Jardin or no Jardin - That is the Question!

It is considered incredibly normal and quite frankly was expected that we were going to put both of our children in the Jardin once we started language school. What is a Jardin - well I am glad you asked! A jardin is basically a daycare center for preschool/kindergarten(jardin is Spanish for garden as well). Here it is normal for Peruvian children to go to the Jardin at age two if they are wanting to get into a better gradeschool, however it is obligatory to place your child in the Jardin at age three - at least that is what we have been told. The Jardin is from 8:50-12:30 every day during the week. For most parents this works out wonderfully because they need to work to support their families. However, for us it is a little complicated. First off John starts school at 8:30 and the Jardin does not open until 8:50 so that means I would have to walk with all THREE kids a few blocks to the Jardin - which seems like a few blocks to many unless I grow another arm. There are services to taxi your kids to school but those cost money and that scares me a little bit. Another thing to think about, is that if I did actually get Caleb to the Jardin in the morning I would not actually see him again until 4:30 because I have language classes from 12:10 till 4:30. At this time I would come home cook dinner and by the time I got done with everything I would be lucky to even get 20 minutes with the little guy before he goes to bed at 7. I feel like I am not ready for this. I think to myself, am I just being selfish or is the just not the right timing? John and I would really like for him to speak Spanish, but is this out of prideful ambition of just wanting to be able to say our kid speaks Spanish or does he really need to learn it right now? I mean I absolutely agree he needs to learn Spanish but right now we have a good schedule going and I fear the emotional turmoil (on both his side and mine) we might create might be worse than not sending him to school. At this point we are not sure if he will benefit from only having a few months in the Jardin before we move to Curahuasi. Once we get to Curahuasi we do not plan on sending him to school, for a couple of reasons (1) He is still very young (2) We have not decided whether we are wanting to homeschool or not. Caleb is still very young (3 in May) so really if we were in the States I would not even be considering whether or not to put him in preschool, however we do feel a good amount of cultural pressure to put him in school here. Every week people talk to me about the benefits of putting him in the Jardin, and really the only benefit would be that Caleb would learn Spanish because realisitically I will still not be able to get more homework done. Will 4 months in the Jardin really make a difference if we decide to homeschool them anyway in Curahuasi? Will it really be that important if we come back after three years anyway? Truth be told if we come back after three years he will not really retain any of it anyway although I am sure this will make it easier for him to learn Spanish in the future. Or will we stay here longer than three years? Tough, tough, tough decisions. Please pray for us on how to go about this.

 

We do have DVDs and music that the kids have been listening to and they are learning lots of Spanish words. We also have a sweet girl who comes to our house to watch the kids while John and I are walking to language school. She stays for about two hours and only speaks Spanish to the kids which has also been helpful. We also just started attending church on Thursday nights too in hopes to get Caleb exposed to more Spanish. We visited this particular church for the first time this past Thursday. What an eye opening experience. I imagine this will be a little bit more like the church experience we will have in Curahuasi. They had two kids rooms, one fore preschool and a nursery. The preschool room was a concrete room with ten plastic chairs. They did have a boombox for music and some crayons but that was pretty much the extent of it. The nusery had two small beds, one crib and lots of stuffed animals. Normally you expect to see a child safety gate in the nursery and they had one creatively made out of material easily available to Peruvians. Kids do not need much - just love and care - and that is what they got that night. When we returned to pick up Caleb that night he was so excited that he got to sing songs and color a picture. Who needs fancy toys right?

Pray for our friend who helps us with the kids as she will be going to have surgery next week, sooner than we expected. She will need to have about 3 weeks off after the surgery and we will miss her dearly - ourselves included. She is such a blessing to our family during this time of language learning.
 

 

...The decision on whether or not to homeschool is giving me more gray hair for sure. Any thoughts on this? I have many...

Oh the Microwave...

 

After several trips to oeshle (where we purchased our microwave), one mechanical repair that gave us back our original microwave and one mechanical repair that failed, two months later we have our microwave back. Seriously when I say several times I mean 15 times - not exaggerated at all. We took the microwave in before I delived Hudson and we just got a new one this week. Not sure we will ever know why it took so long but at least we have it back. We have not had a microwave for so long now we kind of wonder why we bought one in the first place. As we have used it this week we have realized that having a microwave is much more convenient when you have three kids and saves a lot on washing dishes. The funny thing is we have gone without one for so long that Hannah walked in and saw the mircowave, she pointed her finger and with a concerned look on her face said"Uh oh...uh oh..uh oh!". We are all grateful and astonished to have our microwave back. Oh the joy of modern conveniences!

I Can't Speak in English or Spanish

My brain is getting so confused I cannot even speak my native tongue anymore. Just a few days ago Caleb asked me how to spell the word "patient" I said, "P...A...C...I...." - John just looked at me and started laughing. I did not even realize that I was spelling it the Spanish way! Oh dear...

***By the way Caleb's first word he can spell all by himself is, of course, the word "jet". This kid has had airplane/helicopter brain since as he was born!***

Learning a new langauge does horrible things to your mind. Sometimes I cannot remember the English word for things - I consistently forget the English word for "palta" which is avocado. The avocados here are AMAZING- back in the States I could never find ripes ones but here I can choose if I want one for lunch or for later in the week. They always have ripe avocados here, and we are really enjoying them.

I just have to share some of these ridiculous language learning stories. This week for me has been a difficult one with the whole learning Spanish thing but I am slowly learning to laugh at myself - and so is everyone else! During class this week I was describing a scene in my vocab book to my teacher when I said, "The people are eating the duck", when what was really happening was the people were feeding the duck - no big deal right? We got a pretty good laugh out of this one. Oh but it gets better....this week I was trying to explain to John how Hudson's baby blanket smelled like dirt. Let me clarify this - I had just washed his blanket - however it is windy here in Arequipa and when you hang your clothes over night the wind blows all the dirt on the clothes. At least the blanket was cleaner than before it was washed. Anyway, as I was trying to describe that Hudson's blanket smelled like dirt I said, "The blanket sounds like the earth." John looked at me all funny and we both busted up laughing.

Sometimes language learning is hilarious, awkward, and extremely frustrating. The funny thing about this is that I **thought** (which is the key word here) that I pretty much knew Spanish before I got here. HaHAHAAHa! So FUNNY! Everyday I spend my time working on pronunciation, grammar, and just plain stumbling over my words. Spanish is such a beautiful language and it is horrible how I just butcher it every day. Just one more example..I had been here for 5 weeks studying Spanish when on one Sunday I asked my pastor, who is a guy, how his husband was doing?! In my mind I thought, "Did I really just do that?". Yep, I did. Oh brother...

I know that with every week that passes I am getting a little (emphasis on little)  better, but sometimes I wonder if it will ever be enough. One of the hardest things about learning a language is, well, that you actually have to practice speaking - profound right? Well as a mom I think this is really hard. I cannot spend all day integrating myself into the culture or meeting/talking with people well because I have three children who need to eat. In addition to this, every time we go out, we fall into the same pattern as we did in the US - John usually does the talking and I watch the kids. This is especially easy to fall into here since John knows considerably more Spanish than I do - I mean the guy is a genius! They say that some people are left-brained (better at math and science), and some people are right-brained (better at everything else). Well it is obvious to me that John uses both sides of his brain...I mean he is a doctor, and can absorb/speak new languages like no one else I have ever seen. After this evaluation of John, I am beginning to wonder whether I am right-brained, left-brained or just do not have a brain. I will let you know when the verdict is in.

We take for granted just being able to walk into a store and communicate with someone. Yesterday I went to one of my favorite stores here in Arequipa to purchase a few small wooden toys for the kids. They had these beautiful, colorfully-designed little instruments I had been keeping my eye on for a while. When I found out they were on sale I decided to go in and get a few. I spent  a while looking at prices and finally determined what I wanted and went to the register. As the prices began to ring up something was not adding up because it came out to be more than I had intended on paying. I took my receipt back and asked the lady why the price was so high since it said right here it was on sale. She tried to explain the problem to me for a couple of minutes but it was futile. I could not understand what she was saying and more importantly why I had paid so much for something that was supposed to be on sale. I had spent twenty minutes making sure I had everything added up right only to fail miserably. I walked home pouting in disappointment because I just could not understand a word that lady was saying to me. I tried really hard not to break down all the way home because so many people were watching me walk down the street - as I am always a spectacle with the baby. I got home, told John my story, and started crying. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to fully understand Spanish and more importantly have spiritual conversations - or make any sort of impact while I am here.

Everyone here is kind to me when I butcher the very language that so easily rolls off of their tongues. No judgemental words - a little laughter but hey that is just normal. When you learn a language it is like becoming a child all over again except children lack pride. With all of the silly little mistakes I have made lately I am lacking pride too - maybe that is a good thing. Oh Lord help me learn Spanish!

A break from studying Spanish!