A REAL Update

Since the last two blogs were about chocolate and a hairdryer, and the 3rd contained the phrase "public urination," I think it's time for a more legitimate update.

Teaching is going okay. Teaching ESL is going really really well. My student, G, is 9 years old, as dark as his Nigerian counterparts, drops his s's when speaking Spanish, and hasn't quite grown into his adult teeth yet. The look on his face when he grasps a concept is something I will carry with me forever. Basically, he's a joy to work with and his parents are SO supportive of his learning English.
I learned this week that they are not only making him read in English every night, but they've begun speaking to him in English at home. From a cultural standpoint, I don't know how I feel about this loss of mother tongue, but from a teacher's perspective, he'll learn English a lot faster if it's all he's speaking and reading.
We've discovered that G can read English very well, but he often doesn't understand what he's saying. So today, we did a lot of sound recognition; instead of showing him a picture of an object and asking him to identify it, I read aloud a word and asked him to verify the Spanish translation.
He's learning school-applicable things: the question words (who, what, where, etc.), days of the week and months of the year, colors, shapes, ordinary objects, and simple phrases (how are you, please, thank you, you're welcome). We also study words united by sounds (cat, bat, fat, mat; an, man, fan, pan). We ended the day by walking around the library, pointing at colors and saying them in English and in Spanish.
To be honest, I'm totally making this up as I go along. I have no idea if this is the best way to teach him. I don't know how to teach a child another language. I don't know if I'm helping or hurting his learning with my methods or approaches. But G was happy today. He was smiling and laughing and told me he likes our lessons. And that's a good sign. I'm just trying to focus on G and not worry about compare myself to dwell on my incredible college roommate who is teaching an ESL class of 30 adults back in Chicago and contemplating a future in that line of work. She could teach him more effectively, I'm sure, but I'm doing my best and that's got to count for something.

Another facet to G's arrival at school is that I've adopted yet another set of cultural expectations. Greetings in Latino culture are completely different from American and Nigerian. I've gotten used to the extensive verbal greetings here in Nigeria, but when I saw G's father after school yesterday, he kissed me on the cheek - a perfectly acceptable greeting in Cuba, but unfamiliar in Nigeria! There were Nigerians around us and I think they were a little perplexed!

In other news, homesickness hit like a wall last weekend. I wasn't feeling well--my body has begun resisting spicy food, which is most inconvenient--and for the first time I allowed myself to dwell on how far I've come, literally. It is disheartening to consider the seven-almost-eight weeks I've been here in light of the 58 days ahead of me.
I remember similar feelings during my first semester of college. When we arrived and moved into the dorm, it felt like summer camp; it took a couple months to realize we weren't going home at the end of the summer. It's the same thing here: I've hit the wall, saying, "Okay, I've had my fun, I've learned about the culture, let's go home now." But I can't go home, and this isn't summer camp, and I'm in this for the long haul. God's not finished with me here yet.
So Saturday I just kind of moped around the flat, looking at photos online, letting myself be miserable. Monday night, however, the other ladies in our compound (Mrs. O and Rachel) came over for a visit and asked me to show them all my pictures. It was therapeutic to tell them about my family members and loved ones.
God is so faithful to have built a support system around me whose prayers reach all the way across the ocean. (By the way, you're a part of that system, too! Your comments and feedback on the blog make me feel connected.)

1 Timothy 4:10 "For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe."