Aaron's Blog
A Taste of Kinyarwanda
Posted Dec. 14th, 2006
It’s been quite a while since I was last able to write, which gives more of an indication of how busy I have been than it does my interest in keeping in touch. We still think of all our loved ones back home daily, and things are still fresh enough here to feel strange and often spur us to long for “home”, where things seemed easier in many ways—or at least more convenient.
The boys are adjusting well and we have chosen a school for David. He’ll start Jan. 15th, but in the meantime we are preparing him to transition back to early mornings out of bed. His school will actually start at 7:15 am, much earlier than he is used to, so for the time being, we are getting up early and going out for walks around the neighborhood. Every day he is able to walk a bit farther, and yesterday, we actually made it all the way up to the woods at the top of the hill. He was very excited and proud of himself.
Eli has also been quite proud of himself as of late, as he has responded very positively to a crash course in potty training. Miraculously, he is completely out of diapers during waking hours at this point, and only rarely has an accident. We are marveling at the fact that we stand on the precipice of being finished with the diaper years, although it is a stark reminder of how fast the time goes.
Celeste and I have been working hard on language training, which now occupies most of our time between 9 and 5. We take turns with the kids and spend nap time together studying with one of our various tutors, and for the time being, we are keeping pace with one another. I anticipate that Celeste will outpace me pretty soon, but for the moment we are both thrilled to be learning a new language again. Kinyarwanda is an extremely difficult language, so we are also trying to temper our enthusiasm. This was dramatically evident yesterday when I tried to learn a series of sentences involving numbers, colors and objects. The phrase two green pens, for example, is entirely different for the words for two green books. Why? Kinyarwanda has somewhere between 10 and 16 classes of nouns, which determine how things are described. Tables, pens, papers and books are in different classes, so they are described differently. So my lesson using the numbers 1 – 5, the colors red, green, yellow and black, combined with a table, pens, book and papers, was a headache waiting to happen. I’ve recovered now, but language class is about to start again in a few minutes.
I have to wrap up now, but I just wanted to get a few words down so that friends and family know that I am not trying to be neglectful. We plan to send out our 2nd newsletter before Christmas, if all goes well. There will be many more stories and updates there. Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers!
With love,
Aaron
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