Language Study - La Ceiba

We are currently in La Ceiba, our second language study location on the north coast of Honduras. (location #3 in the interactive map in the right panel). We arrived here Sunday a week ago for a three week stint in a different location, different school, different instructors.

Different location: Oh yeah! Very different! This is a coastal location, much flatter and tends to be much hotter. Although last week we mostly experienced wet, rainy, humid weather - it was really gloomy. Today (Monday) has been the first dry and sunny day - which I much prefer, even if it is a lot hotter. I (Virg) ended up getting a nasty cold last week and could hardly talk, which was a real challenge in language study on Thursday morning. Fortunately there was a national holiday Friday soI had a chance to recuperate before starting classes this week.

We are also living in a city - the third largest in Honduras. Although it's not nearly like San Pedro Sula or Tegucigalpa, it is indeed a city and has places one goes and places one avoids. Unfortunately, the beach front near the city is one of those places that one avoids - most folks don't come to La Ceiba for this beach.... it's more of a jumping off point to the beaches of the Bay Islands, farther out to sea, or for exploring the mountains just inland from La Ceiba.


Different School: Oh yeah!
We got spoiled at the Guacamaya school in Copan. The school in La Ceiba is right along a busy street in the town and the class rooms are much more crowded. Classes are all held indoors. Part of the problem may be that there was a fire on the second floor about two months ago and that area is being rebuilt..... they may have held classes there previously.

Different Instructors: The instructors are very different as well - with good points and bad. They are certainly not as friendly here, so we feel blessed to have attended Copan first. My instructor, Esther (same name as my mother!!), has helped me out a lot though. She is filling in some of the language gaps from my Copan experience and pushes me to use my Spanish to talk and construct sentences using advanced verb tenses. She is uncompromising, more of a perfectionist than I am ... so that has been an interesting interaction.

Unfortunately for Kathy, her first instructor was a bit of a disaster. She was difficult to understand (I was having trouble understanding her when talking at break times) and she didn't seem to know the lesson materials. We ended up asking for a change on Wednesday. Kathy's new instructor, Karla, seems to be working out a lot better. I commented in an earlier post about our discussions with our Copan instructors on religion during lessons and how interesting and animated those got. With our La Ceiba instructors.... well, let's just say religion isn't a driving force in our conversations.

On the positive side, our living arrangements here in La Ceiba are wonderful. For these three weeks we opted for an apartment where we could interact with a family, but prepare our own meals and live more independently.

For those of you who may feared we will be living in a grass hut - let me submit a few photos. Our apartment is on the second floor in the back of this house - the home of Senor Isaul and Dona Carmen. It is a beautiful home in a neighborhood called Colonia El Sauce (prounounced: sah-ou'-say). I love saying that. I assumed it referred to a local food specialty, but when I inquired what typed of sauce it was named after I was informed, "no (gringo), no es salsa, es un arbol" (translated, "it's a TREE stupid"). Oh well.... I still enjoy telling the taxi to take us home to "sah-ou'-say" from the grocery store.

The apartment is small, but very clean and nicely furnished. The kitchen is tiny and doesn't have a stove, so meal preparation requires some ingenuity using an electric skillet, crock pot, microwave and toaster. So far, we have eaten really well though. And I do enjoy my cereal and coffee for breakfast. I enjoy tipico Honduran cuisine, but I missed my tipico North American breakfast.

The rest of the apartment is small, but more than adequate for the two of us.

The best part of the arrangement is an open air covered porch outside the apartment. Since there are no other students staying here, we have basically exclusive use of that space. A great place to eat our meals, study, and use the internet..... yep, the family has wireless internet!

We are trying not to get spoiled, because we know it won't always be this way. But for the meantime, we'll enjoy.
















There are more photos on our web album if at all interested. We did a web-cam with our grandchildren last night and Anya was very curious about our "pink" temporary house. So we posted a batch of photo's for her to see.