Ecuador - Learning Spanish in Quito

Typical dinner with our friendly host family 

After landing back at the airport we were met by a representative from the Simon Bolivar School. He drove us the half hour or so to the house of the host family that would also be our home for the next week. We were looking forward to meeting the family although we were a bit worried since we don't speak any Spanish and we didn't know what is was going to be like there.

We have thought about making a serious effort to learn some Spanish before but nothing had come of our good intentions. We found out that Quito was a good place to learn Spanish since they have the closest dialect to “Spanish Spanish” in Ecuador. Before we left home we used the internet to find a Spanish language school in Quito and booked our place on a 1 week introductory course. There were several schools and in the end we chose the Simon Bolivar School. They also offered various forms of accommodation. We thought the option of staying with a host family for a week sounded an interesting way to also experience how a typical Ecuadorian family lived and of course to get to know them.

After meeting our host family, it soon became clear that with our limited (almost non-existent) Spanish and their equally limited English, communication would be difficult. Luckily they had Wi-Fi and so once again, as in Italy, Google's iTranslate came to the rescue. We didn't use it all the time but sometimes, no matter how hard you try and gesticulate, mime or use whatever comes to hand to try and be understood it is impossible to communicate and iTranslate was the only answer. On the first evening we found out that we were not the only pupils from the language school staying at the house. Christina, from Houston Texas, had been there for about a month and was going to be there for at least another month if not two. It was a great advantage for us having Christina there since she could help with communication when we were struggling. The course started at 08:30 each morning and lasted for 4 hours. Our class consisted of just the two of us and our teacher, Carlos. On the first morning Carlos taught us in his office dressed in a smart suit and tie.  He suggested that we try and sit outside for the second day. The rest of the course was conducted in the less formal atmosphere of the garden and without the suit and tie. Carlos was a great teacher and managed to remain enthusiastic throughout the whole week. We had plenty of homework to do. We did most of this in the afternoons in various cafes in the centre of Quito. We both agreed that learning Spanish in this way for four hours each morning was very effective. There is no way that we would have had the discipline to do four hours each day without being on the course.

On a couple of the afternoons after our homework was finished we visited some of the sites in or around Quito. Since Quito is more or less on the equator we had to make the short trip north to the actual equator. They have set up a kind of Equator Theme Park, which we were afraid would turn out to be a bit of tourist trap. In the end it was actually quite good. There were lots of small demonstrations about the peculiarities of being on the equator, all of them fascinating. I have often heard people discuss or ask whether water goes down the plughole in the opposite direction on the other side of the equator or not. I thought that in theory it would but it is difficult to test in practice since there are so many things that can interfer and influence the flow. However, here they had a very simple test to demonstrate water going down the plughole in different directions depending on which hemisphere it was done in. Whether it was a trick or not everyone seemed to enjoy it. 

After the week we had learned a fair amount of vocabulary and how the present tense works. I'm sure we'll forget a lot of what we've learnt during the week but hopefully when we try to learn some more at a later date it will come back to us. I think we'll find an evening course back home and sign up for something like one evening a week. It was interesting to live with our host family for the week. They were all very friendly to us and tried to understand what we said. They were very used to having people like us staying with them and evidence of this was everywhere to see. There were pictures on the walls and hanging from strings across the ceiling of all the students that had stayed with them over the last ten years. The family was proud of all the connections that they had with people from all over the world. We'll send them a picture of us when we get back home to add to their collection of satisfied students. We really appreciated the hospitality!