First Day in Immersion Class (Monday 5/29/23)

 

Starting the adventure on Pentecost Sunday seems very appropriate given that the first objective would be to learn to speak Spanish. I was praying for the Holy Spirit to send me the gift of understanding languages and communicating with the Hondurans and he answered my prayers with the Guacamaya Immersion School. The headmaster, Enrique, spent his entire Sunday picking us up from the airport, transporting us (~4 hrs) to our host family, Jesus & Tina Peraza, and making sure that we were informed as needed. Arriving at school today, we found that Enrique would be Allen’s one-on-one teacher and I met Carla who was mine. With their patience, persistence, good humor and gentle prodding, we have high hopes. In addition, our host family only speaks Spanish to us, so that will help immensely with the practice, practice, practice…

View of the Guacamaya valley from the school.

We had four hours of intensive training and found that we surprisingly remembered more than we thought we would. We are the only students this week, but more will be coming in the weeks ahead. We also learned that the guacamaya (aka Macaw) is the national bird of Honduras and that Copan Ruinas has an annual festival celebrating restoration of habitat and increasing population of the bird. We both have heard the birds and Allen saw a pair during a brief pause in the lesson allowed by Enrique. For the most part Allen was placed facing the interior wall so he would be not be distracted by the views. And this was done with entirely no hints from me! We look forward to seeing more guacamayas as this is the time they are usually in abundance. It is also the season for mangos – I am pretty sure those two seasonal events are not a coincidence but it seems very good timing for us to be here at this time.

Afterwards we walked around the “Parque Central” and discovered a few promising cafes as well as other businesses. In looking for a bank with an ATM that we could use, we found that armed guards are posted at bank entrances. We successfully obtained some lempiras (Honduran currency) with an exchange rate of about 25 lempira to USD. Allen also found the German brewery that was recommended by Enrique using his nose. He sniffed out the two bags of German malt sitting at the front door.


German Brewery & Restaurant in Copan Honduras

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