Babylon??????

Babylon means confusion, right? Well, that could pretty well describe my home right about now. In one corner, we have English translation, and from the corner nearest me I hear “wee thu sue deh duh blah”, and from other corners come other unintelligible sounds while we all diligently practice our Karen lesson for tonight. You see, we have started this English/Karen class at our church each night. On one side sit all those desiring to learn English, and on the other side, are those wanting to learn Karen.I am the English teacher, and Pastor Arthur is the Karen teacher. Each night, we start by quizzing our respective classes on the previous lesson. Unfortunately, last night the Karen class was utterly put to shame by the English class. I am not sure what they are doing, but I suspect that they neither eat or sleep, but gather together and work on perfect pronunciation all day and night so that they can recite perfectly when I come! It is a conspiracy! Whereas, the Karen class, all of which reside in my home, work from early morning until time to go to class, and we have a hard time remembering the first phrase! Talk about embarrassing! I was ready to throw in the towel and admit defeat when Woot explained to us that in Thai schools, English is taught from grade one! They do not have real English speaking teachers, so they are not very good at speaking it, but they can all read and write English! So, while we are starting from the beginning, trying to learn to read and write and speak, they are just brushing up on their pronunciation. You are right, there is no fairness in this world. But, we are determined to not give up, but to show them how smart Americans can be! (I am trying to drum up some American spirit, can you tell?) If Ben can learn this language, then certainly I can…. I was his teacher after all. I guess we should just not talk about how much older I am and discouraging things like that. So, although my home may sound like the tower of Babel, it is actually going to turn out to sound like music to our ears, if we persist. All right, now everyone repeat after me……..Wee thu sue deh duh blah!