Spanish School Guide

2005-10-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

Or, a Latin American town without a central park? Weird...

Newcomers to Quetzaltenango may notice a heartening sight - the central park is temporality closed for renovations. Long-termers are facing a different reality: this has become pretty much a permanent situation.

The park dates from 1880, but took its present from back in 1938. Until 2004, it was one of the social center of town - a place for buskers, sunbakers, pigeon-feeders, gossips and heavy petters to hang out. Then the Committee for the Historical Center announced its intentions to renovate the park. Six wells were dug and various archaeological specimens were extracted. These are still in laboratories, being carbon tested to determined their age, but it is fairly sure that they are from both the pre- and post-Colonial eras.

Work began in earnest in October 2004. The north end of the park was fenced off. The initial idea was to repair the paving, which was lifting and cracking in various places. The plan soon grew to incorporate four stages: 1) restoring the paving and access stairways; 2) restoration of monuments and decorations such as the columns, kiosk, urns and lights; 3) improving disabled access to the park; and 4) finding a "solution" to the informal vendors (shoeshiners, newspaper and fruit vendors, etc) who bring life to the park, but also can impede access.

A semi-controversial plan is also on the table at the moment - to make the sections of the 11th Avenida and 7th Calle that border the park into pedestrian walkways. There have been various reopening dates fro the park, the most recent of which, the 16th of September, sailed past without an official murmur. A major problem confronting construction has been the lack of available funds... it appears that work was started with about half the required cash available. Thanks to a hastily cobbled (sorry) together "buy a brick" campaign and the release of some Municipal emergency funds, work is progressing, and a new date, the 28th of October has been set.

Vamos a ver...

The above article is from the October edition of XelaWho, Quetzaltenango´s leading culture & nightlife magazine.

ConeXion Xela
Spanish Language Schools Guide

Xela, after Stan

2005-10-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

The city of Xelajú is slowly going back to its normal life. So, it will take a while. For example, all the muds that came down with the rain in front of my house has been scraped from the road and piled up, and waiting to be picked up. The main highway is still closed but it should reopen tomorrow. Because of this closure, the price of foods, gasoline, etc have went up. 1 pound of tomatoes used to be around Q2-Q2.5 but now they are Q3-Q3.5. Most of gas station don't have gas and those do have gas are surrounded by long lines. Oh, 1 pound of chicken now costs Q15 which is double the cost of pre-Stan days.

ConeXion Xela
Spanish Language Schools Guide

Raining "gatos y perros"!!!

2005-10-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

It has been raining for several days straight and although it wasn't as devastating as Katrina, it has done quite a damage in Guatemala. In Xela, the electricity and water is still coming back on and off, and internet connection is down for the most of places. Lots of trees came down. It's too bad that the big old tree in front of National Beer Brewery is now gone. We still have lots of muds on the road but things should be OK in a couple of days around here.

ConeXion Xela
Spanish Language Schools Guide

How to get most Spanish out of your dollar.

2005-08-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

Congratulations on your decision to study abroad Spanish! Yes, one of the best way to improve your Spanish is to immerse yourself in the environment and live the language. But the other side of the coin is that the study abroad experience requires a huge commitment on your part. For example, money. Depending on how you do it, it could cost you a small fortune. In order to harvest the great return of improved Spanish, you have to invest in yourself, right? But what if you can optimize the investment by getting the most Spanish out of your dollar? This article is about that. More specifically speaking, there are 3 ways to obtain maximum amount of Spanish by studying abroad. There are: 1) Picking the right country to study Spanish in, 2) Picking the right airline, 3) Not signing up with the language school agency.

Out of the 3, Picking the right country holds the utmost importance because it will determine significant portion of your study abroad expense. Of course, the countries determine the available touristic resources, difference in how the Spanish is spoken, etc, but we'll focus on monetary issue today. Let's say that you are looking for an one-on-one class in Spanish because you've already taken some high school and college Spanish class with 30 other students and that didn't give you much opportunity to practice. As you know, Spanish is spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries and thus, you now have a huge selection. And cost of the study varies significantly from one country to another. For instance in Spain, the individual class in Spanish for a week runs around $850-$900. If you want more complete immersion living with a host family, there goes another $350-$400. If you are going to study for 4 weeks, it's a safe bit to budget around $6000! On the other hand, there are less expensive options in Central America. In Guatemala, you can find both the one-on-one Spanish class and homestay within $150-$250. You definitely don't want to ignore this enormous range of difference.

Another huge expense is the transportation fee. Since most of us will be going to the destination country by air, we'll look at how you can save on airfares. But, first of all, let me just tell you that since I don't work in travel industry, I don't have the insider's secret. I don't have the travel wisdom of a nomadic super backpacker either. All I can give you is a few web sites where you can begin shopping around for your airfare. They are: Economy Travel , Airline Consolidators and Best Fares. If you have been buying tickets from places like Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity, you will see the difference. I guarantee it.

Finally, another way to cut the cost of your Spanish learning experience is to go direct to the Spanish school by skipping through the language school agencies. When you search for Spanish schools on the web, most likely, those agencies are the ones that you will encounter first. They come up on the top of the search engine list and they offer lots of options too. After all, that's their job. They are the "advertising agency" for Spanish school. They charge tons of money from the individual Spanish schools and from you too by marking up about 10%-20% on top of the tuition you pay to the school. Yes, some of them do offer fairly nice information of the countries and schools and we should use them to familiarize ourselves about the potential destinations. But it's not rare that those agencies have problems communicating your needs to the school (My friend had to wonder around the street of Guatemala with all his luggage because the agency didn't notify the arrival time to the school) and there is no point paying extra $50 for the "introductory packet" from the agency when you sign up with them because that's the copied one from the Spanish school. So, once you find out the name of the school you are interested from the agency, just go to Google or Yahoo and type in the name of the school to go to the school's home page and sign up directly.

In conclusion, I'd recommend that you use the language school agency to learn about the going price of tuition in various Spanish speaking countries and when you find a school of your interest, go to their web site to register directly with them. Finally, use the discount airfare web sites indicated previously as a reference point to shop around for your best airfare. With this little bit of research, you are well on your way to get most Spanish out of your bucks!

About the author...
Gen Takahashi is originally from Japan and is an ex-Japanese language teacher. Based on his previous study abroad experience of learning Spanish, he now dedicates his time bringing together the students, the Spanish teachers and the host families in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. If you have any question or would like to share your experience please feel free to visit ConeXion Xela or write to Gen at gen@conexionxela.com.
Spanish Language Schools Guide

Coming soon!

2005-07-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

Thinking about studying abroad to improve your Spanish? This blog will touch on various topics such as getting most Spanish out of your dollar, picking the right Spanish school and other tips to help you maximize your Spanish learning experience. ConeXion Xela
Spanish Language Schools Guide