I am not talking..well, kind of…
I am tired of feeling like I am not fitting in with the culture. The gap is in the language barrier. They smile, laugh and talk with me..and I have no clue as to what they are saying. I took two years of Spanish in high school (over 10 years ago) and I know enough for the basics. I can understand a lot of it when it is spoken or when I read it, but I have trouble speaking it. Then, when you have a 5 year old come over, pull on you, saying things and you have to pull some one over to translate, it gets so frustrating!! I really want to just be able to talk to people.
All of this week I have felt like God was telling me to give up something ..kind of in a way, like a fast. There was more that I really needed to learn. Last night, we all talked about our frustations with not being able to communicate well with the people here, yet we also realized that we have two more months in Spanish speaking countries. I could either sit and just ride out the next two months or I could actually do something.
So, personally, that was my confirmation that what I needed to give up was …English 🙂 So, for today and tomorrow (maybe longer) all I can do is speak in Spanish. (except for when we debrief as a team at night and a couple of minutes ago, when I just talked to my family) If I am going to learn this, I totally need to throw myself into it.
In just the few hours this morning, this has proved to be quite the challenge. Asking for a fork for breakfast was difficult (Linnea was like, what does she want? 🙂 and apparently instead of telling everyone I would pay for their taxi ride here, I said some thing about Prego. (everyone was again like, huh?) My team mates (Team Nessa and the rest of the media team) seem to be having lots of fun with this, but keep pushing me on it as well. During devotions, I had to read from a Spanish Bible and Shawna suggested that I give my testimony in Spanish…very funny 🙂
I can tell you now that I will have more funny stories, but I am already learning a lot (both in words and thoughts) and will share more about this with you guys later!
Things continue to go well for us! Please keep us in your prayers as we have just a little over one week left here!
