and so do their parents!
It was hard not to crack up when Ben and Elena were singing the "Rick and Becky, sittin' in a tree" chant and threw in Adam and Eve. It came out "Adam and Even, sittin' in a tree" when Ben started to laugh, Elena declared "It's true they loved each other, I saw the movie!!" Then followed a discussion about who could kiss whom. Boys would never kiss boys, Elena seemed to think only Mommy and Daddys could kiss each other on the lips, but Ben pointed out that he had seen his teacher's boyfriend kiss her. Elena then declared that they were going to get married, right Mom? Well....
One of the kids' teachers recently had a motorcycle accident, severely fracturing his leg. He had surgery in Santiago (about 45 minutes away). As I related this to our housekeeper who attends their church, I said in Spanish, "It sure was a blessing Mark was wearing a basket on his head because he flew off the bike and landed on the ground." Our housekeeper kindly shared with me the difference between a basket (canasta) and a helmet (casco).
The kids understand that our job is to teach others about Jesus. After a few months of regular Bible study in Montana, Ben asked how much longer I, Becky, would be going there. I said, "For a while yet." He frowned and said, "How long is it going to take for them to figure it out!! It says it about Jesus right in the Bible!" Ahh, if only it were so simple.
Elena is learning to read this year. It is fun to sit down with books and watch her sound out the words and read a whole beginner book by herself. One of her favorite big kid books is a World Atlas for kids. She mostly looks at the pictures, but a couple of weeks ago tried to read a page about animals. Suddenly she declared, "Mommy, they put Spanish words in this book!" I went to look and she pointed to "gorilla." She was quite miffed that the writers would do such a thing and I had a hard time convincing her that "gorilla" is spelled the same in both languages but pronounced differently in each. Although Ben added his older brother advice to the discussion, she continued to frown at the page.
We speak spanglish. We find that we sometimes say odd things in English like, "That tool won't serve" or "I terminated my homework" These being direct translations of the Spanish words. We do the same in reverse, getting odd looks from our Dominican friends at times. But when you are grasping for a word, sometimes it is expedient to spanishize an English word since there are so many similarities. Occasionally you can get yourself in trouble though. We are thankful for dominicanisms that come from english. For example, "tape" is taypee," mop is "swape" (as in swab the deck), and a lid is "tapa" as in "top." None of these examples are really Spanish words! In Guatemala we had to use the actual Spanish words, but the dominicanisms are far easier for us to remember.
1 comment:
Greetings to Ben and Elena...they are really growing rapidly.
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