truth #8: South Africans call it a 'bathing costume'

On last Thursday, Darren's sister, Kerry, came to visit from South Africa. She will be staying in Ecuador until the day after Christmas. It was nice to have a roommate again, even if only for a short while. We hit it off immediately. During the course of the weekend, Kerry joined us in our usual activities. This included Santay Island. First, let me preface this by saying that the children on Santay are absolutely wild and crazy but at the same time very cute. As Kerry was getting to know the kids, of course solely through playing with them and the interpretations of others as she does not speak much Spanish, she would tell them her name. However it seemed that they could not quite get 'Kerry' out so instead she became 'Kiwi'. I, now, call her by this name and will refer to her as 'Kiwi' from now on. Also during this trip to Santay, I had great opportunity to practice my newly found skill of communicating in Spanish. I had several long conversations with some of the girls that came to help at Santay from a nearby church. And also some conversations with the mothers of the children on Santay. And for the first time ever, I could actually understand most of what the children were chattering to me... One little kid, Leonardo, who strangely reminds me of Lennart (the OMer from Holland) particularly talked with me a great bit. I think that both of these boys have more in common than just the name.

Let me tell you a little story: When I got my sunburn two weeks ago, my legs swelled up horribly! Well one of those days, Lennart decided to give me a hard time. So he started calling me 'Chub-itha' instead of Tabitha... No worries it was all in good fun and I will get my revenge one day :) Well when I was on Santay this weekend, little Leonardo, would ask me "What is your name?" I would say "Tabita", then he would respond "oh, Chub-ita", I would say "No, Tabita", then he would say "oh, Aug-wita", I would then quite firmly respond with "No, with a 'T', Tabita" then he would say "oh, Tabita". You might think oh how cute, he finally learned to say her name correctly... No, he knew the whole time what my real name was as we went through this process at least 10 times over the weekend... Kids


Kiwi loved the weekend and the children of Santay. After we returned from Santay on Saturday morning we went to a Historical Park in Guayaquil. It was very nice with lots of the native animals from Ecuador, some of the original buildings and a walk through village/farm from the 1800's. It was fun but also SUPER hot. I think we finally introduced Kiwi to the weather of Ecuador, but the nice thing is that once you experience a real 'hot' day here all the other days feel cool in comparison.

Also during the weekend we went to several church services and also to an Evangelism workshop. Darren was not able to be right next to his sister during all of these things so it actually turned out that I was the translator for her quite a bit. My translation was by no means perfect but I could at least tell her practically all that was going on. I never understood how hard translation is until I had to actually do it, and I mean really translate and not what I did in Peru but as the person is speaking I had to translate even though they never paused... wow! One of the hardest parts was remember which language to actually speak in, if they were talking in Spanish for example about how Jesus is the Light, He would say "Jesús es la luz", I would translate that into English in my mind 'Jesus is the light' but then my mouth would get confused about which language I was suppose to say it in and it would come out like "Jesus is the luz.. I mean light, which is luz in Spanish". Once they were talking about Jesus being Lord over us and they used a word that I only knew to translate as 'landlord' so I turned to Kiwi and said "Jesus is our Landlord, but that doesn't make sense.. but that is the only way I know the word" then I just kept going. Kiwi was laughing so hard at me the whole time about my translations. I am laughing at myself about my translations and now my English. I have digressed, I say things like the sister of Darren, instead of Darren's sister (yes I erased and corrected that at the top of this blog). I hope one day they will finally separate themselves in my mind, English and Spanish, however, they all tell me it will never happen..

Though I greatly enjoyed the company of Darren's sister (they both left for the jungle yesterday morning and I will be leaving for the states before they return) I will not see her again this trip. We had many fun times together, especially over the differences in our English. First, she has an amazingly fun and beautiful South African accent. Second, they say things like "I am going to take my bathing costume with me to the beach". I tend to just turn and stare when she says things like that.. then we have a long discussion about the differences between SA English and American English. It is crazy that even though people speak the same language there are so many differences. But then again I love it as things would be much more boring without all these fun surprises! (let's hope that I still hold to that when it comes down to the wire with my visa!).