How an Immersive Language Course in Mexico City Taught Me to Take Pride in My Heritage — and Stoked My Love of Travel

From in-class learning at a boutique hotel to practicing vocab over dinner at Pujol, here's what to expect from a Fluenz course.

I was one of 11 students staying at a boutique hotel in Mexico City. They included a mother-daughter duo from the Southwest, a woman from New York looking to volunteer abroad, two friends from Texas, and a California man who was between jobs. Though we had different backgrounds, we shared a single goal: to learn Spanish with Fluenz, a company that offers language-immersion classes in Barcelona and throughout Latin America.

My own relationship with Spanish was rooted in guilt and a bit of shame. I’m a Latina raised in the Midwest, but I have little proficiency in the language. My Mexican American dad was raised in Texas in the 1950s, the oldest of 11 children. Spanish was spoken at home, but not in school. My father, like other students, was banned from speaking Spanish there — he was scolded and even spanked if he did.

My father was taught that English is the language of opportunity, which might explain why he encouraged me and my siblings to prioritize it. Over the years, when classmates and colleagues asked why I didn’t speak Spanish, I cringed and held my tongue.

That nervousness came flooding back during my first Fluenz class. Sitting in a colorful, art-filled meeting room, my hands started to sweat as my instructor, Nikola Krestonosich Celis, gave an overview of the program in slow, measured Spanish.

Then he jumped right into verbal exercises. On his iPad, he played a prerecorded dialogue between a waiter and a customer, and we had to decipher what was said. “How many people are there?” he asked us in Spanish. “Where are they?” We responded in Spanish, too. Then it was our turn to make requests. “Yo quiero un café con leche, por favor,” I said. By the end of the morning session, I could already feel my confidence growing.

All five days followed a similar structure: a breakfast of eggs and chorizo or chilaquiles, then a morning class with an instructor and one other student, followed by a group lunch in the hotel’s lush courtyard. Next came an afternoon class, usually one-on-one with a coach. Most sessions took place at the Pug Seal Anatole France, a 26-room hotel housed in a Belle Époque mansion in the leafy Polanco neighborhood.

But the program wasn’t limited to the classroom. One evening, we took a private tour of the National Museum of Anthropology, where we saw statues of Mayan and Aztec gods. Midway through the week, we were taken to dinner at Pujol, the acclaimed modern-Mexican restaurant. We sampled a tostada topped with pineapple purée and cilantro and Pujol’s signature offering, “mole madre,” a plate of aged mole sauce served with tortillas (on the day we visited, the mole was 3,107 days old). Our table was filled with laughter and easy conversation.

On the fourth day, I hit a wall. In Spanish, there are two different words for the verb to be. One, ser, is used for permanent things (like physical traits), while estar is for temporary states (like emotions). My brain felt exhausted and I kept mixing up the two. My coach, Abby Contreras, seemed to pick up on my negative thoughts. “You have to look at how far you’ve already come,” she said. As we reviewed the week, I realized she was right. I had to allow myself some grace.

On the final day, we each had to give a speech to the rest of the group in Spanish. Although I was still nervous, I spoke about how much I had progressed, both linguistically and emotionally, and how I felt more open and vulnerable to the challenge. “Yo quiero ir a todas partes, entonces yo necesito practicar,” I said. “I want to go everywhere, so I need to practice.”

A version of this story first appeared in the November 2023 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Language Lost and Found."

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