SPANISH IMMERSION IN MEXICO

Spanish Language and Mexican Culture Trip

For the number of years that I have traveled in Spanish-speaking countries I have tried to learn a bit of the language. I even signed up for some Spanish classes at the local rec center, but that adventure was somewhat hampered by the fact that it is well and good to learn how to say Buenos Dias and Gracias and the like but it is entirely a different ma

Some years ago I learned that the city of Antigua in Guatemala had a cottage industry of Spanish immersion language schools. In fact I had friends who had taken some of these programs and they were very pleased. I always wanted to take one, but the problem was that they were two weeks minimum and taking that time off away from the dive business and not going diving seemed like a waste of time.

Then I sold the store and found that I had a lot of time on my hands. One day I read about an ElderHostel program at Cuernavaca Mexico that combined Spanish Language immersion with local history classes. It sounded like fun and for once I had the time and the money so I signed up.

It was a rather new experience for me. Up until that trip I had never been a customer on a trip out of the country wh

We all arrived at various times on Friday, Jan 26 in Mexico City and made our way to the Hotel Bristol. The hotel was chosen because it is near the US Embassy.  At the hotel I met my roommate for the next two weeks, Meg Marshall from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I don’t know what criteria that ElderHostel uses to assign roommates but Meg and I could not have been more compatible. Except for the fact tha

There were 37 people on this trip. Some of them were very advanced in their knowledge of Spanish and some very novice – like me. 

That evening we attended a cocktail party and dinner where Jim Horn of Educational Travel Service, Inc, our trip leader, went over the details of the weeks with us. In the morning after breakfast we boarded a bus for the trip to Cuernavaca. 

We went directly to Universidad Internacional, the language school, for a placement test – which amounted to having to conjugate a bunch of verbs in a document. I was not totally clueless but was afraid that I might just guess right and end up in a class that was too advanced for me so I took the coward’s way out and just put my name at the top of the page. That way I got placed in an entry le