I decided to continue my Spanish lessons in Lake Atitlan. I stayed in La Iguana Perdida in Santa Cruz La Laguna and signed up for the package of 5 days of Spanish lessons, 7 nights accommodation, and 6 days allowance of Q75 to spend in their restaurant.

The view from this hostel is just beautiful! I start my morning every day staring at the beautiful Lake Atitlan and the volcanoes.

My teacher actually lives in Panajachel, about a 15-minute boat ride from Santa Cruz. She comes over to the hostel at 9AM and teaches me for 4 hours, where we usually sit somewhere where we can see the lake or the volcano.

This week I learned all these different ways to form sentences. There’s a lot of them! I’m still having a hard time remembering them. All these different tenses and conjugations confuse me. I have a lot of things to review, but I now have a better idea what people mean when I hear them say words with a different conjugation. I’m finding that there’s really not that many verbs used in daily conversations, but there’s so many different conjugations for each word that if you didn’t know about them they may sound like they’re different words.

Chances are, though, that if you conjugate a verb improperly, the person you’re talking to will still understand you. So I’m trying not to think about it too much. I think it’s more important to just keep practicing speaking, which is actually a little hard to do in Lake Atitlan as most people I met where I’m staying speak English. A lot of the locals in the area also speak a different language, which appears to be a Mayan language.

My next stop is Quetzaltenango (or “Xela” for short). This city is very popular for learning Spanish as there’s not many English-speakers in the area which really forces you to immerse yourself. Not sure yet if I’m signing up for classes at a language school. I’m thinking of just working with a private tutor for 2-3 hours a day to start with. I met someone in Tulum who recommended his teacher to me, who I hope is available.