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.