Back at the grinding wheel...

Today was the second day back for us at school. We truly love learning Spanish. Nothing worth doing is easy, and this definitely holds true here. Here are a few of the things that will be expected of us throughout this trimester, which ends in December. For me, Sean, in my conversation class, I have to create a “route” of about 5 or more people outside of the school in the community to go and ask pre-specified questions every week. From their responses I have to make a report and turn it in to my teacher and also discuss it with my classmates. This happens every week. I will also be responsible for a weekly Bible study of just around 20 minutes. Twice this semester I will have to prepare a Bible study for a full hour. And even today we started to discuss things such as the Big Bang Theory, kids of missionaries, some humorous things that happened to me in the past, and what I think of violent sports like boxing. This is just part of the format for my conversation class. At times it is hard to get your point across in English let alone Spanish with topics like these. I will also have to give a “trade” type presentation. Since I am a pilot and mechanic I will be expected to teach my classmates all the parts of an airplane, what they do, and then explain how it all comes together for the miracle of flight. Again, this is no easy matter in English, but I will need this anyway, so the course is very practical for us to not only obtain Spanish, but know it as it relates to our respective trades, pilot, pastor, doctor, ect. Rebecca’s conversation class is very similar to mine. Supposedly next trimester, our last, we will have to give around a 2-hour presentation on the country of our expected service, for us, Ecuador. They really challenge us, but one of the quickest ways to grow is by being stretched (how do you say Gumby in Spanish). We also have grammar class, which we are learning is getting deep quickly. It is hard sometimes to file some of this information for use when there is nothing remotely close in English to compare it to. Yet, we are learning this language and still having fun. On top of all of that we are involved in other things at the school. I am the worship coordinator, which means not only do I have a worship team of my own to lead, but I am also responsible for all the other teams that I need to manage and make sure they are scheduled for the appropriate chapel service, which we have twice a week. This is fun though, and I really enjoy it. Rebecca on the other hand is the treasurer for student council. What this really boils down to is I now have to opportunity to get us a new sound system at the school as well as take Becca out on a few more dates. Wait, this is beginning to sound something like Enron. I wonder how that translates to Spanish. Maybe sleeping with the treasurer isn’t full of all the perks I thought. Needless to say we are really busy, which is a vast difference from our recent break. I believe I experienced a level of boredom unprecedented in my life before. It was awful. Now we are at the other extreme, barely getting our homework done, making dinner, cleaning the dishes (we are the dishwasher here), putting Brooklyn to bed, ect, ect, ect. And then we go to bed around 9-10 at night. Yes I know this sounds early. But I am up at 4:30 a.m. to get the day going on the right foot, and overall this culture just rises earlier than we did back home. It took a little adjustment at first, but it is pretty easy now. Costa Rica being close to the equator experiences close to 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness every day, regardless of the time of year. So this schedule suits us fine since the sun is up around 5 a.m. and goes down around 5:30-6 p.m. And when you don’t have T.V. and are finally done with homework, there isn’t much to do, so you read a book, or something along those lines and go to bed. It is already amazing to us how fast our time is going here, and all the Spanish we still need to acquire. We have been told that this year will lay the foundation for our Spanish, and afterwards in Ecuador we will actually build upon it. We are beginning to believe this. Although we are getting pretty good at understanding conversations and overall what is happening around us, we are far from fluent. Anyway, if our little girl Brooklyn has taught us anything, language isn’t something you can order at a drive up window or in a nicely packed box. It happens little by little every day.