Culture on a Tuesday Morning

Yesterday we went to the Tec with Alex Handal. He had to go take a test so we planned when we would meet back and went our separate ways. Sheryl and i got to spend some time talking and discussing how the trip was going and what was stressful/what was encouraging.

The language barrier has been more difficult than i expected; even though many people speak english here and Sheryl and i both speak pretty decent spanish, the holes are often in the same places. The concepts that we don't understand in spanish are often the same ones that the people here don't know how to express in english heh. The interesting thing about going without the team and living with the families here is that we don't have a cultural retreat; when the day is over, we don't go back to our hotel where the jokes and the processing is done in english (though the people in the church here are doing such a wonderful job of making us feel welcomed, their hospitality is amazing).

There are two other "gringas" here (gringo is used really affectionately here ha...or at least with the church). Megan and Jessica who are from a GCM church in Iowa and also know the Handal family. They're currently involved in different stuff than Sheryl and i, but we still hang out together a veces (sometimes).

Today we're going back to la Uni with Henry and then tonight we'll meet with different grupos de crecimientos. The Uni and the Tec are very different and the people there each view the other differently. They are kind of rivals, but it's amiable until a futbol game. The Uni is the big public university, more the size of A+M, and the students there are not required to study english, so communication is more challenging. They also seem more open to hearing the gospel, though the students at the Tec have been very receptive too. The Tec is a smaller, private university. It has more of the familiar and laid-back feel that A+M campus has though (possibly the layout, possibly the fact that i've been there before). The students there are generally more well-off and you're more likely to find students from other countries at the Tec. They're required to take english classes, so it's a little easier to talk... (they like to practice their english and we like to practice our spanish so the conversations switch around alot)...