Daily Life

Things are still going great. I have been studying Spanish regularly. Yesterday I spend about two and a half hours in the books and came away discouraged. I too a diagnostic test in the SATII Spanish Review book, which I am using to brush up on Spanish, review, and learn more. I found that I am ¨average¨ on both vocabulary and reading comprehension and ¨unsatisfactory¨in grammar and something else. When I saw Nelton later in the evening I told him I took a test and it told me to stop speaking Spanish. We laughed and it just motivated me all the more to study like crazy.

I am also using some of the tools aquired in SPAR (Stratigic Planning and Research) to help me research the cultural values, assumptions, norms, and customs of Peru. It has been quite comical as I am actaully living in the culture and not just dropping in to study it for three hours a week. I believe I have tapped into a key value of the culture through some wonderful observation and the next thing I know that observation is overturned as someone does exactly opposite of what my theory said was the norm. It´s been fun.

Yesterday, Nelton and I started painting the room, which was comical in itself. While he was out for the day, I cleaned the floors, washed the walls, and carefully taped the edges of the walls. I had wanted to get plastic to cover everything in that small room, but Nelton insisted we would just be careful, besides, it´s a waterbased paint that comes out with a little water and scrubbing. We began painting, and in no time, the floor was covered with little specs, or quartersized gobs of paint. So much for my taping.

Beyond that, there were 4 other people at one time crammed in that little room sitting on the bed in any empty space they could find or creeping around the small walkways I had created, and giving a live comentary of the whole ordeal. On of the guys was impressed with my taping idea, so it was worth it. Except for the floor is still a mess and needs to be scrubbed.

The climax of the night was when Nelton was using last bit of the paint in the plastic bin to do some touchup work before putting it back. He was climbing around on the ladder he had engineered from two chairs, and had set the paint on the ledge of the half wall the comes up between the room and the bathroom. I had just finnished scrubbing one section of the floor to a point that was satisfying to me, and had stopped to admire my work when suddenly my ears perked to the sound of something falling, Nelton gasping and saying, with a bit of a chuckle, ¨Oh my gosh, I don´t believe it.¨ I slowly turned, saw indeed, what I had feared, green paint splattered over everything. I quickly shut my eyes and for maybe a minute tried my hardest to imagine it away, all the while Nelton is chuckling. It was comical. Glory to God, he is right, it does wash out with relative ease. He would not permit me to clean it, but finnished up, cleaned all the paint off my arms and face with a wet clothe, and then took me out for a wonderful dinner. After dinner, I cleared off the bed, showered, tiptoed around the paint explosion and crawled into bed. The mess still sits there. We are going to finnish painting tonight as we only got through half of it, and I suspect tomorrow will be cleaning day.

I have been taking pictures of the project and hope to get them posted when all is said and done.

Prayer Request

• Marriage Paperwork. We have been checking into stuff, bringing all the needed documents and paperwork in, and working with a man. Today I brought in my document of singleness (something very important here, but something we do not use in the States). I was not sure if it would work, but the man said he would check into it for us. So, from what I understand, he is going to check with his boss to see if it will be acceptable. If not, there may be a long process we have to go through. So just pray that it will be acceptable! I will keep you posted.

More later!