Bienvenidos A Veracruz

After a week hiatus for a quick turkey recharge in the US I'm back on the wagon. My next destination is Veracruz, a coastal city in southeast Mexico.

I'll be studying Spanish at the aptly named Language Immersion Institute. Run by an American couple, the school takes a slightly different approach to teaching, emphasizing conversation and activities rather than the traditional lecture format. I found the school by googling Spanish immersion and Mexican cooking: Mexican food has always been my favorite, so I figured I might as well learn how to cook as part of my year of self enrichment.

Everything happens at the school: classes, room, and board. The median age for students here is 49 and as expected I am the youngest one here, but many of the staff are my age and with an early morning wakeup it is probably for the best that there is less of a temptation to stay out past my parents' bedtime.

And here you really are immersed in Spanish. My day began at 7:30 for breakfast with the students/teachers followed by an hour of cooking: today we prepared two different kinds of salsa and a flan.

Next was an hour of conversation and reading one-on-one, followed by an hour walk around the city with my professora. Everyone reconvenes for lunch, and formal classes finally end with another 2 hours of conversation in the afternoon for essentially 8 hours of straight Spanish. After that there is a teacher assigned to hang out on the couch until 9pm for anyone that wants to continue to practice, and there are evening excusions a few nights each week.

I honestly cannot think of a better set-up for Spanish immersion. Everyone has their own room and bathroom with AC, there is high speed wifi throughout the school (same speed as home), you get to eat delicious home-cooked Mexican food, and you are forced to speak Spanish for a minimum of 8 hours each day. But aside from the physical comforts, it is the emphasis on conversation that really wins me over. At this point in my Spanish development I've learned the fundamental aspects of grammar, it is now all about speaking. I also appreciate that the school is half a block from the ocean.