Bienvenidos a San Miguel!

Hello to all in cyberspace!

Tarah here. First off, welcome to our little blog. It took me a while, but I finally got around to setting this up to share about our new Mexico adventure. I hope nobody is too disappointed in how long this took me to create, and I hope you wont be equally disappointed when you realize how undisciplined I am going to be about writing on this thing. I like to consider my unreliable nature for all things journaling more like an appreciation for 'living in the moment' than flat out indiscipline. I encourage you to see it this way as well, for it will save you any potential frustration with me over the next six months :)

The four of us (Lindsey Speck and Anthony Molieri as well) have been given a number of responsibilities here by the church leaders. We will be starting our weekly English classes on Monday, and will provide an adult, children, and teen class to everyone in the church and the rest of the community. This is an exciting and challenging opportunity for us because we have never taught an English class before, and already people in the church are sharing with us their own excitement to learn the language. Lindsey and I will be taking weekly trips to an impoverished area of town to spend time with two families and their children who live very far from the church but desire to be in community. There are a lot of retired gringo(a)s here in San Miguel, so the pastor has asked us to also conduct weekly English services. These will most likely look like Bible studies rather than traditional services, but we are excited for this challenge as well.

Our first priority here is to learn Spanish...ASAP. We can only be as effective as our level of communication will allow. Regardless of my 10 years of Spanish class, it is difficult to keep up with the speed at which people speak here. We are attending biweekly conversation classes to help with this issue. Last night at conversation, I had a discussion with a Mexican man about the US's position as global 'dictator' and the mechanisms of control it uses on other countries through the economy, etc. By the end of the conversation, my brain felt like an egg on a frying pan and I wanted to sleep for a week straight. Nonetheless, I knew my language was making progress. I have now moved passed the "Where are you going?","This is a boat", and "The cat is running" phase in my language progression. Praise God-I don't know how long my sanity could hold up speaking only at a 1st grade level to everyone I met. And God help the people that have to listen to me talk about what I had for lunch or what my favorite subject in school is every day...

My goal for this blog is to share a diverse range of experiences while we are here in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. Something I noticed after my stay in Guatemala 3 years ago was that I found myself telling the same stories over and over again when I returned to the States. After awhile, I had my lines down like an elevator speech, and my memory bank of stories and emotions during the entire experience became thinner and much less rich than when I first returned. I hope that I can prevent that phenomenon by maintaining this lovely little blog affectionately titled "The Chronicles of Kyle and Tarah," and that we can always return to it to remember the smells, sounds, and stories of San Miguel de Allende.

Bienvenidos a nuestro blog :)