School in Quito

Our teacher Christina

For the last three weeks we have been attending Simon Bolivar Spanish School in Quito with Friday being our last day. We've been doing  lessons together however in hindsight we probably would have learned more with our own teachers since we both tune out whenever the teacher isn't directing a question to us. And each of us is stronger in different areas so we have to wait patiently while the other is mastering something we already understand.

I'm actually pretty good at reading Spanish however I struggle to understand what they're saying, especially when they speak so quickly. When the teacher would ask me a question I would give her a blank stare until she would write it down and then I would know exactly what she was asking. Unfortunately understand what they stay will be crucial.  We have a pretty good basic vocab for communicating however I think our biggest struggle will be understanding what they are saying in response.

We have learned quite a bit in a short period of time with 20 hours of class a week (8:30-12:30). I think our biggest issue however is that we haven't really been speaking that much English outside of school. All of our friends from school speak English, so outside of class we always speak English and whenever we go out, the person with the best Spanish usually takes responsibility for any Spanish communication. So aside from speaking Spanish with our host family, we haven't really put our Spanish knowledge to use. However this will change in Columbia, where they don't speak much English and Trevor and I will be on our own again. 

One of the things I really liked about our Spanish school was that they had daily activities. Everyone Tuesday and Thursday they had Merengue and Salsa lessons, on Friday futball, they also had cooking classes, cocktail lessons, movie nights, etc. We also went on some of the weekend excursions like Banos and all these activities really helped us to get to know the other students in the school and make new friends. This then lead to us spending our afternoon hangout together and evenings dancing  at the discos.