worth of Spanish classes in Antigua, the plan being to take more classes in other places. Lonely Planet Guatemala had described Antigua to be a well-trodden place and I thought that although the familiarity it afforded would be good for my first few days in Latin America, I didn’t want to get stuck there.

My host mother was a Guatemalan called Isabella and she had two girls, one 6 years old and the other 11; I didn’t see her husband much though he lived in the house. She was friendly when I met her, and ushered me into my own room, which had a desk and chair, a shelf and a bed, and a square hole cut into the roof covered with a transparent flap so that I would have no need to turn on the lights in the day, thus helping them to save on electricity. During lunch at the dining table I met two other Spanish students who were also living there – Chantalle, a nurse from Switzerland and Ryan from San Francisco, who were both very friendly and easy company. I remember Chantalle as being a very candid, plain-speaking person who had no airs nor unease about her when we first met, who would stare piercingly into my eyes when she asked me even a simple question at breakfast after we’d just woken up like she was probing the depths of me. Her honesty would oftentimes be punctuated into bluntness by virtue of her heavily French-influenced-English, as she lived in the part of Switzerland close to the French border, and this would be an endless source of hilarity for Ryan and I, who enjoyed her bold statements. More than once she told us, “When I go home I’m going to ask my boyfriend to make babies!” Even Isabella, usually solemn and politely distant, couldn’t help but laugh at the unexpected things that came out of her mouth.

The three of us got along well enough with Isabella’s family, but it wasn’t the warm embrace I envisioned. Isabella ran her home like a guesthouse, which was understandable considering the tide of people that come and go, and especially since there were usually at least two student occupiers at any one time. For Isabella we were business, and she was the one to make the decisions around the house as her husband was often out working and we didn’t see him very much. She was hospitable enough but we didn’t spend very much time with her or her family. Isabella would oblige herself to sit down at the meal table with us for breakfast, lunch and dinner to chat if we’d decided to eat in, but she wouldn’t take her meal at the same time. She would always eat with her family before or after we’d eaten. We never spent much time with the kids either, and it seemed to me that Isabella protected them from us.

Ryan told me once that she feared her kids getting too close to the foreigners that occupy her house since most that come are short-term, but that once, with a student who stayed several months she let them spend a lot of time with her and there are photos of the children and this European girl up around the house. Isabella’s feelings about this were understandable, because imagine a never-ending queue of people coming and going and the detriment that could be to children, who being children, attach themselves easily to friendly strangers. But still, it wasn’t the immersion experience I was promised. But then again, that’s nobody’s fault. I can’t really fault Isabella for much that she did. I think there’s something wrong about the whole “I want to buy an immersion experience and I should get it” attitude. If you really want to learn about a whole different culture and its people and its language it’s up to you and it should be something that happens naturally and because both sides mutually seek it. It’s not something to be paid for and given to you on a platter. You shouldn’t have to buy experiences, but it seems like that’s how the world goes round these days, doesn’t it, and money has a way of staining even the best of intentions.

However, one thing is immersion and another thing is getting your money’s worth for basic necessities you are paying for. We were paying $70 USD a week for accommodation and meals, but Isabella, in comparison to other host families I’ve heard about, was stingy with food as we hardly got any meat, mostly just a variety of eggs, beans and vegetables. I wouldn’t have thought anything about the lack I meat we were fed, I suppose, had I not noticed that one night when Ryan, Chantelle and I had decided to eat out, she invited family friends to her house to have a barbecue and I saw big fat sausages and steak all over the place, surely bought with our money, and it was hard not to feel a little bit ripped off.

Outside Isabella’s home, it’s not so easy to get in touch with the local people either. It’s so easy to live life as you normally do back home because Antigua is perfectly catered for foreigners. There are foreign faces everywhere and you are never forced to have to speak Spanish. It’s a little tourist bubble and consequently infrastructure has been built to cater to foreign travelers and there are hole-in-the-wall bars and cafes with WiFi everywhere (my favourite spot was Bagel Barn) reminiscent of places in London or other big cities, and there are places projecting American films every night (Cafe 2000 is the most popular). And most of these places are all frequented by tourists, hardly any Guatemalans at all, except for the employees.

Don’t get me wrong. Antigua is beautiful. Beautiful. And the six months I was in Guatemala I loved popping by every now and then for a short while – to pamper myself a little bit there where it’s more possible than anywhere else in the country, or to buy western medicines when I had giardia swimming around in my stomach (because it’s impossible to get hold of western medicines anywhere else, with the other exception of Guatemala City). It could be a home away from home, and if you’re looking for fun that’s where it’s at. But if you’re looking for the raw, undiluted Guatemala, you won’t find it in Antigua.

A corner of Antigua's Central Park

Some tips for studying Spanish at Ixchel Spanish School:
Note: This is probably also a loose guide for other schools as many of them are run quite similarly.

Cost:
* $75 per week for stay with a host family. You get a single room with shared bathroom and three meals a day. See price list.
* $110 for 4 hours of 1-on-1 Spanish lessons, five days a week.

Classes normally start at 8 a.m. The school offers a discount of $15 for afternoon classes, but it is recommended that you take morning lessons because that leaves your afternoons and evenings free for the various day trips and activities organized by the school, such as salsa classes, eco-tours and cooking classes. Also, it’s busier in the mornings; in the afternoons there is likely to be nobody at the school except you and your teacher. If you prefer to study in silence, then the afternoons might be a better option. In the mornings it’s quite noisy as all the students and teachers are huddled in the same outdoor compound, working up quite a chatter.

On the nights that the school holds activities such as barbecues, your host family is relieved of its obligation to provide you meals. So you either attend the dinners, or go out on the town to sample its culinary delights – there is quite a wide range in Antigua. I’d say go for these school-organized gatherings. You’ll end up dancing and singing and drinking rum with your teachers and have the advantage of being able to say “Aha!” to them as they try to fight the effects of a hangover the next morning.

It might also be a good idea to ask for a rotation of teachers to find whose style of teaching suits you best before settling. I went through 3 teachers and they all had very different ways of teaching – and varying levels of English, if that’s a concern for you.

You might be able to loan a dictionary from the school’s small library from time to time but it’s best to bring your own before entering the country. Book prices are inflated in Guatemala due to the import tax, so it costs a good $3 or $4 more than the original price. If you really have to buy one in Guatemala though, there are quite a few bookshops in Antigua, which the school will refer you to if you ask.

I also recommend buying a pocket grammar handbook especially for bilingual learners. The school professes to provide you materials included in the fee you paid, but this will only be the form of some photocopies and memory cards. And you will be taking down some notes during the class while you converse with your teacher, but as most things will be explained in Spanish it might be useful to have an English explanation at hand. It’s more effective consolidating your grammatical knowledge with a bilingual handbook.

Note: names have individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.