Learn Spanish
Here is a glowing endorsement of an excellent Spanish language school in Mexico, made be Mac and Catherine Tayor, Leg 2-2001:
(Mac and Catherine recently took delivery of a new Nauticat 42 and after extensive NW cruising are preparing for exciting cruising adventures further afield)
There are many language schools in Mexico, with differing purposes. We studied at the Baden-Powell Institute in Morelia, Michoacan. Morelia is a beautiful colonial town, halfway between Mexico City and Guadalajara, about a 3 hour drive inland from Zihuatanejo. The city is not visited by non-Mexican tourists, which makes it an ideal place to study Spanish. The center of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the colonial architecture. It is beautiful. Morelia has three large, and several small Universities, with over 70,000 students. The city is extremely friendly, welcoming, and safe we walked everywhere at all hours of the day and night.
Having spend my entire professional career as an educator, I cannot say enough in favor of Baden-Powell. We attended group classes (largest class had 4 persons) for 4 hours each day for 8 weeks. There was a different instructor for each hour. The curriculum was organized, disciplined and professional. The pace was fast, and we had lots of homework. The teachers all had a very high energy level, and coordinated with each other extensively to maximize each individual’s approach. When I mentioned that I was interested particularly in marine vocabulary, there was a lot of individual attention. It was definitely not a school dedicated to “tourist Spanish” or “conversational Spanish”, both code words to indicate a sloppy approach to facilitating shopping. Neither Catherine nor I had studied Spanish before. After 8 weeks we are reading and comprehending at about a 4th year college Spanish level. We can conduct business, talk on the phone, read pretty much everything, and talk to non English speakers, not fluently, but effectively. Mexico is a very different place when you can talk to non-gringos. We found it enchanting.
We rented a very nice apartment from the school, complete with cable TV and wireless internet (both major luxuries for us liveaboards). So we also got to shop in the local food markets, cook only Mexican dishes for a couple of months, and get to know our neighbors. We made some good friends.
Baden-Powell has an excellent website www.baden-powell.com. You can read more about our experience in Mexico and see some photos (and some of Catherine's paintings) on our blog svindigo.blogspot.com.
Hope this is helpful.
Mac
Illustrated updates at:
svindigo.blogspot.com
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