Loud Noises and Soft Voices

Crick, crick, crick, crick, crick, crick, crick. Imagine that sound, over and over, louder and louder. This is what we have had to deal with in our house over the last few nights because there is a cricket in the living room. It is no ordinary cricket, it is a cricket with an over-sized larynx that it is not afraid to use. Every morning, Isabel tells us that she could not sleep because of the grillo (cricket) and no matter how hard we try we cannot find it.

Other than the cricket, it has been a good week so far. On Monday, we started our second class. I thought it was going to be a literature class but I must have been mistaken because so far it has just been a continuation of our last class, grammar. Most of it has been review for me, which is nice but also makes it kind of boring.

On Tuesday, I went back to the nursing home as part of my service learning class. The nursing home is called "Hospital de Caridad." It was used as a hospital for a long time before it became a nursing home.  I will be going there every Tuesday to hang out with the guys and possibly help with feeding and dressing as well. For my first day there, I mostly played dominoes with three other guys and one spectator. One of the men kept calling me "joven," (young) every time he addressed me.

The courtyard of "Hosiptal de Caridad"

Like most older people, the men were kind of hard to understand because they spoke very quietly. The difference was that they spoke quietly in a language I am still learning. This made it really hard to understand several of the guys I talked to, but I am hoping to improve. I felt better when I helped push one man in a wheelchair to a store down the street. The owner of the store had to get really close to him and needed him to repeat himself several times to understand what he wanted.

Wednesday night, I went to "encuentro," our worship service. Mark got there ahead of time to practice with the band and he decided it would be funny to hide under the stage and pop out during the first song. What he was not planning on was a guest speaker before the singing started, so he ended up waiting under the stage fro about 30 minutes.