Another Article From A Travel To...
Speak The Language For More Traveling Pleasure
by Nicole Minard
http://www.atravelto.com/
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.
Several years ago, I made a visit to Guatemala. I traveled there alone to attend a language school and arranged to meet a friend to tour the country later. The Spanish language institute I chose was in the city nicknamed Xela (Quezaltenango). I selected this school partly because the fee included boarding with a Guatemalan family. That appealed to me because of its total immersion factor~ language and culture.
The institute had sent excellent instructions with my enrollment materials. The assumption was that I spoke no Spanish at all - which was basically true: two semesters of Spanish hadn't put me in the league of conversational expertise. Arriving alone and travel-weary at the airport in Guatemala City, I made it successfully through customs and proceeded to the street for a cab. The driver looked at my information printed in Spanish and drove me to one of the hotels the school had indicated in the packet of instructions. The desk personnel spoke English and soon had me situated comfortably for the night.
I took the bus to Xela next morning. After several hours of enjoying watching the scenes change as we rolled by, I arrived at the school ready to meet my tutor, my host family, and begin exploring the city before classes began next day. I felt excited to be in an unfamiliar country, on my own and yet aware that people were available to guide and assist me if I asked. This mix of independence and support is far superior to relying only on a Fodor Guide, or traveling with a guided tour group.
Each day, I met with my Spanish tutor and we had a one-on- one session of conversation, playing language games to build vocabulary, and so on. At lunchtime, all of the students and tutors gathered. Since we were there from all around the world, we used Spanish to converse. The tutoring was in week-long cycles; some students were there for just one week, brushing up their Spanish before continuing their travels.
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.
After three weeks at the school, I parted with my tutors and my Guatemalan family and went off to meet my friend from the U.S. to travel together to the Mayan ruins of Tikal. By now, I was comfortable enough with the language that I could get around, although I really wasn't fluent - my verb conjugations remained mainly in the present tense. People were very patient, thank goodness.
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.
Nicole Minard's articles on topics related to travel are published in <a href="http://atravelto.com">The Travel News</a> the leading resource on-line for information about travel. Visit the complete archive of articles here: http://www.atravelto.com/