August 23, 2007

Hi everyone!

I hope that all is going well on your side of the world!

Things have been going well here too!

This week I have been teaching a pronunciation class in the mornings. That has been fun. The class is all girls, which is a nice change from my all boy class in the evenings.  And the people in the office are great too! Not to mention that they serve us yummy Chai Tea every time! Just when my throat starts to get scratchy from speaking so much, in comes the guy with our tea! And it's probably the best tea that I've had so far! One of the girls said that it is very meechi, which means sweet, so it's probably all of the sugar in it that I like so much.

 Yesterday and the day before a girl stayed with us. She was from Switzerland. It was really cool. She was about my age, and I think she seemed pretty American in the way she acted. Her accent was a little crazy though. She was here for the summer working with a team that all spoke Spanish! I thought that was cool, but she said that it was a little difficult because there were a lot of translation difficulties. She speaks Spanish and French and English and a little bit of Hindi now, but she said trying to switch modes was a little difficult for her. Anyway, she was a lot of fun to have around, and yesterday afternoon we went shopping with her for some souvenirs. Steph and I thought that we would wait until the end of our trip to get stuff, but it turns out that Oct/Nov are the peak of tourist season and so prices will go way up. So we bought some stuff with her yesterday.

Our chapter in my evening class has been about body language, and it has been interesting comparing our culture to the culture here. I realized that all of the women that I smile at as I walk down the street probably think I'm crazy because you're not supposed to smile at people if you just make eye contact, but then you are always supposed to smile when you greet someone with words. There are a lot of do's and don'ts in this culture. That's all they know, a list of rules to follow. I think that it ties in a little bit with their relig too. That's all their book is mostly, rules. They think about I can do this and I can't do that and I have to do it this way and I can't do it that way. Therefore if you do it any other way, you are obviously wrong, especially when it comes to relig.

Sunday night one of our friends here had a birthday party. (She is actually the sister of our language tutor.) She took us to one of the nicest hotels I have ever been in in my entire life! We had dinner by the pool, and there was a giant rotating disco ball on the ground by the pool. She made us wear our western clothes which means American/European clothes, and it was so awkward leaving our house that night. Here we have been fully covered in the local clothes with sleeves down past my elbows and now I was leaving the house in a long skirt and shirt. Her friends were all wearing jeans and halter tops! They looked like models! We were glad when we got there that we had taken her advice and worn western clothes.

Steph and I had to move our return tickets back a few days so that we wouldn't overstay our visas. We were excited because now we will be home just before Thanksgiving! Yay for turkey! This week was our half way point!

Thank you all for yarping for my dad! And thank you everyone who went to visit him! He is still in the hospital, but he is stable. His kidneys are outputting more than they were a week ago, so he seems to slowly be improving, but they are taking him off of sedation and it's causing him more pain and a bit of amnesia from the side effects. Last I heard they were giving him an antibiotic to kill the infection in his lungs from the pneumonia. So not much has changed, but my mom says that this week there is a glimmer of hope that he will get through it. She calls good news rays of sunshine coming through the dark clouds. So next time you see the sun, think of my dad.

And continue to pr. for my mom as she is trying to balance her teaching and being at the hospital, and I'm worried that she hasn't been getting enough sleep.

You can pr. for me too:

- that I will be able to get my school work done in plenty of time

- that my ability to speak the language will go beyond single sentences

- that I will not become stressed out about things at home that I can't control

- that my students will not have a desire to argue with me about things that don't matter but will desire to know our father and his son.

- that our father will do something powerful to reach these people because I've realized that it can't be anything that I say, but it has to be Him.

Thank you all! If there are any pr. requests that you have, I would love to pr for you too!

Blessings!

Karena