More on Se Habla...La Paz

Now that we’re slightly rested up from the weekend, we can write more about our Se Habla . . . La Paz school experience. We re-posted a couple of pictures from our collage yesterday to show each of our classes. We’re extremely impressed with the school and its’ quality of instruction. The number of instructors varies week to week depending on the number of students enrolled. This past week there were 4 instructors: Merit (who is also the Director of Education), Marta, Alexa and Orlando. Cathryn’s class was taught by Merit two hours each day. She’s an incredible professor who exhibited a warm, friendly personality, great sense of humor, exceptional patience, outstanding English fluency, and teaching methods that were exactly what her students needed. She holds two University degrees (education and accounting), is married to the principal of a Telesecundario school, and has an adorable 4-year-old son. She and her family joined Juli, the school’s Director, and the 6 of us students at a restaurant for dinner Thursday night in La Paz. Orlando, Cathryn’s other professor, also has a friendly personality, great sense of humor and moved our class along at an appropriate pace for our skill level. He’s a young man who was educated in both Mexico and the U.S., plays soccer, and has lots of friends and a cute girlfriend. He taught us a lot of “street slang” in addition to the more formal aspects of the Spanish language. Bob’s instructor, Alexa, is from Mexico City and speaks with a slightly different accent than the Baja-born instructors. She did a great job of bringing Bob along in an encouraging way and was very patient with his ability say the same word incorrectly multiple times.

The last hour of class on Friday, Cathryn, Megan and Bill were exhausted and had over-full brains, so Merit obliged us by spending the hour telling stories and answering questions regarding how certain things work in Mexico. We’ll tell you some of these “how things work” stories in future posts.