M & Ms, Coke Zero and new friendship

I came a week before the rest of the Paraguay team so I could hang out with Alyssa Lugbill and follow her around a bit. She teaches at a primary school run by the church her mission works with. The last two nights we have hung out with girls who are friends of Alyssa's and had a great time. The Spanish has been pretty easy for me to follow, so it has been very "amable" all around. Today I have a sore throat, so we decided I should just stay home and rest while Alyssa went to school.

I was reading, checking email, and generally being lazy when the phone rang. I answered, and then realized it was from downstairs, where someone was calling to be let in. It was one of the girls we have spent time with, Noemi, 17 and "a friend." She wanted to know if they could come up so she could introduce me to the friend. The two of them came up, we greeted each other....and then Noemi said they had to leave. I decided maybe I should do a bit more grooming since I'd only gotten as far as a shower in case any more people would be coming by to stare at the visiting American!!

A little while later, I was working away on a project on the computer. I heard what would normally sound like knocking, but there have been construction workers banging and yelling just a little ways away all week, so I figured it was just them. After a little more of the same sound, I decided it was indeed someone at the door. When I opened it, there stood Noemi, smiling at me shyly. I invited her in and decided she was stopping by for a visit.

We talked about several things. She was the most animated when trying to tell me about the vowel sounds and various words from the Guyani (Indian) language. Alyssa has a white board
up in her living room, so Noemi was being very "teacherly" making her points with written examples. After a bit we sat down at Alyssa's nice "farm" style table, where various things from our last 2 evenings' activities we sitting. There was a bowl of M & Ms there, left over from brownie hot fudge sundaes. So we started helping ourselves to those.

My favorite snack during the school year is M & Ms and Diet Pepsi. I am known at my school for eating those daily.:) I began to tell her about that, and she said, "But we don't have Pepsi here."
Alyssa had gotten us some Coke Zero a couple of days ago, so I got that out. Then as she watched very carefully, I popped some M & Ms into my mouth and swigged a bit of the Coke. She proceeded to imitate me exactly....put in the M & Ms, then before finishing them, take a nice swig of the Coke. We sat there doing this for a bit together. Before too long, she had to return to school for her afternoon session.

I told Alyssa about the M & Ms when she got home....I said I had never meant for it to be quite such a precision demonstration, but when put alongside the "how do you do and say things here" that we had been engaged in this afternoon and previously, it seemed that a careful demo and careful observation by the "learner" were appropriate!!:)

(Written by Carol Schmidt)