This is quick note to say "Hi". I am just heading into the clinic now, and later I will be busy cooking dinner and going to Mizpah (local children's home). So, there won't be any time for blogging later tonight.
We're doing well - had a great day yesterday hanging out with friends after church and in the afternoon before Lauren returned from her camping trip. Almost all of the girls in Lauren's class (and the class above her) went on a campout for the weekend. They had a great time! On Saturday we celebrated the support staff at Hebron. They came to the school with their families for a short service, lunch, and games. We gave a really gift to the two ladies that sweep our house and wash our clothes, and Ryan even memorized a little Tamil "thank you" for their work.
Speaking of Tamil - we've had a breakthrough!!! Over the past few months we've been having our friend come and teach us Tamil. It is a difficult language that uses symbols (almost 150 of them) for sounds we can't even seem to make consistently. Anyway...I've been getting really discouraged, and told Ryan before our last lesson that I didn't know if I could continue anymore. During the lesson we both realized that if we are going to learn to speak, then we have to learn to read and write. So, we have successfully memorized the first 25 characters, and have realized that most of the other characters follow patterns that we have already memorized - all this since Thursday! The funny thing is that once we memorize them all, we still won't have any idea what we're saying! But it will be easier to read the notes that our teacher leaves us.
I'm going to try to post the symbols that we have learned so far, but it may take me a little to figure out how...
2 comments:
[wanacom] My name is Karen. I e-mailed you about your prayer list a few weeks ago. I can really sympathize with your efforts to learn Tamil. It took me 3 visits to India in 6 months just figure out the difference between "mother" and "yes". To hear a Tamil speaker, the two words sound the same, but when they slow down then you hear the difference - the double "m" in mother and the single "m" in yes. You are a lot farther along than I am. Congratulations.
Bless you! I'm doing the same thing in Amharic--has something like 250 characters, with hard and soft letters, and the whole bit. I'm also working on the local tribal language! So far I've been able to keep them all straight, but we'll see how it goes. How's your Tamil learning coming by now?
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