Teaching and Offending

A lot has happened in the past four days since my last update. From getting asked out by one of Ana's co-workers to offending people to sleeping through my alarm this morning it's been busy here. So I will go day by day.

Friday: I went to work with Ana. It was a really long boring day. I forgot my book. I worked on lesson plans/ studied my Spanish for 7 hours. During the last 30 minutes everyone had gone home except Ana, Llehudy (pronounced kind of like "Jody" -- Ana's brother-in-law), Alonso (one of Ana's co-workers), and me. Llehudy was out of the room and Alonso turned to me and said something very quickly in Spanish. The only word I caught was "Fiesta." Ana started laughing and shaking her head telling me to say "no." So I said "Something about a party?" Through the laughter and confusion of tenses I realized that he was asking me to go to a party with him. I declined and he quickly dropped the subject. During the rest of the time they talked very rapidly in Spanish and I went back to being bored. It was all very funny.

After those exciting 7 hours, Ana and I went to worship practice. It was really fun, they actually had me singing into the microphone (in Spanish...). They were going around having everyone try to lead one of the songs and I figured they would just skip over me because my Spanish pronunciation is not fabulous. But no, I had to sing it. I think it went pretty well. I stumbled over a few words but for the most part I was able to sing it. I will be helping to lead worship for the next 3 weeks. I'm really excited about it! :-D

Saturday:
Saturday was a busy day full of all kinds of mixed and confusing emotions. I taught my first classes. They went really well. I have 5 students in the younger class and 3 in the older class. The younger students were very engaged the whole time and really enjoyed the class. My lesson plan fit their age well and I was not struggling for material or running out of time. I think they had fun, and they enjoyed my stickers. The older kids were a different story. It took them awhile to warm up to the idea of the class but once i was able to act silly they were willing to be silly as well. They knew some English, but no conversational. They knew numbers and colors mostly. They learn very quickly. The lesson plan I had was finished in 20 minutes. Luckily I was able to improvise and add to my lessons and go on into future weeks. Now I know that I need to make 2 separate plans. A few observations: The older kids have a harder time pronouncing words and their words have very thick accents. The younger kids however have very little accent. I think this is because the younger kids are coming in with no English at all and the older kids have a little that they have learned at school or from their parents. My kids here are very well behaved. I was amazed that they were willing to sit there engaged for an hour, well "sit" is the wrong verb. I'm using Total Physical Response for teaching verbs so at times they were to "Stand Up" "Sit down" "Raise your hand' "Put your hand down" etc.

After teaching I went to lunch with Ericka, Orlando, Ligia, and Ericka's family. While there I had my first cultural insensitivity moment. Alberto (Ericka's husband who is fluent in English) and I were talking about life here. I mentioned something about a difference in "America" and he said "You mean the United States." I ended up saying it 3 times on Saturday. I felt so horrible. Ericka and I had a long conversation about it, after I said "America" to her twice. Each time I felt awful about it. It's an example in my mind of how selfish the United States is. Don't get me wrong, I feel very blessed to have been born in the United States. The opportunities there are amazing, and I'm learning to appreciate them more, especially education (more on that in a minute.) However, the word "America" applies to many more countries then just the US. I spent all day Saturday trying to figure out another word for my nationality, but we are Americans. That word seems silly to me because Ericka is an American to, Orlando is an American too, Fabiola is an American too. They are all Central Americans, but Americans nonetheless. I guess there is no point in getting angry about it. I can't change that I'm called an American, but I can be more careful and change from referring to "America" to referring to "The States."

I went to another birthday party, nothing very eventful happened. I sat with Ericka and Alberto and it was really nice to have long conversations in non-broken English! I went back to the house with them because Ana and Christian were going to visit a friend. To tell this story I need to describe the roads here to you.

On the way back to Alajuela from San Jose we travel on 3 different kinds of roads. The first is a highway. It's 3 lanes and pretty straight where everyone drives very fast and cuts each other off, very nearly getting into accidents. Second, two lane roads full of pot holes and curves. These are just as scary because people pass each other and drive into each other's lanes to miss pot holes. Third, there are one and a half lane roads. These roads are just wide enough for two cars to pass each other if each car drives on the very edge of the road (these are also very curvy and are driven on very fast with many pedestrians and bicycles).

We were driving on the 3rd type of road about 30 feet from the driveway when a car approached us from the other direction. The other car decided to stay in the middle of the road, thus running us off the road. I didn't see what was happening because I was playing the Bubblegum hand game with Christina (Ericka's daughter who speaks some English -- I taught her the Bubblegum Game from my Elementary school days). Suddenly, the car crunched very loudly and bumped abruptly and stopped, tilting slightly to the right. Orlando came with his truck and they tried to pull it out of the ditch, but the rope broke. Orlando drove Ligia, Ericka, Christina, Samuel (Ericka's 3 year old) and me to the house. Eventually they got the car out, because it wasn't there on Sunday morning. It certainly was an exciting turn of events.

Sunday:

I received my first snail-mail! :) That was exciting. Worship was awesome. I went to 2 different services on Sunday and really enjoyed the musical worship during both of them. God has done some really cool work in my heart this weekend, in spite of the enemy trying to discourage me. God is good and I'm glad that we live in the knowledge that the end will be His victory over all.

2 foods I have discovered I do not like here: a certain type of cheese and mayonnaise covered tomatoes. My favorite snack: Saltine crackers with butter and cream cheese and galletas dulce (sweet crackers-- cookies basically).

I hope and pray that you have an amazing day full of yummy food, time to rest, and a reminder of how much God loves you! :)