Written by Central America Students, Henry Probolus and Arianna Cochrane
This was our last week in Xela! At the start of the week, we left our hostel and moved in with our host families! It has been such an amazing time experiencing the culture and tasting the amazing food inside our families’ houses! We met and became friends with so many people through the school PLQ, and we have improved our Spanish-speaking conversational skills immensely! Through one-on-one Spanish classes with our teachers, to school group activities such as taking a salsa dance class, attending a lecture about women’s health/rights in Guatemala, and playing a game of fútbol, our Spanish has never been better! ⚽️💃🏽🇬🇹
Our Top Highlights of the Week:
💃🏽 We all had the opportunity to take a Salsa class through PLQ, sadly we did not make chips and salsa, but we learned the basic steps of the dance and all the different and cool motions! Although it was pretty difficult in the beginning, once we got the hang of it, it was so much fun!
🥾 We hiked up Cerro Baúl on Thursday and got to see the amazing view from above Xela. We took pictures on a ledge near a lookout point and slid down big concrete slides on pieces of cardboard. 🛝
🎓 After a long week of intense Spanish immersion classes, we all graduated from PLQ! 🎉
What’s been challenging this week?
The intensive Spanish immersion with our teachers one-on-one has been such a big challenge, as our teachers speak little to no English, but it has definitely helped us learn a lot of Spanish muy rápido!
What are you looking forward to?
We are looking forward to our trek up Lake Atitlán! We get to stay the night camping on the mountain, and we will wake up to watch the sunrise over the lake! After that, we will be doing permaculture farming in Tzununa! We are so excited about the adventures that await us, and we can’t wait to continue to improve our Spanish. 🌄
