May 23rd 2008

For the first time since I have been in Bolivia, I woke up with my alarm. Next, I went downstairs for breakfast and had a piece of bread, a cup of tea, and two cups of water. I have found that the three days I have had tea with my breakfast I do not have a sick feeling in my stomach. After I was ready for my day to begin, I did my morning devotional and thank God for the day and especially the beautiful weather that I have had since I have been in Bolivia. I relaxed the rest of the time until it was time for me to go to language and enjoy the last classes of my first week of school. I arrived at the language school in what I though was plenty of time until I noticed they changed my class schedule for today and move my earlier class until later. In other words, I was really early. During my free time, I talked with Kiki, since he had the day off from school, about things we have done to get into trouble. In my first class today with Angelica, I learned about how to state obligations with certain emphasis along with speaking in the future tense. Next, I had a class with Maite in which I went over the conjugations of verbs and continued to work speaking in the future tense along with speaking of obligations. It was then time for class with Susana in which we went over how to use two verbs in a sentence in multiple ways. This class was really special for me today because one sentence structure that uses two verbs is giving advice. Her son Lucas is having surgery next Thursday because on his one foot he walks on his toes. She shared with me that he can not walk and has to be in a cast for six weeks. It was during this conversation, all in Spanish, that I gave her advice about this situation since I have experienced breaking my femur bone and being in half of a body cast for six weeks. We came up with ideas to keep Lucas occupied. Also, during this conversation God gave me some direction on why I am with the family I am with and my reason for being here right now. It is such a great feeling to have after having an emotionally stressful day yesterday. Another point made during the conversation was that Susana wishes she could take the whole week off or even the day, but she can not financially afford. This point hit me because how many of us in America are fortunate enough to take a day off from work or a week because we want to care for another person. My last class of the day with Viviana, I worked on describing difference and talking about the future. I then caught the bus home without any problems and said my evening devotion. While I was doing my devotion, it hit me that all of my professors have said that they have noticed great progress with me in just the week that I have been in classes with them. Because of this, I was given homework by my teachers to do over the weekend to continue to help me improve. It was then time for dinner, I had meat with pasta and carrots and peas. It was good. After dinner I took some time to relax and then I went back to work on my Spanish because I was able to be involved in the dinner conversation and be able to understand a majority of what was being discussed. Also, I am a person who believes that a reward is determined by how much effort is put into it.