While I wish I could say every day goes as splendidly as these stories, it just isn’t true. There is another side, which mostly involves the simple fact that we are still studying.
This was yesterday’s test: I went to the hospital to pick up the previous evening’s drop off, and on the way back was quizzed by the passengers. The setting: I’m driving in a country where laws and lanes are suggestions while there are three people all speaking to me simultaneously in two languages in a car that sounds like it has a jet engine (and yet runs more like a go-cart…).
I told Stephen, “They then decided to quiz me the entire way home, in both Burmese and Karen! While I’m driving, which they have no idea how to do. I need to learn how to say “I am not a good multi-tasker” in Burmese.”
“So how’d you do?”
“Well, it wasn’t my worst. And it wasn’t my best. Unfortunately it was closer to my worst…”
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Also this week, one of the kids came to tell us a little girl was climbing on the motorbike, which one of our few rules outside.
{No fighting. No money. No motorbike.}
I then shouted over to the little girl, in Burmese: No motorbike! Don’t play on the motorbike. Don’t touch it.
Unfortunately, I exchanged “touch” for “see”–which, in my defense, rhyme in Burmese–and in essence said, Don’t see the motorbike!
This resulted in belly laughs from the nine-year-old who had come to the door. “No, Kelli! TOUCH not SEE. Don’t touch the motorbike. You said, Don’t see the motorbike! Don’t see!?” More belly laughs.
Nothing like having a nine-year-old roll with laughter at your language skills to encourage you!
So you win some & you lose some; and yet you still get up and go to class! Here’s to hoping there are more wins on the horizon.
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