Wednesday was not one of those days. A lot of days, it's easy to stay in our little compound of a house, take care of kids, clean, do homework and read. Almost everything is in English, except maybe homework, and it's very comfortable. Wednesday, I started out the day with a 3rd grade class parent's meeting. There is a chosen leader, vocales, that is our representative with the PTA. She held the meeting at her house. Luckily, she lived in California for a few years and speaks pretty good English, so she translated a little for me and the other mother that doesn't speak Spanish. She is very nice and even offered to help Jane and Riley with homework and sent me these pictures from Jane's class. Even so, I missed most of what was said and feel very uncomfortable trying to communicate with the mothers that don't speak any English.
Later, we took some banana bread over to some of the nieghbors here that we hadn't met yet. One was Mexican and I butchered my introduction in Spanish. I had practiced it and everything, but my tongue gets tied. It almost gives me a headache. Again luckily the father speaks English pretty well. I feel so bad to be relieved when the Mexicans here speak English, which is a surprising amount. I should be learning thiers.
Lastly, I was a driver for our congregation's temple trip in the evening. Dave stayed home with the kids so I could go, since he's been once already. Driving in Guadalajara is scary. Not so much during the day, but on the way home, it was dark and rainy. When you need to change lanes you just have to go for it, because noone lets you in, no matter how well you signal. The temple service was in Spanish, obviously, but they have translater headphones. I listened to most of the service in Spanish. It was peaceful inside, so my nerves were calmed before the ride home. I wanted to make more conversation with the other women that drove in my car, but of the 4, only one spoke English, so we were limited to short questions and responses. Come esta? Donde vive? Izquierda o derecha? Hopefully soon I will learn more how to phrase full sentences. My vocabulary grows every day, but not my grammer.
Me at the Guadalajara Temple.
If any of my Spanish speaking friends have any tricks they learned to help them with grammer, I would appreciate a comment or two.
And pray for me.
2 comments:
it sounds like you feel the way i did when i first got to my mission. my advice...hang in there and do exactly what you're doing, which is throw yourself into every spanish speaking situation you can. don't worry so much about the grammar. it'll come, and they don't care when you mess it up. good luck. you're amazing to be doing this for your family.
Carrie...I am constantly impressed with you. I KNEW you were great, but I agree with the previous poster, you are really putting yourself out there. That's scary. You are so great. Call me if you want to have an english conversation. I'd be COMPLETELY impressed your your espanol. :)
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