Ants in our pants...

And everything else.  We’ve been drying our clothes outside for more than a year and a half.  Not too big of a deal, expect during raining season as we have to find a spot sheltered from the rain and things just take longer to dry, occasionally leading to a sour smelling towel or shirt.  Other than that, we’ve gotten use to the initial starchy or scratchy feeling of hanged dried clothes.  Since living with a local family in this smaller town, we’ve had to adjust to another aspect of drying clothes outside.  The clothes line is next to the house above over grown plants.  Quite frequently the clothes line is used as a major highway by ants.  So when it is time to take the clothes down they need to be shaken out well.  Even still the ants end up coming inside.  I frequently will place all the clean laundry on our bed to be folded, but this then leads to ants in our bed.  There are enough ants other places it is hard to know if the ants we actually find on our bodies are from our clothes or elsewhere.   In addition to ants in our clothes John has been bitten multiple times while hanging up clothes, this has then led to a very swollen foot and difficult language session after taking Benadryl and fighting drowsiness. 



Caedmon on the way to take down dry clothes.

A couple days after we moved upstairs we were given a broom.  Small wicker brooms are usually used outside to sweep porches, driveways, streets, and even lawns.  At first I was a little confused as to why we where given this broom until it was explained it was for our bed.  Who knew you need a broom for your bed.  It has come in quite handy as we do not have a top sheet or comforter (not that we’d want one in this heat) and our room is not sealed off well from outside.  So our bed needs a frequent sweeping.  Though I still think if our bed truly needs sweeping there are other preventative measures I should take, because it is really that much cleaner if I’ve just swept it with a broom?

our bed broom

Substitute Teacher

Our host is a high school art teacher who recently opened a language center (where John will work).  His heart is for people from his community to understand other cultures to then enhance relationships and development within their own community.  His center currently offers English courses and TOEFL prep courses.  A English conversation class currently meets three time per week.  The majority of the students are nurses or midwives within the community.  Our host invited John to the Thursday class, but John suggested I go instead since I previously worked as a nurse.  I had a language session from 2-4pm on Thursday, then was planning to stay to be a guest at the 4pm English conversation class.  It was never discussed as to what I would be doing during the class, but I assumed at least speaking in English.  Prior to the end of my language session, John called to inform me our host was not coming to the class and I was THE teacher.  5 minutes prior to class our host stopped by to briefly explain what he had planned for the session. 

At 4:15 2 people, out of 9, had arrived for the 4pm class.  One of which was a visitor interested in the class.  Finally at 4:30 I started class with two students.  Over the next HOUR, 5 other students trickled in.  I spent the majority of the time doing a Q&A session.  Then we discussed characteristics of local names versus names in the States.  It turned out to be a lot of fun, though next time I would prefer to plan for the 1 ½ hour session. 

Language Learning

We are a week and a half into learning the local ‘village’ language.  We are still students sponsored by the University, but there isn’t any ready-made curriculum or any designated tutors.  So how in the world do we go about this enormous task?  I, Erin, was feeling quite overwhelmed by this fact last week.  Thankfully we have both received great training for this particular task.  We’ve begun with a lot of listening and recording.  We each meet with a local language speaker 2 hours a day.  We ask for a couple common phrases, record them, then memorized them (even if we don’t quite understand them).  For example, “what is this?”, “good morning,” and “how do you say that in the local language.”  That is about all the actual speaking we are presently doing.  The majority of our time is spent with an activity called Total Physical Response (TPR – the more you move the better).  For example, to learn colors, we set on the table a red crayon and blue crayon.  We point to the red one and ask, “what is this?”, thus eliciting a word or sometimes a phrase.  Then repeat for the blue one.  We continue pointing and eliciting the two words until we feel we have a good grasp on them.  We do not repeat or say them, just listen.  Then we have the tutor ‘test’ us by saying the words or phrases elicited, such as ‘blue,’ then we point to the correct one.  After repeating multiple times in mixed order, we add a color and return to asking “what is this?”  We continue adding and being tested until there are 10-15 items.  We record the final ‘test’ to use for our own practice at home.  So far we have learned colors, numbers, farm animals, wild animals, insects, terms for people, and house parts all in this manner.  We aren’t saying them ourselves at this time, just listening and pointing out the answer.  This methods promotes better pronunciation later and good auditory comprehension.

On Monday we had a quite unusual language session.  We had one language tutor and lined up a second to begin on Monday so John and I could trade off studying and watching the boys.  Our tutors have jobs of their own so our meeting times change from day to day.  On Monday, one of the tutors had to postpone a morning session until the afternoon.  So John and I met at the same time, taking the boys with us to the center where John hopes to later work.  Upon arriving we found out there was already a class scheduled at the same time.  So the pre-scheduled class met in the one class room, while John and I, our two tutors, and the boys met in the front reception area at the same time two people arrived inquiring about the center.  The reception area is not air conditioned, so with 9 people in a space about 12 x 18 feet it got pretty hot.  We eventually opened the front door to let in some air, but that also let in the noise of all the vehicles passing by.  Instead of trying TPR with two tutors and a lot of noise we asked for multiple dialogues from our tutors in the local language, which turned out well thanks to a great microphone on our recorder.  Otherwise the session was very chaotic and not very beneficial. 

On another note, last weekend we moved upstairs!  Before arriving we were expecting two bedrooms upstairs.  One bedroom was ready this past weekend.  We are all still in one room, but now there is enough room for us to have our own beds!  There is also a great deal of room upstairs for the kids to run around.

Our new bedroom upstairs, big but slightly unfinished!

Upstairs area, with a nook to later be enclosed for a second bedroom.



The bathroom for two families.  There is a sink, it is just outside the bathroom door.  The blue tub seems only to be used to store water if needed.

The kitchen and washing machine/area at the far end.  There is a fridge next to the dish rack on the left.

 

Safely in a new city!

We arrived safely in the smaller city to study their local language.  We rode a night bus, after a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with other ex-pats, and arrived at about 4:30am.  THANKFULLY the boys slept really well!  We were graciously picked up by the family we are now living with.  They offered us their eldest daughter’s room to sleep in until morning (or at least later morning), which we were all able to do for a couple more hours.  That morning we ate pastries (the local version) and coffee (with sugar).  Mid morning I, Erin, along with Whitman joined the wife on a trip to the traditional market.  It was great to see all the produce, meat, household items, and even toiletries they had.  The wife bought blue nail polish for her daughter, yes, at the traditional market.  The rest of the afternoon we spent just hanging out at the house. 

We are trying to get settled, yet still very much in transition.  The second floor, which we where first offered, isn’t quite finished.  So the daughter’s room we were graciously offered is our room as a family.  The firsts two night we slept well, but last night the four of us in one bed began to be more uncomfortable. 

Our current sleeping situation... becoming local!

Thanks to our host we have lined up a language tutor.  He works for the department of tourism and a local museum.  Due to his work schedule and there only being one tutor, John and I are attending a 2 hour language session together.  That means the boys get to come along and try to be quite!  Movies, books and snacks are very helpful. 

The rest of our time is still pretty unscheduled.  I often will help the wife cook at 11am, when she prepares a few different dishes for lunch.  Later we eat the left overs for dinner.  We’ve eaten at least four different kinds of fish thus far.  Today I did laundry.  My first time using a twin tub washer, do those even exist in the states?  When we arrived I was very glad to see it, then I noticed laundry being done by hand and figured it must be broken.  Apparently the wife prefers laundry to be done, by her house help, by hand.  Shortly after I hung up the clothes it began to rain.  Mid-day it cleared up only to rain again early evening.  I brought our laundry in before the second rain, though some of it was still damp.  Once inside I struggled to find a place to dry it, so I just laid it all out on our bed and pointed our 6 inch fan it. 

We are in the middle of an incredible learning experience as we get to live with a family and focus on language study.  Even teaching Caedmon is on hold as I arranged his lessons so he gets the whole month of December off, a perk to homeschooling!  But it is also becoming challenging as we try to maintain some of our normal routines for the health and well being of our family. 

We will be here with the local family for 3 weeks, celebrate Christmas on another island, then come back to the same city for continued language study.  So here we go!