Journal #8

Friday, August 18, 2006

I have to admit that I am sad today. I have been looking forward to what was going to occur on Friday all week. Shelly was going to teach Ana Julia (the daughter-in-law) how to make a Chocolate Cobbler this afternoon. BUT that is not going to happen because Ana Julia was baking 2 cakes yesterday for her mother’s birthday and noticed that it was taking 3 hours to bake a cake that normally took 1 hour or less. THE OVEN IS BROKEN! That is what I get for holding CHOCOLATE COBBLER (with vanilla ice cream) so high on my priority list. I have to admit that I can taste it right now typing about it. Oh well, the new date is next weekend so I will wait.

We have finished 2 weeks of Language School. We have 6 more to go. I can not believe that August is half way over. Every Friday, our school has graduation for those leaving during our break. They get a diploma and everything. That will be the day on September 29th when Shelly and my names are called and we get that piece of paper that means very little to many but will be a HUGE accomplishment for us! I am eager to see how much Spanish we will know at that point. We are making good strides right now. You have to take each day at a time and realize that knowledge of the language is not going to come overnight but if you take it one step at a time, you will grasp it.

We went to Bible Study last night at the Iglesia de Cristo en Antigua. We finally made it on time. We had 4 others go with us which was exciting. There were a total of 10 Guatemaltecans and our 6 Americanos. They sang a few songs and then a man of the congregation gave a lesson for 45 minutes. I picked up his three points as: The church grows numerically, spiritually and organizationally. Everything is in Spanish so it is a great experience for us to pick up on words we know and try to put together others to make sense of what is being said. We will take pictures of the church building on Sunday and put them on the blog Monday. We will be going to worship on Sunday from 9:00-11:00 am and Bible Study from 11:00 am-12:00 pm. I am sure we will do the traditional church of Christ thing and go to lunch after.

We plan on taking it easy this weekend so we will update our blog on Monday with our activities. We will probably rent a movie or two and watch them on my laptop. We have some studying to do (which is our life) and we will take Tristan on a couple of long walks to allow him to get some exercise and stretch his legs.

I have heard that this weekend is the start of football season so update me with scores (high school, college and pro). I got in the mood when a local school’s marching band marched in a parade right in front of our school today sounding as loud as the Franklin High School Marching Band. I was going to take a picture to include in the blog but we left the camera in our room. They had fancy white uniforms and everything.

Buen el fin de semana! (Have a great weekend!) Adios.

Chad