Antigua - CSA

Finally feel like I have found the right school and homestay for me.

The school is called the Christian Spanish Academy and its probably the most professional school in Antigua. It was originally opened to cater for missionaries, and the students still tend to be a pretty serious bunch. Which is good, as at Centro Linguistica no-one really took the Spanish too seriously. My teacher Ana was fantastic and I really felt like I learnt a lot. After three weeks I could have a pretty basic conversation and had enough verbs and phrases to get what I want.

That's not to say that learning Spanish has been easy – anyone that says that learning another language is a walk in the park is just plain lying! There were times when I felt completely swamped, and the idea of learning more verb conjugations and prepositions just seemed like pure torture. But all in all it was a great experience and at the end of the three weeks I passed grade A, only 6 more grades to go!

I also hit the jackpot with my homestay. Janet really is incredibly sweet, and I really feel part of the family. She's a single mother with two teenage kids. Danielle is 15 and pretty shy, and Martin is 16 and probably the biggest fan of the rocky films I have ever seen. Janet sometimes works part time as a Spanish language teacher, and occasionally makes wedding cakes and pastries for different people, but most of her income comes from housing students.

The fact that Janet teaches Spanish is probably one of the best things about the homestay. She is forever picking me up on different things, and knows exactly how to pitch her Spanish to my level. Its really weird, I can be walking down the street and everyone I hear may as well be speaking Russian for the amount that I understand, but yet even I cant translate what Janet's saying I can understand exactly what she's saying.

The house is much smaller and the food a lot simpler than my last house. But who cares, everyone is nice, they all talk to me and you get the feeling that it’s a house with lot of love in it (as opposed to my previous homestay which can only be described as clinical).

But it hasn’t been all hard work here in Antigua. There’s quite a lot going on in Antigua from day, and I had a blast.  For example, and this is just gobsmacking, I saw one of original Cuban members of the Buena Vista Social Club perform live three times – just awesome.