Day 8 - Job complains...

Today was an interesting and tiring day! I woke up and realized that for the third day in a row, the sun was not out- how depressing! So, I stayed in bed and read 4 days worth of Bible reading. I finished Joseph’s life and started Job’s. It is interesting that Job does not curse God even though he does complain about his boils and the “misfortunes” that come to him. He wishes he was never born and says he hates life. I’m wondering how this is considering “blameless” in God’s sight…? Does this give us the right to complain and wish we were never born at certain times? I have never wished that myself, but felt that such thoughts were sins! I guess generally from man we can learn what “not” to do and how “not” to behave, while when we look at Christ, we learn how we should behave and what we should do. He is the perfect example…not Job.

After studying Job, I went outside and soon, the kids in the village came over. We looked at my language learning pictures and they told me sentences about them. Granted I don’t think I retained anything from that ‘language session’- it was fun, nonetheless and perhaps that’s just one more time I can hear the sounds and the words and getting me closer to producing them!

Afterwards, Joyti, Robin and I ate daal batt (beans and rice), and then we went to Deepa’s for our more formal language session. Although, it has never been a ‘formal language session’ by normal standards of a language session! Today, I asked Deepa to review what Anju had taught as “on top of” and “under.” I recording the differences in Deepa’s Kahani versus Anju’s- as there were differences. I think this week I’ll be checking everything that Anju did- for review, but also to check and see how Deepa says it and how’s it the same or different.

Later in the session, Deepa was able to understand what I wanted with the little people I’ve been using to illustrate various pronouns. She went through all of them telling me the various verb endings for “to sit” in the present continuous tense. I was so proud of her- I made a big deal about it when we finished the recording. She also seemed happy, and asked, “Did you understand?” I said, “Yes! And you did too! Yeah!”

During my session, two kids (Joyti and Gauruf), were sitting there talking some of the time, and saying things. During the recording they also were saying things. I finally said, “You should be quiet during the recording, because…listen…” I had Joyti listen to herself in the recording. She said, “who is that?” I said, “you!” She realized that she needed to be quiet and both kids were better in the rest of the recordings.

After my recording I started to go back home (while Robin had her language session). I met Diksha (6 years old) and Latta (5 years old) on the path. I asked them, “Did you go to school?” The said, “yes.” I said, “how was it?” Diksha (I think my favorite little girl in the village!), said, “Good!” I tried to ask them what they learned, and Diksha motioned to her school bag and said, “Should I show you?” I went with them to Latta’s house- I was planning to go to Diksha’s home, but Latta’s was on the way, and there was no way I could go through Latta’s house without staying, having chai and talking to whoever was there. I realized that I might not get to Diksha’s house today- she seemed to understand.

I sat for about 45 minutes and tried to communicate. I took some pictures, and they asked me various questions such as, “Are you married?” “Do you like it here?” “Can you come to my village?” “When you go back to America, take me with you…” I was mainly surrounded by old women and little kids, but two young mothers were also there.

We finally did go back home; when we got there, Joyti asked us if we wanted to go with her to the field. So we did…We picked “flowers”- that are used for oil and other grass type stuff, that we think is for the cow- but we’re not sure. After a short time, Joyti continued picking grass and flower stuff and Robin, Bhavana (a 5 year old little girl who was with us), and I went to watch some little boys from another village play cricket up on the side of the mountain. We had to climb up the mountain to get there. It was fun!

We came back and continued picking. We filled an entire basket and carried it a short distance on our heads! It was heavy! Joyti carried it the rest of the way back.