Antigua, Guatemala: Farewell Antigua!!

This week is my last week here in Antigua, Guatemala which I have called home for the past two and a half months. I’ve had some great times here, and some amazing experiences. I have met some wonderful people, and a few people that weren’t so wonderful. I know that it’s going to be sad leaving, and although I really like it here, and I love my Spanish school, I think it’s high time to get out there and do some hardcore traveling!

As far as my Spanish goes, I have made a lot of progress and I can have small, simple conversations, but I’m far from fluent. I would really love to spend another month or so here at the school, however, in taking some advice from Tim Ferris (the author of the 4 Hour Work Week, which is one of my favorite books) on one of his blog posts; the goal of progressing with language learning should be to lose the training wheels as quickly as possible, and to accelerate your learning by screwing up as much as possible in uncontrolled environments (check out the link, it’s a great post on the subject). So I believe that it’s high time to get out there and start really using my Spanish!

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/09/22/why-language-classes-dont-work-how-to-cut-classes-and-double-your-learning-rate-plus-madrid-update/#more-609

As far as my last week of preparation goes, I have also switched my strategy of learning Spanish from spending a lot of time on the grammatical aspects of the language (which I have been doing in, and outside, of class for the past 9 weeks), to just powering through and learning as many words as possible to expand my vocabulary. Proper grammar can take years to learn, and I think it would give me a better ROI for my time spent during my last week here learning a massive amount of vocabulary. So, for the past few days I’ve been hanging out in my spare time and just memorizing flash cards. A LOT of flash cards.

With that said, on Sunday night I’m going to begin heading to Belize by way of Petén. Now I know that I had said in one of my earlier posts that I wasn’t going to go to Belize, but that was before I found out that I could easily take a bus there from the Mayan Temples of Tikal for about $16 rather than the $430 for a round trip flight from Guate. So I’m definitely going to check out Belize for a few days and sample the giant lobsters that I’ve heard so much about!

After a few days in Belize, I’m planning on taking a 3 to 4 day bus trip south, through Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and down to San Jose Costa Rica, and then on to Panama City. I’ll probably end up hanging out in Costa Rica for a week or so just to check it out, but I really think that there’s going to be way too many gringos there for my liking based on what I’ve heard about the place from other people I’ve talked to. You know, I could never understand why Americans like to go places where there are a lot of other Americans, and where a lot of things are “Americanized”. If you like that sort of thing I guess more power to you, but you’re probably better off just staying in the US and saving your money.

So those are my tentative plans, and as of right now I’d like to say, “Farewell to Antigua! I will truly miss you!” Hopefully, I’ll be lucky enough to live a long life and make it back here some day. In the mean time, look out giant lobsters… Here I come! Oh Yeah!!!

PS. I also decided to post a video that I made earlier today (in Spanish), as well as a few of my favorite pictures from the last 2 ½ months here in Antigua (at the end of the video, so be sure to check them out).

**Please excuse my Spanish, as the video was made spontaneously with only 2 takes by speaking off the top of my head... Enjoy!!