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There is a friend...

As many of you probably know from Facebook, we have had ten students from a local Bible college staying with us since Wednesday. This is the second group we have had, the last group having come at Easter this year. The common factor between these groups is language; most of the students speak very little English. Now, admittedly, this should not really be a problem because I should know the language a little better than I do after living here for 5 years; however, I still do not speak fluently. Really, my extent of Spanish knowledge is understanding what they are saying, but not being able to respond in Spanish. However, even my parents, who can speak Spanish very well, occasionally forget a word or
phrase. Fortunately, the students have been learning English as well, and so we can usually communicate fairly well. There are three students in particular, Camila, Jemima, and David, that have a very good knowledge of English and we instantly started talking to each other.
However, despite our efforts, some words we simply do not know or understand. A funny example is the word "deer". As an activity on Thursday, we decided to walk some of the biking trails in Rio Grande. Almost as soon as we started, my Dad noticed an animal in the brush. We never did figure out what it was, only that it was big and ran fast, but our guess was a deer. A problem though, none of us knew the word for "deer" in Spanish. So, to try and explain what a deer was and have the students figure out the word themselves, I delved deep into my knowledge. What I came up with was asking Jemima if she had ever watched "Bambi". I know, this seems like a long shot, and sort of a silly thing to do, but I thought it actually had a chance. And it did! After a little confusion over "Bambi" and "Dumbo", they actually figured out what we were trying to say! It turns out, the word for deer is "venado" (veh-nah-doh). This is a humorous example of what we sometimes run into trying to talk together, however, it simply makes the conversations more interesting. 😀 Unfortunately, the students will be leaving tomorrow, but I have enjoyed having them here and hope they return in the group next year! Please leave a comment below or on Facebook, and I hope you enjoyed this post!

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