Soli Deo Gloria

Lessons in cricket and marathi

January 13, 2011 at 6:09 pm (Uncategorized)

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Friday morning, 5:45am. Jodi and I are woken up by scratching at our window. After recovering from the initial panic and chaos, we realized it was Danny (Kiron and Nalini’s son)…he was waking us up for our 5:30 run. Yes, we overslept. We ran around the grounds for 15 or 20 minutes and decided that the uneven ground hurt the knees too much to be worth it, so we decided to walk down to the railroad tracks. That was terrifying. Back home, a morning walk in the country would be no big deal….but throw in a jungle, monkeys, and possible tigers, motorcycles and random waterbuffalo and it is an entire different story. Luckily, Danny and Daniel (the Australian) wanted to go too so they were there to protect us.

I continue to learn a lot of Marathi. The back of my journal has become a veritable dictionary of words and phrases. Some I learn by asking, some by hearing, and others I learn the hard way. In the last few days, I’ve mixed up several words: I tried to ask Daddy if he was cold…in Marathi that is “Daddy thunde ahe?” but instead I said “Daddy thundar ahe?” I asked Daddy if he was a motorcycle. Then in English class we were learning opposites…I tried to ask the girls “Where is outside?” (Outside kuthe ahe?) instead, I said “The dog is outside.” (Outside kuthra ahe.) No wonder they just stared…

Yesterday we had an awesome game of cricket. I’m starting to really like that game…we play it with a tennis ball, so all solid hits go flying across the field. It makes you feel good about your athletic skills. Although the good feeling only lasts until I have to run back and forth between the wickets and get lapped by 7 year olds because I’m so out of shape I’m sucking air.

English class is going ok. By ok, I mean that I’m able to fill the ½ hour with music (when we have current (electricity)….right now we don’t so there goes that idea for today), games, puzzles, stories, conversation questions, etc… but just because the ½ hour is full, doesn’t necessarily mean that it all makes sense. It feels thrown together and I hate that. My prayer right now is that the kids would be able to get something out of it.

At night we have a meeting time with the kids…me and Jodi and Daniel the Australian will do skits, music, and lead them through a devotion. A few nights ago I went through Isaiah 40:26 “Lift up your eyes and see Who has created the stars. He leads forth their host by number and calls them all by name. Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of his power not one is missing.” I had them really think about how big our God is… to really stop and consider the song we sing: my God is so big, so strong and so mighty, theres nothing my God cannot do! And that the creator of 350,000,000,000 galaxies knows every detail of who we are. He knows our name. Psalm 139 says that His thoughts about us are so many, they outnumber the sand. I love encouraging them like that… truth is, I need to hear it every now and then too.

We end every day with guitar class…the girls continue to mix their class time with a heavy dose of socializing. It’s cute! Last night they asked me all about my family; my sister’s name, mom’s name, dad’s name, do I have a boyfriend…I guess some questions transcend culture! The boys are already starting to change chords smoothly, pick and strum…all of them are catching on so quick! It’s SO fun seeing them progress…that’s the part I miss about being a school teacher: the “a-ha!” moment.

It’s about 7:30 now so I have an hour to take a bucket bath (with leftover hot water from before the power went out), eat breakfast, and gather a few things to teach English… maybe I can find some more chai too….