CEC and Spanish course

One of our views. Surrounded by Mountains

So the first month in Bolivia... We lived at CEC which is connected to Casa de Esperanza and is a Spanish course and also a discipleship course for Bolivians who are around 17+. our main goal was to learn as much Spanish as possible in our class. Every morning we would have four hours of Spanish class where our teachers would only speak Spanish and our textbook was only in Spanish. It was crazy... I went from not even knowing how to say what my name was to slowly but surely being able to speak more and more spanish.

CEC students on their last day

During our stay we got to hang out with the CEC students who were part of the discipleship course for 3 months. Some of them were orphans living at Casa de Esperanza and others came from all over. It was really fun to be able to make lots of new friends who were the same age as us and to be able to practice our Spanish with them. And they were really patient with my Spanish. :) Really patient. Even when I accidentally would say bad words in Spanish they would just laugh and actually tell me how to say the word right!

Our beautiful view overlooking Caranavi

 



Jessa and I were so blessed by all of our new friends and we learned so much from our stay at CEC. During this month we also went up to Casa de Esperanza every afternoon to help with homework but our main goal was to get as much Spanish into our brains as possible. We were blessed with some amazing teachers. Ximena, Jasmin, Jameson and Marco all were so patient with us and made learning SO fun! There were times where we would just die laughing in class.

Two of our good friends from CEC: Marcos and Misael

Some of the highlights from living at CEC:

*The FOOD!!! We were so spoiled with all the yummy meals. Lots of rice and potatoes but really tasty!

*Chuño! First of all the dog. Jameson and Diedra's dog Chuño was such a love bug and I loved snuggling on him.
 The other chuño is a little black potato that's been freezer or something and it tastes kinda weird. Not gross or anything... I just could never decide if I actually enjoyed eating them or not.

Our AMAZING Spanish teacher and friend: Ximena

Noelia, Jessa and I swimming in Caranavi    

*Sleeping with the warm breeze blowing into our windows and the sound of TONS of crickets everywhere. Seriously the most amazing sound to go to bed to.

With Jameson, Diedra and MaryLuc

*Rain! Lots and lots of rain. Going to sleep to rain and waking up to rain and lots of rain in between. Lots of classes would be interrupted by the sound of rain and everyone running to get clothes off the line before they got more wet!

We were also incredibly blessed to be able to spend time with and learn from Jameson and Diedra who are from our church and had been serving in Bolivia for over a year. So fun to get to know them better. God really used them to encourage me on days where I was discouraged with Spanish or with life in general. 

I really learned how important it is to be able to laugh at yourself. While learning a different language, there were times where my brain didn't want to take anymore and I would just start repeating the same word over and over again in a daze. Being able to laugh was such a crazy blessing. It seems like a simple concept. :) 

“I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.” 

― Dr. Seuss
 
More coming!
~Lily