Espanol

Buenas Noches (good evening)!

One of the biggest cultural adjustments we've had to make while living in Shell is learning to speak, read, and understand the Spanish language. Here are a few notes & anecdotes about the learning process.

- I'm learning something new everday and starting to feel more comfortable with basic retail transactions. The vocabulary is coming along much quicker than the grammar and semantics. I probably sound like the Spanish speaking equivalent of the sterotypical Native American in old western movies.

-Micah repeatedly says his favorite class in school is Spanish. All of the students have Spanish class everyday. It's taught by a local teacher, Senora Salas, who has taught at Nate Saint for, I think, close to 20 years.

-Jadyn's attending a local pre-school two days a week. She sometimes expresses frustration because her teacher "always talks in Spanish". On her first day she saw one of the American physicians who works at the HCJB hospital. I asked Jadyn if Dr. Nelson spoke to her in English or Spanish. She said, "neither, she just talked to me regular."

-When talking to Jadyn's teacher's aide, she told me that she was a profesora of what I thought she said as 'bibia'. When I asked her what 'bibia' was, she looked at me like I had 3 heads. Then I realized that she was saying "Biblia".

-Speaking of the Bible, church can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming with the language barrier. Overhead/power point lyrics are helpful. There's a lot of repetition of vocabluary in worship lyrics and we're becoming more familiar with a lot of the words and songs. We're often able to pick out when the preacher gives a chapter and verse (I sometimes cheat by peeking over a shoulder in front of me) and are able to usually get the theme of the sermon from the Bible text even if we're not able to understand much of the interpretation/application. Power point sermon notes have been helpful too as reading is a bit easier than listening since you can do it a little slower.

- Luke's starting to say "hola" (hi) and "ciao"- pronounced "chow" (bye).