OLÉ, Organización Linguistica de Español, has been selected by some Seminaries in the US to send their seminarians for Spanish language training. I think one of the reasons for their selection is that OLÉ is located in Querétao, a very Catholic city. How is it so? I’ll tell you in another entry. This program arranges for students to stay with families of the local people. They would take care of food and lodging for the students while they attend class every morning. Mount Saint Mary Seminary incorporates with OLÉ to include the spiritual component, so that our daily schedule includes Mass and holy hour.
I usually wake up around 6:30 and have breakfast with my family before leaving for class at 8:00 am. The walk to school is about 20 minutes. We seminarians would have Morning Prayer together before class starts at 9:00. From the placement test, I am placed in 2nd to the lowest level. Each session is 55 minutes. For the first two sessions I have Grammar, and after the 30 minute break, we have Conversation session. There is one instructor in the Grammar, but two instructors in the Conversation class. I guess that would make the conversation practice go more smoothly.
Our school is very beautiful. Too beautiful that it looks more like a vacation home. The staff and instructors are extremely friendly and helpful. They make a commitment to talk to us in English only on the first day, after that, only in Spanish, although everybody in the faculty and staff has a working knowledge of English. The classrooms are small because the class size is small. There are only 3 students in the class of my level. Some other levels have 4 or 5, or 6 students at most. There seem to be a lot of students from the United States studying in this school. There are some young kids attending classes here too. I’m surprised that their parents allow them to be away in a foreign country for an extended time like this.
OLÉ has been around for 15 years so they know how to accommodate foreign students. For example, they know that Americans are not usually used to Mexican food on the first days, and diarrhea is a common problem for them on the first few days, so they have ready in their medicine cabinet some drugs for stomach problems. Within this week alone, there are 3-4 people who have to take advantage of that accommodation already. I do feel a little funny in my stomach sometimes, too. I still like the food though.
There is a small library with some old books that no one seems to check out. There is a computer room with three computers on which the Internet usually works. There is wireless in the patio, but during busy hours it runs really slow, or stops running altogether. I just discovered today that in El Centro (downtown), there is free wireleless Internet that is a lot stronger and faster. I just happen to see a lot of people using their laptops one day, and they told me that the Internet was free there.
As I’m writing this Entry, the schedule has been adjusted to better fit our schedule. For the first few days, we had to figure out when to do what and where. We often had to come back to school or some church near by later in the day for our daily Mass. But from now on, we’ll have Holy Hour and Mass right after the last class of the day. By the time we finish everything it is close to 2:30 pm. We’d then have the rest of the day free to do homework or whatever else we want to. And Yes, there is a lot of homework.
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