Getting the Lingo

We have now been in Arequipa for over three weeks and settled into our apartment now for about two weeks and our beginning to feel settled here. We have been able to get around the city a little and find our bearings. It has also been interesting shopping and finding out where there best places are to buy things. We are fortunate that there are two supermarkets nearby but for most things it is actually better and much cheaper to get them at the market. It has been fun discovering what market is best for what things.

Sarah continues to settle into and enjoy her nursery. It sounds like it will be great. At present it is alot less structured but next week is when the summer holidays end here and so she will be seperated into age specific classes. Although it is nursery they are very much into interactive learning here even at her age. We were given a list (that filled an A4 page!) of things that we would need to get for her. (Parents provide everything that is used in the classroom, including toilet rolls and soap for the year!) Already Sarah has made some friends and she amuses the helpers by copying everything so she has already picked up some Spanish and understands many of their instructions. We have phased Sarah into the nursery and so for the first week we took her for between an hour and an hour and a half and one of us stayed with her. Last week we started language study for 1 1/2 hours a day and so we left her on her own for the full time and then this week our schedule has increased so she is staying for almost 4 hour a day. Praise God she seems to be adapting well. She always cries when we leave her (which we are told is natural) but when we come back to collect her she is almost always having lots of fun. Sometimes she has cried when we leave nursery saying "more boys and girls."!!!!!

Last week we started language study with a phonetics class. We found this really helpful to get much of our pronounciation right (although we still have a long way to go!) This week and from now on we will have two classes a day, grammar and conversation/practical. Things are much busier this week. Alicia leaves the house with Sarah at 8am and takes Sarah to nursery on her way to the language school for her conversation class which starts at 8.30am. (All the conversation classes are one to one). I then leave the house at 9.30am to get to the language school for 10am when Alicia and I have a grammar class together. This finishes around noon and then Alicia collects Sarah, takes her home, gets her lunch and puts her to bed and then starts her homework while I stay on until 2pm for my conversation class. I walk home and get some well deserved lunch and then if Sarah is still sleeping, make a start on homework. This week so far we have had about 2 hours of homework but it can be anything up to 4 hours. In the afternoon we try to do something with Sarah and then in the evening we may have a little homework to finish off.

At the weekend we hav tried to do something together on the Saturday and then go to church on Sunday. This past Sunday we also had some other missionaries from Northern Ireland here for lunch which was really nice. Since we have come to Arequipa we have attended the same church each Sunday. It is a Baptist Church. We have really enjoyed the friendliness of the people and it has been really good that it is only about 100 yards from our apartment. Hopefully over the coming weeks as our language develops we will be able to get more out of the sermons but in the meantime we have really appreciated Val's sermons on our church website (You are a star Val!!!).

We hope to post the text from our prayer letter on this blog soon but thought that we should also tell you a little more about what is happening in our life at the moment and what a day in our life involves here in Arequipa. Once again thank you to all for thinking of us and for praying for us.