San Blas Spanish School

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October 4th - 8th

The main aim of our week in Cuzco was to improve our Spanish. We thought that we had managed pretty well up until that point by pointing and yelling but figured if we were going to be in South America for a few months, perhaps a touch of Spanish wouldn’t hurt. This was best underlined by an incident that occurred on my second day on the continent.
The Boss and I had caught a cab from Miraflores to Lima’s historic town centre. I thought, based on a jaunty tune from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ “By the Way” album, and the frequent use of the word in Louis de Berniere’s South American trilogy that I was calling my cabbie “mate”, when I said to him.
“Cabron, es bueno”.
A week later I inquired with some Peruvians exactly what the word “Cabron” meant. I discovered the reason the cabby had given me an icy stare as I paid him was due to the fact I had said,
“Cunt, it’s fine.”
So on Monday the 4th of October, we began our first day of Spanish school at San Blas, a block away from our apartment (the school being the way we had found the apartment) and ten or so minutes walk from the Plaza de Armas.
We signed up for group classes, being told that they consisted of between 2 and 4 people. We were also told that there would be two groups of beginners classes, so we were prepared to ask to be put in to separate classes, figuring not spending all day every day together would be a nice change.
Instead, our group class consisted of just the two of us. Though we had also signed up for classes with the hope of meeting some new people, the two person group class was actually pretty good value because the girl in the room next door to us was paying for private lessons and by the end of the week had the same amount of Spanish as the Boss and I.
Our teacher was a Peruvian guy in his mid 20’s named Gustavo. He spoke almost exclusively in Spanish to us and, by the week’s end, it was encouraging how much of what he said we could understand.
To go in to much more detail about a week at school would be tear-inducing boredom. So I’ll say that the Boss and I graduated from “nada” to “poco” Spanish, have a couple of exercise books full of words and questions and rather than point and yell, we now point, think and utter a few words that don’t quite make a sentence but get the point across.

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