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Traveling in another country
is so much more fun if you can speak the national language
- even just a little bit. If you can't speak it, learning
the language can become a wonderful part of the journey.
Here's a suggestion for your next foreign traveling event:
begin your trip by attending a language school in your
destination country.
Years ago, my first trip
outside the U.S. was to Guatemala. I decided to begin by
attending a language school and then tour the country with
a friend. I enrolled with a Spanish language institute in
the city of Quezaltenango (nicknamed Xela) on a
colleague's recommendation. This particular school boarded
its students with Guatemalan families, which appealed to
me because of the total immersion in the language and
culture.
The adventure of traveling
abroad was new to me then, and I was happy that the
institute had sent an enrollment packet with very clear
instructions. They assumed that I spoke no Spanish, (a
good assumption in my case, since two semesters of college
Spanish hadn't quite made a conversational expert out of
me!). Arriving at the Guatemala City airport armed with
passport and the school's instructions, I made it through
customs and out to the street for a taxi. The driver read
my note in Spanish and drove me to one of the three hotels
the school had suggested. At the hotel, the desk personnel
spoke English, and I was soon settled for the night.
Next morning, I took the
bus to Xela, and after the several hours journey, watching
the countryside change as we rolled by, I arrived at the
school ready to meet my tutor, my host family, and start
exploring the city before beginning classes next day. It
was exciting to be in another country, all on my own and
yet to have people prepared to guide and assist me. It's
far superior to using a Fodor Guide, and yet a bit more
adventurous than traveling with a tour group.
Each student had a personal
Spanish tutor. We met for a sit-down session every day,
playing language games to build vocabulary and having
conversations for practice. For lunch, all the students
and tutors gathered to converse in larger groups. Since we
were there from around the world, everyone used the one
language in common: Spanish. Some of the students were
there only briefly, for a brush up before continuing their
journey. The tutoring cycles were one week long.
Students like me who were
continuing at the institute for another week or more made
weekend plans, with assistance from the school if needed.
One time, some of us rented mountain bikes and traveled to
a hot springs resort. Another time, we took the bus to a
beach on the Pacific and stayed a couple nights. The
language school ended up being a sort of frame for
exploring Guatemala. One of the best parts of my trip was
living with my Guatemalan host family. By sharing meals
and being involved with them in other day to day
activities, I had a sense of the culture that is not
possible to have from staying at a hotel.
At the end of three weeks,
I said good-bye to my Guatemalan family and my Spanish
tutors, and connected with my friend to travel together to
the Mayan ruins of Tikal. I was comfortable enough with
the language by now that I could get around, although I
really wasn't fluent.
We traveled in Tikal and
Antigua and to Atitlan. These are heavily touristed areas,
and we would not have had to speak Spanish. The people who
worked with tourists generally spoke far better English
than I spoke Spanish at the time. But it was more fun to
speak the language of the place, and it was the start of
becoming fluent. Most of all, my weeks at the school and
with the host family were a highlight of my travels in
Guatemala, not a precursor nor separate from the journey,
and the experience enriched my life, which is what travel
is meant to do.
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