Hello - or should than be Hola?

We´ve had a slight change of pace this last week; we´ve slowed down a bit and stayed in the same place for 10 days. "Why?" we hear you ask, well we decided that, as we are going to be in South America for a while, we should make more of an attempt at the language, so we signed ourselves up for an intensive bout of Spanish lessons (erm...sorry Brazil you just get the phrase book).

So we are in Sucre a beautiful colonial city in the middle of Bolivia. Our lessons are for 3 hours every morning, then we have a long lunch (as is the custom here) before heading home to do our homework. Being back in school and exercising part of the brain that's not done much for a while, has actually been really good fun (and hard work). And although we are far (miles) from fluency we can say much more than we ever could before. For example, what used to happen is people would talk to us / ask a question and we would have to mumble something about not understanding. Now it's very, very different. People talk to us and we confidently tell them we are learning Spanish then we walk off thinking "Oh b***** I should have used the verb XXXXXXX" or something like that.

Anyway Pete has absolutely loved his lessons, Polly not so much. We think this is partly down to different teaching styles. Gabi, Pete´s teacher, really pushed him to learn lots but to focus on the things that would be useful over the next month or so. Polly´s teacher was more of a perfectionist, focusing on the real nitty gritty stuff and teaching Polly some very strange things - such as the words for cotton, wool and acrylic. I mean honestly when are we ever going to use that in conversation?

Polly´s teacher was also very traditional, serious and never let her guard down. I think she smiled once. Whereas Pete´s teacher was a modern Bolivian lady happy to laugh and joke in lessons, and to talk freely about her life in Bolivia. It was a great experience for Pete but poor Polly had to sit in the classroom next door listening to Pete and his ´other woman´ giggling away, whilst Polly repeated adjectives. The only rest bite Polly got was when they popped out for cake!

In the evenings after class/flirting and homework we´ve been back at the Spanish school ´helping´ teach local children English. We´re not sure what help we've been were, in fact more often than not we caused a diversion from the lesson plan as they asked lots questions about us - namely why we hadn´t got children yet! Although not being naturals in the classroom it was fun to do something different it felt good and gave us a warm feeling. On our last day the class took us out for pizza and even some of the really quiet ones opened up.

During all this we´ve been staying with a Bolivian family. Jorjé, Lumin their two children plus Margarita the housekeeper. It's been a great experience. On day one we were all sign language and smiles and by day 8 we are onto a handful of words - usually in the wrong tense - and sign language and smiles. However on our last day we had a huge Easter meal with the whole family (and the other 3 students in the house). We sat round the table eating traditional Bolivian Easter food (spicy peas, pumpkin and rice pudding being among the highlights) and we actually began to talk properly and hold conversations in Spanish. We covered how we'd enjoyed our lessons, Easter traditions in different countries and of course the success of the local football team. Maybe this is a breakthrough and our remaining weeks will be punctuated by bouts of insightful Spanish conversation with locals? Or maybe we´ll be back to ´Donde esta una baño´ only time will tell.

Right got to go now as we need to pop to the market to buy some new cotton socks.

PS We could have written all this in Spanish but we figured you wouldn´t be able to read it! (except of course for you Pablo. And you Manuel. Oh and you Miguel)