Volunteering and traveling in Argentina to proclaim God's great love, and hopefully not getting sick along the way.

Pages

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Aprendiendo the Espanol

As we walked to her house, Sarah and I prayed that she would provide us Spanish lessons. We prayed that if not, another opportunity would come to our attention immediately. The second half of that prayer was unnecessary, because not only did she say yes, but that we could start the next day and that she wouldn't charge us. "I need to study up on my English any way," she had said.Esta es mi maestra Romina. Ella sabe mucho ingles porque ella trabajo con MCI en Argentina. Ahora, es una policia. Tiene un hijo llama Fabri que viene todos los sabados a Escuelita.

Speaking of Escuelita, we had our second hang out today. I had a lot of fun, because I was able to remember some of the names of the kiddos that I played with la semana pasada. They were so great when they worked to pronounce my name. They insist that I must have a nickname--I respond with equal persistence that I do not. But Sophie has come up with a little diddy to help remember my name that is pretty stinking cute, and some of the others are saying it with her. In time, we will all know each other!

Before going to Escuelita, another team member named Coco met with me and Sarah to talk about the games we wanted to play. Enter what probably would have been a great scene for Lost in Translation: Argentina Edition. Coco can only speak Spanish, Sarah can only speak English, I know a little bit of both (haha, okay, a lot of English, but a little bit of Spanish). I have the list of games before me; games I've played with teenagers and little ones multiple times. We can do this right??

You try explaining "Screaming Ninjas" in Spanish. Although I had told myself that I should probably find the Spanish equivalent for words like ninja and point, there's so much more that goes into explaining el gritando ninja. Multiple times, Coco and I found ourselves drawing pictures as if we were, and sorry about this Geico, cave people. Sarah said that there were multiple times she had to hold in her laughter.

Coco was overall very gracious with us though, and I did get to practice hearing the language and talking with him more. That's something I appreciate so much. And I've found the value in working with kids more when it comes to learning the language. Enter scene two:

The game is "Telephone." Everyone knows how to play telephone. Not everyone knows what to say when there are words in another language being whispered to you (thus, not fully enunciated) and that you need to pass on. Which means, even when I knew some of the words, I would then say "Something, something, something...Ah! I mean: algo, algo, algo.." But the little girl didn't understand that she wasn't supposed to include the English part. So when I "retaliated" by having them play with the English phrase, "Jesus loves me, this I know," they finally understood how hard it was for me.

Pretty funny though. All right, almost dinner time, so chau!

No comments:

Post a Comment