A Big Week

Listening to: O My Soul


I think I'll bring back the "Listening to" feature - it inspires my to actually select what I listen to rather than just hitting the magic shuffle button.  I'm on "The Coolin'" by Samuel Barber, which is causing some serious Chorale/Valpo nostalgia.  I've been feeling a lot of that recently - I miss the people, the place, the experiences: the life.  If any of you college kids are taking the time out of your insane schedules to read this (meaning you're not at the Halloween party for some reason), take that to heart.  Get the most out of "college" while it lasts; it is an experience that, as far as I can tell, is pretty much unique to 18-22 year olds living in the U.S.  That doesn't mean you should just "enjoy" college - living that life to its fullest means being productive, too.  Ok, done preaching.

This was definitely the fastest week yet.  It wasn't easy, but I feel like it was the first one that's resembled what the next 6 (5? how did that happen?) months will normally look like.  A brief rundown (not including a bunch of random meetings and other stuff I had this week):

Domingo: Farmer's market at about 8:00 am.  Best fruits, veggies, cheeses, and random (viz: very likely stolen) stuff at stupidly low prices.  Last week, I bought my tea kettle for 1,000 Colones (about $2), my pressure cooker for 12,000 (you can handle the math), and five pineapples for another 1,000.  Church at 3:00 pm, social time and sometimes a community supper after worship, then the general English class for the youth, then piano class.

Lunes: Class at HP from 4:00-7:00 pm.  That doesn't look bad, but I have to leave here by about 1:30 and don't get back until approximately 9:00.  Thankfully, it's paid per academic hour, so I get four hours' worth of pay instead of three.  They're very smart and are at a Beginning-Advanced level (C1).

Martes: My one day that's currently free as far as teaching, though I do get to go to a Bible study that often feels like a class.  I say "currently" because I may be picking up some more volunteer activity tomorrow when I visit the other Lutheran congregation in San Jose.  I'm technically here as a volunteer to their umbrella organization (Iglesia Luterana Centro-Americana), but I've only been working with Sola Fe so far.  The Bible study rotates between homes weekly, is accompanied by an awesome supper, and is led by Sergio, one of the pastors.  At the end of the study, the group decides who is going to preach on Sunday.  This seems like it's about 50/50 between the pastors and laity as far as preaching duty - they've already tried to get me to do it twice.  They said they aren't letting me leave until I do, but my Spanish is nowhere near the level it needs to be for that yet!

Miércoles: Two lessons, 4:30-6:00 and 6:00-7:00.  The first is a private lesson with Sergio.  He's at a beginning-intermediate (B1) level, which is probably about my favorite to teach.  They have enough background to believe in themselves, but they still have a very long way to go and are a little more eager to make mistakes and learn from them, which is very much the way I like to teach.  The second is the beginning English class for adults, which is a little more difficult but just as rewarding.

Jueves: Normally, general English for the youth at 6:00 and guitar class at 7:00, but this week I got a shift as a substitute and had to bump these to Friday after my other English lessons.

Viernes: Same schedule as Wednesday.

Sábado: Hopefully a morning shift with InLingua (currently pending).  Percussion class at 4:30, Youth Choir (starting next week!!!) at 6:00, youth group at 7:00.

Repeat.

Those are the basics of it, which probably look like almost nothing.  Unfortunately, as I have discovered, teaching well requires a lot of lesson planning (and I'm not even grading anything).  Additionally, I usually go to Heidi's for a sort of orientation class every week, run to the office(s) to make copies and file paperwork, go into San Jose for various things, Skyping, yada yada yada.  Long story short, I somehow usually manage to have a lot less free time than I think, which is probably a good thing.  I'm not very good at handling it.  Additionally, there are still two churches that want a piece of me and I want to start a recorder ensemble.  It would be a lot easier if I could work during the day or in the morning, but c'est la vie.

Tomorrow, there's some kind of inter-church service going on - I've only heard it discussed in Spanish so I'm very fuzzy on the details.  I'm just going to show up at Sola Fe with my guitar and let them lead me.  For this event, Wendy Mallette (a fellow Valpo student spending her semester here) and I have been working on a jazz arrangement of "A Mighty Fortress" for soprano saxophone and guitar per Heidi's request.  We practiced it again this morning, and it actually went really well.  Maybe I'll get a video up in the next few days.

I think I'd better call it a night as far as this post.  Heather and I are working through the Bible in six months, and last night she called me out for slacking by about a whole book (Joshua).  I need to read.

Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers.  I feel like a lot more of my time so far has been spent trying to position myself to let God use me than actually letting him use me, but last night I got to catch a glimpse of it.  I brought three boys in guitar class from "this is a treble clef" to being able to play open E's, A's, and D's in time in about 90 minutes.  That was really cool, and I hope it was just a little taste of what's to come.