Jabel Tinamit Spanish School

We spent 2 weeks at Jabel Tinamit Spanish school in Panajachel.  The school is in a very comfortable building with an amazing garden.  The third and fourth levels of the building are open with beautiful views of the town and the surrounding mountains.  From where I sat I could see an 80 foot waterfall, a 300 year old catholic church and Lake Atitlan while I pondered irregular subjunctive verb conjugations.

The school is run by an awesome guy named Gregorio and his wife Candelaria.  To say that they were accommodating would be an understatement.  When we told them that we would need a secure location to park our vehicle, he emptied out their garage (and part of the living room) to fit our Montero.  I never realized how big it was until it was parked inside a building.    He also let us choose whether or not we wanted to study on Saturdays and organized our teachers accordingly.  

Speaking of teachers, we had some great ones.  I spent my time with Patricia.  She is a young mom with 2 cute kids.  She made learning Spanish grammar less irritating and she was relentless in correcting my mistakes.  I think that’s a good thing.  Me with my sucky Spanish needed to be humbled. 

Brett split his time with the owner of the school and his brother Jose.  Jose teased him relentlessly about how he should be dating Kaytie’s cute sister.  I may or may not have showed him a picture or two of her….

Kaytie had a super sweet teacher named Ingrid.  Kaytie remarked that she learned so much more from Ingrid than just Spanish.  She was impressed with her faith and ability to always have a positive outlook, no matter what her circumstances were.

Our home stay was with Amalia and Floridalma.   For about $15/night, they fed us 3 meals a day and gave us a comfortable room to stay in.  Sweet deal!  What made it even better is that Amalia owned a restaurant for 30 years!  She only closed it after her husband, who owned the tailor shop next door, passed away a few years ago.  The food was incredible and they were very kind hosts.  We will miss them dearly.