The Home Stretch

Three weeks to go and the heat is on! All of a sudden we are getting lots more homework! At the mid-term break we had meetings with all of our teachers to talk about each class and how it was going. I humbly requested more homework and it looks like I am finally getting my wish! Since we will only be here for two-thirds of the normal time, we had hoped we could move quickly so that we could complete most of the grammar. Spanish is not as easy as I once thought. Picking up vocabulary is the easiest part. Actually using it correctly in speech is decidedly not easy. There are so many different verb conjugations (endings of which there seems to be an infinite amount), words need to be in agreement according to their "gender" (casa bonito is incorrect- it should be casa bonita), indirect and direct pronouns appear before the verb (as opposed to after the verb in most English sentences), some verbs are reflexive requiring a pronoun to be inserted before the verb, and the list could go on. The encouraging part for us is that we should finish the trimester one-third of the way through the grammar for the next trimester.

Camden has been cleared to resume his normal life. We are thankful because he was driving us nuts being in the house all day not able to go do something! He does need to take one more test, but that should be the end of his little ordeal.

We visited a missionary friend named Roger Reeck in the hospital yesterday. Roger primarily serves in Honduras but travels all over doing training and lots of other stuff. Several years ago he showed up at our hotel in Managua and almost got a certain person with a passport photocopy out of the country. It was fun to catch up with him, though the circumstances weren't of his choosing. He fell and ruptured a tendon in his leg, had surgery, and will be in a full-leg cast for 2 months. He had just returned from Africa where he was bitten by a kind of fly that lays its eggs inside your skin. The eggs hatch and the little buggers start tunneling through your body. Remind me to not go to Africa.

April went on a walk today with our neighbor, Audrey, and past by a vendor selling scarves and knit hats. After all, it is 65 degrees here! It has been rather comical to see how bundled up many of the locals get. The sad part is that April seriously considered buying a set of them. I'm in heaven, though I still break a sweat on long walks! 5 degrees cooler would be perfect.