It's Saturday morning and I should be doing homework, but after three solid weeks of Spanish classes and homework, I'm taking a little mental health break. We started class on September 5th, and since then we have been immersed in a five week college course, worth 3 college semester credits. One of the college students remarked, after we got our our first graded assignment back, "What are you guys worried about, you aren't doing this for a grade ..." No, we are not in this for the grade. We are doing this in part, out of necessity, but mostly out of a deep desire to be able to communicate with the Dominican people we work with and those we interact with in the stores and streets of Jarabacoa, Santiago, and anywhere else we venture!
Our schedule looks pretty much like this:
Between 6:00 - 8:00 a.m., wake up, have quiet time, and then breakfast ...
Between 8:00 a.m. and noon, work on Spanish homework ...
We break for lunch somewhere between 12:00 & 12:30 ...
Then it's back to the books until it's time to trudge down the hill to attend class at the base ...
We attend Spanish class from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Following class, we take a little time to unwind and eat dinner ...
Somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., it's back to the homework until we can't keep our eyes open ...
Go to bed, wake up, and do it again the next morning!
On the weekends, we sometimes travel down the mountain to grocery shop, we attend church but then pretty much the rest of our time is spent doing ... you guessed it, more homework!
We have been told that verbs are the heart of any language. Some verbs that describe what we have experienced in the midst of language learning are (mostly in their gerund form =): Challenging, annoying, interesting, exasperating, gratifying, stressful, valuable, perplexing, useful, puzzling, thought-provoking, taxing, satisfying, vexing, fulfilling, provoking, nerve-wracking, delightful, frustrating, worthwhile, infuriating, and rewarding. It just depends on the day ... sometimes on the moment!
I think one of the things we are looking forward to the most when this is all over is reconnecting with our co-workers and friends. While it has been a tremendous gift from everyone we work with to be able to set aside our job responsibilities to concentrate solely on learning Spanish, one of the things we love the most about this culture is that it is a very warm culture that puts great emphasis on relationships. Because of the pace of this course we are in, we haven't had much time for that lately.
The reality of our living in the DR is that we will spend the rest of our days here learning to communicate. In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, we read, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Please join us in praying that in the midst of our learning to "speak with the tongues of men" we don't become a noisy gong and lose sight of the reason that we are here, to love in a way that it is evident that Christ lives inside our hearts and we are here to serve Him.
