People thinking about an immersion trip usually ask us two things: how much Spanish they will really speak, and what they will actually be doing all day. This post answers the second question. Here is a normal weekday in La Fortuna de Bagaces, the small town in Guanacaste, near the Miravalles volcano, where our students live and study.
The day at a glance
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| Around 7:00 | Breakfast with your host family |
| Before 8:00 | Walk to class, stopping at the print shop for your pages |
| 8:00 to 12:00 | Class, with a short break around ten |
| Midday | Lunch, usually with the family |
| 2:30 to 6:00 | An afternoon activity, four days a week |
| Around 7:00 | Dinner with the family |
| Evening | Your teacher writes tomorrow’s material |
Class runs Monday to Friday, twenty hours a week. Weekends are yours.
Morning: breakfast and the walk to the print shop
Your day starts around seven, at the breakfast table with your host family. It is a short meal, but it is your first Spanish of the day, and nobody expects it to be perfect.
Then you walk to class. On the way you stop at the print shop in the village and collect the pages your teacher wrote for you the night before, usually between 10 and 30 of them. Printing costs about $25 a week, and you pay it at the shop as you go.
Those pages are the heart of the program. They are not grammar drills printed off the internet. They are built around you: the verb you needed yesterday afternoon, the thing you tried to tell your host mother at dinner, the words you asked for and forgot.
8:00 to 12:00: class
Class runs for four hours, with a short break around ten. Depending on your level and who else is here that week, you study one-to-one or in a small group of up to five people at your level, always with a certified teacher. The price is the same either way.
There is no test on your first morning. Before you travel, you have a short call with your teacher so she knows your level and what you want from your weeks. It is a conversation, not an exam. By the time you sit down, your first lesson is already written.
Part of the morning gets you ready for the afternoon. If you are going riding, you learn the parts of a saddle. If you are visiting a dairy, you learn the words for what happens to milk. You head out already holding the vocabulary you will need.
Midday: lunch
Lunch is normally with your host family, though you are free to eat on your own or at another time. It is a good moment to read back through the morning’s pages, or simply to rest before the afternoon.
2:30 to 6:00: the afternoon activity
Four afternoons a week, you go out into the town with an instructor. The person leading you is not a tour guide reading from a script. It is the cattle farmer, the artist, the man who runs the village shop: people who do that work for a living and are used to explaining it slowly, in Spanish, to someone who is still learning. Most activities run from half past two until six, though some take longer.
More than twenty activities run here, four of them in any given week. A few examples:
- Horseback riding, the one almost nobody skips
- A walk down to the Cabro Muco waterfall
- Milking cows by hand at a working dairy
- The petroglyphs of the Bagatzi
- Las Hornillas crater
- Cooking classes and wooden mask carving
- Dancing: merengue, cumbia, bachata and salsa
You do not pick from a fixed menu before you come. We build your weeks around your level, what interests you, and what is actually happening in town that week: the season, the farm work, the river.
Some activities can only happen in the morning. Milking is the obvious one. On those days class moves to the afternoon, from 1:00 to 5:00, and your twenty hours stay the same.
Around 7:00: dinner with the family
Dinner is the long meal of the day, and it is the best Spanish practice you will get. You always have something to talk about, because you spent the afternoon doing something. You will not understand everything, especially at first. That is normal, and host families here are used to beginners.
While you are at the table, your teacher is writing. What you did that day, and what you struggled to say, goes into tomorrow’s pages. By Friday you have a stack of paper that no other student has, because no other student had your week.
Your first day, and your weekends
Your first day is a little different. When you arrive, you go straight to your host family’s house. Someone from the program introduces you, shows you your room and walks you round the village so you know where the classroom and the print shop are. Class starts the next business day, so if you arrive on a Saturday, you start on Monday.
Weekends are free. Some students travel, some stay with their family. Either way, just tell us your plans so nobody worries.
Is this rhythm right for you?
If you like structure in the morning and real life in the afternoon, it probably is. Every week includes 20 hours of class, seven nights with a host family with three meals a day, and four afternoon activities. You can see everything that is included on our Programs page, and read more about the afternoons on our language activities page.
Want to see what your own weeks could look like? Tell us your dates, how many weeks and your level, and we will send you a written plan and price the same day.