Days Four and Five

The sleigh had been getting harder to push since Tuesday, but shortly after lunch the snow and the oomph ran out. It was time for high fives all around and a celebration with carrot cake and hearty local ice cream for a job well done.

Joel and Rebecca, Stefan, and Josiah and Cynthia had slogged through grammar problems usually given to people taking linguistics for hours most days for six months. Not that they’ve become experts, but they could get most of the way through at some level, and then look at the answer keys and understand the jargon. Moreover, they enjoyed the process and felt they had some idea of how to use linguistic tools to approach problems in Cabecar or other languages they might approach. (They also knew that if they were to do serious linguistic work they would need intense formal training, but now they can approach such training without the anticipation they would have had for eating roasted spiders or boiled grubs.)

At sunset (hence no pix) Timothy and I took a walk down to Grano de Oro. I saw the building his family lived in when they first moved into the area and the building that housed the church his father started, and he described how the culture there had changed in the last century from Indians living alone attired in bark to the arrival of “Spanish” (often born on this side of the ocean) outsiders to the two cultures living together like oil and water to assimilation. Within a day’s walk of where he lives the Indians seem to be assimilating to some degree. Further out they are not, and those are the people he is translating for.

In a few minutes he will be taking me to Josiah’s. Josiah and Cynthia will drop me at Cynthia’s parents’ house while they go to translate at a bilingual women’s conference. Cynthia’s parents don’t speak English, so we’ll see how long the conversation lasts. Joshua says the dad is quite a joker. If he speaks slowly enough, I might even catch some of the humor. The plan is for me to go to church tomorrow (Foursquare Gospel, probably all in Spanish, both new experiences for me), then Monday morning J & C have to go to immigration for one of their sons’ passports, so I guess they’ll drop me where I can take a bus to the airport. Traffic in San Jose is gridlock about 18/7, so I may spend more time on wheels than on wings.

See you later!