Update as promised via Larry

Brenda promised you an update, but she has been busy all day planning what she is going to do next week with her Teacher-students. I have been Mr. Mom today, cleaning the apartment and doing the laundry. (Note: Brenda says: "Lots of husband points accumulated here!") I think we have mastered the washing machine, but even with the fan, the drying process has been very slow today. (See last week's blog.) Of course rainy, wet weather, with the humidity at about 99.9999% is not helping the cause any.

Just a quick update as to what each of us is doing "officially" and maybe even a bit of "unofficial" activities.

Official Activities:

Larry: I am teaching one advanced class on Monday and Wednesday morning at 7:00 AM over at city hall. Officially I have four students, all of whom handle English fairly well. Except for the first day, I have not had all four of them there at the same time. Last Wednesday, I asked Brenda to come along as my "show-and-tell". Actually I wanted them to get to meet her in person rather than just in pictures, and since she did not have a class at that time she came along. Some of the pictures I had were of her when she was a little girl, so I asked her tell about them. (Br's note: It was quite interesting to hear Alexander, who lived through the years of the Communist takeover, as he shared his perspective on those awful years; whereas Aleta, a much younger student, really could not relate to Alexander's painful perspective. She was 7 when Communism released its grip on what was then Czechoslovakia).

On Thursdays I go to the University of Zilina and do two English conversation classes of an hour and 40 minutes each. I have the option of splitting them into four 50-minute classes with 10 students each, which I may do, simply because having 10 students/class rather than 20/class will allow more conversation from all of them and keep their attention better than the longer/bigger class. The University Prof. has also asked if I would help edit some of their journal articles which have to be published in English because the journals are internationally distributed, not just in Slovakia. Those of you who know my propensity for misspelling words will probably find this as amusing as I do; however, they tell me that I will not have to "proofread", just help them with their word order, content, etc., to make sure it sounds correct in "American" English. Additionally, they have a guest lecture series, and wanted to know if I would consider being one of their "guest lecturers". WOW! Talk about a change from what I have been doing for the last 35+ years!

Brenda: Brenda teaches the second half of three beginning English classes for the city workers. These classes are taught on Monday and Tuesday by Sisa, a staff member here. Brenda sits in on Sisa's presentations and then follows up Wednesdays and Thursdays with more oral work. She also works with 16 teachers from the Lutheran elementary school, which is a part of the Bible School, throughout the week at various times. She has 12 slots of 45 minutes each for these 16 people, so a lot of them are getting 1:1 tutoring. Their skills range from upper beginner to advanced. The picture above is her preparing for her teacher-pupils.

Unofficial:

We have attended the Lutheran church which is associated with the Bible School each Sunday. While they are hoping to have regular translation into English available in the future, it is not in place yet. This makes worship interesting. We are beginning to put some sounds with letters, but have not even begun to master Slovak words, much less follow the liturgy, sermon, and hymns. We have decided to participate in the adult choir, however. We can both read the music and thus stay on pitch. We are getting better at making the Slovak sounds along with the notes. We have to trust them when it comes to content of the songs, because neither of us has the foggiest idea the meaning of what we are singing. The choir will be going into Eastern Czech Republic on Sunday to do a concert. We have been invited to go along. We are not planning to sing, having only sung through the songs once. But we are looking forward to visiting, even briefly, this neighboring country.

We are also involved in a Friday night Bible Study in English, conducted by Mary Hamilton, the other person here from New Heights Church. Besides Brenda and me, four Norwegian medical students who attend the medical school here in Martin and two Slovak students who have excellent English skills participate in this study. We have just begun a study of Matthew.