or: How to learn French in Mexico
I gave this blog post a subtitle, because my last week in Mexico, wasn’t just about beach, tequila and mexican food. For me, this vacation was one thing in particular: An intense language course.
But let’s start from the beginning. I joined Jean-Nick for a week to Mexico, because he had been invitied to give a presentation to a group of dentists and their assistants. Overall, we were a group of nearly 50 people (the team and their partners), so I knew that this week would be kind of a “group travel”. Even if the partners didn’t need to attend the courses in the morning, we had a schedule of events and group activities.
So far so good. We arrived at the Hotel.. or better say “resort”, because it was huge with pools, restaurants, theme nights, bars… I have to mention that personally, I prefer to go travelling individually, trying to avoid the all-inclusive resorts. I just feel imprisoned, when I stick a whole week at a resort. Anyway, this resort was beautiful and I guess I could “deal” with a week there to be at the beach and relax.
But I overestimated the time to relax: To keep up with the group conversations, I had a week full of discussions in French. I truly can say that this boosted my language skills a lot. Who knew this would happen in Mexico! I felt really motivated and happy to have improved, when, on the next day, I wasn’t able to speak with anyone at all. I had to rest in bed, because I got stomach problems from the food or water. I couldn’t really attend the “white night”, the highlight of the week: It was an evening with the whole group, dressed in white and lots of activities.
To sum up this week, this was a pleasent getaway from the long winter in Canada. Though I missed to travel around and visit some mexican sites an villages, I enjoyed meeting new people and having interesting conversations.
With a short stopover, back in Canada, I’m happy that I continue my travel to California tomorrow. I guess, I will have a little vacation from learning French :).