Teachers don’t cry

Date: 09/12 – 15/12
City: San Andres, Guatemala
Kilometres ridden: 63
Cumulative kilometre: 27591

We packed the bike and had breakfast, took a couple of pictures of our accommodation and the wildlife around.

We were waiting until 10AM when the internet was available again. We needed to get a confirmation from our language school, and we got it! Somebody on a motorcycle will meet us on the Island of Flores, behind one particular hotel at 2PM. Not sure why we couldn’t meet us at the school? So we went on our way. At a petrol station stop we meet two bike riders – Damian and Alexander – from Argentina. They ask questions about the Guatemala/Belize border and the Belize/Mexico border, how much money they had to pay and what the process was. Shortly after they continued to the Belize border and we on to the Island of Flores. Just after 2PM a motorcycle rider appeared and guided us to the school, where we finally meet Ernesto, the organizer of the courses and accommodation. He showed us where we could park our bikes safely and our host – Almi – arrived and opened the door to the secure bike park. It was the unused house of her brother, where the bikes where safely looked up :).
After settling into our room, Almi introduced us to the rest of the family: Raul, her husband, Kevin, her son and Naomi, her daughter. In addition there where two dogs – Doggy the dog of the house – Boody, neighbour’s dog who appears at her house as soon she has students, one goat and two turtles.

After the introduction we started to make some lemonade together, which was fun. Maybe we can do the same with our grapefruits at home.

We were keen to have a look at the lake, so we went for a short stroll to the beach and a dog – Boody – was with us all the time. We were a bit concerned that the dog would get run over by cars or motorcycles, since he was completely oblivious to them. In the end we arrived safely at the house and could just witness a wedding from the rooftop.

Almi very nicely and patiently talked to us, which was not easy. She cooked Spaghetti with rice and something cooked in Banana leaves, it tasted nice. Then her husband arrived and we had a nice conversation with him. Seems they have a problem with a virus scanner on their computer, we will have a look at that later on. Tomorrow at 8AM the Spanish school starts.

The next day was our first school day, the bags are packed and the school is in walking distance, just 20m from our accommodation.

After the first day, it felt like my head would explode. So after school we had a power nap. Once completed, we went on a small excursion to the town centre – a few steep uphill roads, but the view from there was nice.

In the evening we went swimming with Almi and the kids, which was nice since the ambient temperature was still high. The next days in school went well; I adore the patient my teacher showed when he described the same words over and over again. The daily routine was: go to school after breakfast, come home have a power nap, then we did homework and in the evening we studied Spanish at the terrace until the sun went down (not sure how the bottle of beer came into the picture…) 😉 .

And in the morning, I asked ????? – my teacher – not to cry when he was correcting my homework, and here are both our hero’s, ????? and Julia.

The conclusion of this week is, ‘Spanish teachers don’t cry’ 😀. Sigrid wanted to take some pictures, so I was pretending to know what I’m doing.

We really enjoyed being part of a family, so when Almi had to peel more than 150 bananas I offered to help, since Sigrid tried to fix her computer overrun by viruses. The peeling was finished it in no time, but the computer took considerably longer since the virus prevented a virus checker download (a good old USB stick with linux and virus scanner solved the problem in the end).

Almi does a lot of volunteer work; she teaches in a school twice a week and helpes in school to wrap Christmas gifts for kids. One day we went with here to the school to help, some people worked, some played silly with the kid.