Monday, May 7, 2012

A Capital Thing to Do

I have had a run of several good days in a row. This past Friday, I passed my first level Spanish exam, and I did very well. It was a pretty comprehensive exam that took nearly three hours to complete. I was dreading the oral part where a story is read to me in Spanish, and then I have to remember what was read to me. Then the instructor (and it is a different instructor than the one that instructed me for the prior two weeks) asks me questions in Spanish about the story and I have to attempt to remember what was read to me and respond accurately in Spanish. I passed that part of the exam with an 80% score; I was thrilled. The balance of the test was written and it took me a bit over two hours to complete the written part. Whoopee! I passed it! But the bad thing about immersion and doing this alone is I had no one to celebrate with; how sad ("could y'all shed a big tear for me? Thanks, I feel better now").
The next day, two of my friends, the Barrera's from San Miguel Chicaj, joined me in Antigua for lunch. I say they are from San Miguel Chicaj, but actually Rodrigo is from Mexico and Carol is from the USA. They have been in San Miguel Chicaj for more than thirty years as a Wycliffe bible translation team and my church, Desert Springs Church in Albuquerque has been working with and supporting the Barrera's for just about eight years. They are both language experts, especially Carol, and they are trilingual in Spanish, English and Rabinal Achi. It was a real pleasure talking to both of them and Carol knew exactly what I was going through because she could still remember what it was like when she learned Spanish. So we had fun relating common, but different experiences. We had a nice lunch in Antigua and then I returned with them to their place in the capital, Guatemala City. That night we fellowshipped, shared stories, I did my Spanish review and they both kindly spoke English to me and did not make the week end a total teaching experience.
The next day, Rodrigo and I spent most of the day together while Carol stayed home and recharged her batteries. They were in the capital because Carol had been one of the principals in a two week language workshop for several people groups all over Guatemala and she was exhausted. Rodrigo and I headed out across the city for breakfast and then we went to church. The church was a great experience, but authentic and not bilingual. However, when the sermon started, a nice young lady gave me a headset and a receiver and said I could listen to the English translation of the sermon. After five minutes of fumbling with headset, trying to see if there was a way to change the channel on it and hearing nothing but static, a different nice young lady came by and told me there was no one translating today. Oh, well, so I listened to the rest of the sermon and caught about every fifth word ... not really enough to get all the meaning. I have not yet reached my goal of being 'smarter than a fifth grader'.
After church, Rodrigo and I were given directions on how to find the orphanage that the church supported. Rodrigo was pretty pessimistic about the directions. Two people gave us directions and they were almost the same directions. We made two big unsuccessful attempts to find the orphanage and drove through some very interesting parts of town that made me realize I definitely was not in Kansas. We actually even gave up and were driving back in to the capital when we saw one of the landmarks we were supposed to drive around. So we made a U turn, and I will not tell you what driving around the landmark encompassed, but we made it to the orphanage.
Visiting the orphanage was a delight. It was pretty large, with spacious grounds and the young girls were on one side of the orphanage and the young boys on the other, with the common eating areas and classrooms in the middle. It was clean everywhere we looked and they did not know we were coming. The kids were happy and the youngest ones climbed all over us. Towards the end of our San Miguel Chicaj mission, I would love to bring the team from Desert Springs and Rabinal Achi young adult team and do a cross cultural combined mission for the orphanage.
After the orphanage visit, Rodrigo and I returned to the capital and picked up Carol; and we returned to Antigua to have another wonderful dinner together. There are a number of wonderful places to have dinner in Antigua, if you have not figured that out. After dinner they returned to the capital to prepare to drive back to San Miguel Chicaj and I remained in Antigua for my next two weeks of language school.

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