Al fin de semana

Today, Friday, I had a short lesson from one of the teachers. She had not, as of Thursday, finished up a section on pronouns - those la, las, los, lo, les, se, te and me words you see in Spanish. She was kind enough to come in today on her off day and finish the lesson. The whole staff at Interaction has been amazing in their professionalism, desire for you to learn and going the extra mile to ensure you understand. They are really quite demanding of students, in a nice way and you do really learn.

This experience has been wonderful in many respects; learning a new language suffciently well enough to communicate in present and past tense, but also to see and be part of another culture for a short time. It is humbling to watch TV and not understand but a few words of what they are saying, trying to derive meaning from other clues in pictures, gestures, etc., and realizing a history and time lie behind the language, pictures and conversations that you do not know and most likely will not know. What one gets passing insights. Kind of like hearing part of a really good song but not knowing its name or what the rest of the song sounds like. A tease.

Watching the work of staff and volunteers at the orphanage was a lasting impression of their doing God's work with these "little ones". Like previous trips to Mexicio with teens from California, I came away with the sense of God's church working in many different ways, in different countries, in many languages and with many different people. The volunteers at the orphanage were from Spain, the US and from other parts of Mexico. All Christian and willing to serve in some capacity.

The staff at Interaction are all Christian and in talking with them they are all living the Gospel, providing a powerful witness in a humble way and growing the church in their walk. God is worshiped in many countries and His work is being done by the faithful to His Glory.

What lies ahead for me in my faith walk is to be determined but will likely involve something Spanish. This experience is a step in that direction. As the man on the insurance company ad asks -- Are you in good hands? My response is the best!

Al fin de semana means weekend or literally, the end of the week. This weekend will find me returning home to Texas. My flight leaves at 7:30 am Saturday morning. A couple of the young ladies from Interaction will be getting up early to drive me to the airport.

I should be in College Station mid Saturday afternoon with Bobby picking me up.

More later.

Doug

Guillermo or you can call me Ray

Time goes by fast when you are consumed. On Saturday, we went out to the orphanage again and I did a short English lesson on numbers 1-10. We did some games and coloring and the kids seemed to have learned a few new words. They are precious and are in a good environment given their circumstances. I have great admiration for the director and his wife who over see the facility.

On Sunday, the language school director had us to her house in the north part of town. It is a beautiful place on a hill. We celebrated the 4th of July with hamburgers and hotdogs, potato salad,..... and we were given permission to speak English. Yahoo! All of the students came, some teachers and a few of Rebecca's (small group Bible Study) were there as well. A good time.

I have two more days of school, an off day and then my flight back to Houston on Saturday.

As to the Title of this entry; there is no Spanish sound for the oug in Doug. My teachers say Doc, Dog, or some variant. A sound of someone choking or sneezing and coughing at the same time. One of Rebecca's friends asked who was coming to the orphanage. She mentioned, by name, several of us students. When she mentioned my name - Doug, the person heard dog and asked why Rebecca was bringing a perro, dog to the orphanage.

So I thought it might be nice to change my name this last week to something they all could pronounce. Guillermo (William in English) rolls off the tongue a lot easier than Dochg or Dugt.

My best to you all.

Guillermo

The goats are dancing.

Two weeks down and one to go. I have been learning much and practicing a little. In the time I have been here we have covered the present tense and the past tense. In Spanish, there are two forms of past tense, each with different verb endings. One is for past actions that are completed (I flew from Texas last week.) The other is for actions that happened in the past but had an indeterminate ending (I lived in California for awhile). The second form is used when telling a story or narrative. The first is formal, the second is informal.

By this time next week, I should have covered two more verb forms - Future and Conditional, if my head doesn't pop first.

The staff know that I am here for a short time and are trying to cover as much as possible.This includes homework at night and on the weekends. It has been a little daunting. (Most students stay for 4-8 weeks.)

I can read and write what I have learned much better than speaking. I need lots of wait time to respond. These 60 year old brain cell neurons are firing as fast as possible, let me tell you.

Yesterday, Laura, my afternoon teacher, had me doing a drill of reading a paragraph in the present tense and then reread it in the past tense, changing all verbs to the correct endings,with accents, etc, with no looking at notes. Aii Carumba. I got through it relatively well but it wasn't pretty at times.

Earlier in the week, I was doing a similar exercise and I had a particularly difficult sentence (for me) to read. The instructor started smiling. I asked her what I had said because I knew it was mangled. She said what I said could be translated as "The goats are dancing". We all had a good laugh on that one.

Yesterday, we had a new person come to the school. Julia comes from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena and will be doing some volunteer work at Casa Adonai orphanage. We had an opportunity to talk about our respective experiences at Fuller.

Saturday, several of us will be going to the orphanage as well. I will be doing some classes on speaking English with the kids. We are going to learn numbers and number words for Numbers 1-10. Last week's lesson went well and hopefully tomorrow's will also.

Today, is an off day, so I will be walking to some stores to pick up few things and watch some World Cup matches with my host family.

El tiempo aqui estuve muy bueno y simpatico. Pero el trabajo aprender una nueva lingua esta muy dificil y fuerte algunas veces. Sabo tendre muchas ocassiones usar Espanol en mi clases y con el padres de mis estudiantes. Alegrarme vene. Gracias a Dios. Hasta Luego.

Translation

The time here has been very good and congenial. But the work to learn a new language is difficult and hard sometimes. I know I will have many occasions to use Spanish in my classes and with the parents of my students. I am glad I came. Thanks be to God. Bye for now.

Doug.