I have a small car... or not!

I'd never really learnt a foreign language.
"I would like a kilo of apples, and a strawberry ice-cream" in French, and "I am 12 years old" in German.  Literally those were pretty much the only 'foreign language' phrases I could remember, so I was excited to be learning Arabic.

'I have a little Arabic'  - this was one of the first phrases I learnt before class started.
Trying to cobble together some words I had picked up, I went around saying this to anyone who attempted to talk to me, or who I was trying to communicate with.

It was slightly unfortunate that what I was actually saying was "I have a small car".

One day I was surprised to hear my Muslim friend say something to her daughter about getting the "pastor on the wall".  Not pastor, but actually a glass bottle - the two words being very close sounding.

'Cat' and 'church' were more close sounding words to my inexperienced ears.  I told the teenage boys I was working with that we were going to 'the cat' instead of the church.

Many times I would end up laughing out loud at myself as I bumbled through the days.
I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to learn Arabic and the gracious, friendly, and often highly amused, friends who helped me learn.


There are many cars in this photo... none of them are mine.. including the small ones!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fishing

Image
The boys were aged between 14 and 18.  All had chosen to live at the centre instead of the streets. As part of a reward system for good behaviour, I decided I would take a few of the boys fishing. I knew nothing about fishing, and they didn't know much either. I went to the market and found some fish hooks and fishing line and hoped the boys would know what to do with it! Friday morning we set off.  One of the boys had collected worms from the 'garden' next to the centre.  We weren't far from the Nile, probably 10 minutes walk from the bank.  We cut through by the church, and went off into the farm land,  quickly coming to the brickworks.  All along the Nile, after the yearly flood water went down, men would set up brickworks where they would make bricks from the Nile mud.  The bricks would then be sold and used to build houses. It was probably a very strange sight - a young, white woman walking with a bunch of teenage Sudanese boys, most of whom were taller tha
Read more

The car that stopped and the car that didn't.

Image
Sometimes we (the single women living together in the 'girls house') borrowed a friend's car.  It was older and occasionally had problems starting, but once it got going worked well. One morning we were on our way to school.  Just after we got onto the main road the car suddenly stopped.  I couldn't re-start it. We prayed for it.  We tried everything we could think of.  I assumed it had run out of gas.  The fuel gauge was a bit tempermental so it was kind of a guessing game as to how full the tank might be.  The thought of figuring out how to get diesel from a gas station and get it in the car was not appealing.  I put the key in one last time....and this time the car started immediately.  We had been stopped about 10 minutes. Less than five minutes down the road the traffic was at a standstill, there had been a serious car accident.  As we drove past we realised it had just happened. Our delay had meant we missed it. Nothing is a surprise to God.  I was thankful.
Read more