A great way for students to immerse themselves in Guatemalan life is by staying with a Guatemalan host family during their studies. Staying with a Guatemalan family will give you the chance to learn first-hand about Guatemalan life and to practice your Spanish outside the school environment. Our families provide students with a private room, three meals a day for all seven days (including Sunday) and an enjoyable, interesting experience. They can accommodate vegetarians, vegans and students with food allergies. In most of the houses, students will share a bathroom. all the families who team up with Utatlan Utatlan are located 5 to 10 minutes’ walk from the school, in Zone 1 of the city.
In busy periods families will often have more than one student staying with them (either from Utatlan or a student or volunteer from elsewhere), but all families encourage only Spanish to be spoken in the house. If you would like to be the only student in the house, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Most students stay with the same family, but you are more than welcome to change families every week so you can get to know other families and customs. You can start your family homestay any day of the week, even if you haven’t yet started classes. If you stay with your family for more or less than the 7 days, we will discount or add Q80.00 per day. Couples who stay in a host family can stay together, but they pay per person as the money goes principally to food costs. Students pay the host family cost as part of their tuition fee on Mondays. As there is a high demand for host family places, Utatlán cannot organize host families for non-students.