In the Last 24 Hours ...

... I've been on both ends of the language learning spectrum: from student to teacher.  Yesterday we went as a family straight out to Emmaus Seminary after school.  The kids were happy to play with the Heckman kids and the other children around the campus while Melissa and I met with Simeon, a recent graduate who is now working at the seminary.  It was our first time to meet Simeon, a tall, lanky young man who enthusiastically shared his knowledge of Creole with Melissa and me. 

Thankfully, we are not entirely unfamiliar with Creole, as our Haitian friend in Indiana, Storly, did a great job over the past year in giving us at least a foundational knowledge of how Creole works.

Storly and Simeon have this in common: they both assure us that Creole is EASY. SOOOO easy! 

And, in relative terms, it definitely is.  For example, there's no such thing as an irregular verb. (Sarah at six and a half is still learning that in English not every verb's past tense is formed by simply adding "ed" to the end.  "She teached." "They speaked.") And in Creole, the spelling is all phonetic - so once you know how to pronounce various letters, you can read the language fairly accurately.  Still, my brain at 45 says ANY language is going to take a long time and a lot of effort to learn.

Simeon went over pronouns and verb tenses and the days of the week.  All good, solid, foundational stuff.  And our heads hurt a bit by the time we finished, so he did his job.

This afternoon then, after classes ended at Cowman, it was time to flip language learning roles for me.  I stepped into an old classroom - that coincidentally used to belong to Emmaus Seminary before it moved to the new campus - now as a teacher.  My students were 35 Haitian men and women who want to learn English. 

Deluxe accommodations!

They were all so attentive and earnest - teachers, businessmen, mechanics and students, all looking to improve their English skills.  They've all been through "Level 1" already and I am teaching "Level 2", so thank goodness I'm not required to explain things in Creole!  It was intimidating enough to look at the unfamiliar names on the sign up sheet: Lunel, Margareth, Sulvestre, Simalia, Jiloucie, Andrise, Celestin, and Luckner.  Just taking attendance could have eaten up the entire hour and a half if I hadn't thought to call on a nearby student to read off the names!  I would have come nowhere near pronouncing half of them in any way recognizable to their owners. 

So by the end of class, I had just one person's name memorized: the guy who helped me with attendance.

Jeffery!

It's a start.

Just before class ended, I told the students that I wanted to pray for them.  And even though I felt exhausted by that point and in-way-over-my-head, I felt a deep gratitude toward the Lord for bringing me to this place.  This IS where I am supposed to be.  This course will stretch throughout the rest of the year and into next May, so these folks will not be strangers to me for long!  I am anxious to see how God works through me and this Bible-based curriculum in the coming months.



I close with a couple of pics from the old seminary classrooms that just sort of made me laugh a bit: 

Heh. What do you do when the only logical place for the chalkboard coincides with one of the few outlets in the room?

This seems like an easier solution: just put the chalkboard on blocks!  ;-)