Ciamar a tha sibh?

Day 3 at Tyn-y-nant. So it’s still weird for me to think that as my Monday morning started, it was still only 2am at home and people were sound asleep, but the day started nonetheless. Jet lag really isn’t a problem anymore, and for that I am extremely happy. Now I don’t have anything to blame my tiredness on except...um me but that’s no different than back home. 

This was our first day of actual training in specific areas. After breakfast, we had a time of praise and worship which was lead by 4 of the students. Each day, a different group of students will “lead” worship in whatever way they want to. After that time, we broke out into discussion groups in which we read through Luke 10:1-12 and discussed some things about it. 

Next, was our first official language class for 2 hours. We have teams going to 3 language areas: Welsh, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic. Oh by the way, “Gaelic” in Scottish Gaelic in pronounced like “galaxy” without the “see” sound at the end, if that makes sense. I had no idea it was pronounced different that “gay-lic.” Speaking of Gaelic, that’s what I will be learning. It’s just me and my teammate, Elise, that are going to Scotland, so our class is a little small, but I like it that way. John is teaching the Welsh group, another colleague is teaching the Irish group, and someone is “teaching” Elise and me. I say “teaching” because she doesn’t actually speak Scottish Gaelic fluently and stepped up to learn with us and help guide us. We’ll all learn together. The learning approach we are all doing is very auditory and all about the hearing and speaking of the language as opposed to the visual/reading it part. Since we only have a week to get down basic knowledge this is the best way. That’s better too because in the languages, well in Gaelic at least, the words are pronounced so phonetically different than we are used to that looking at the words doesn’t help that much. In fact it might confuse me more. Our class is using a video series that is coupled with a workbook thing that is very helpful. It was a good first day of class, I think. We got a lot of phrases down and I think by the end of the week, all 3 of us will be much better. The first thing we learned was “ciamar a tha sibh?” which means “How are you?” It’s pronounced kaymuhr ua ha shiv. See how different it is? Our teacher did tell us a tip she learned from speaking Irish where she lives...even if you’re not sure of the right pronunciation just spit it all our really fast and don’t linger and it’s probably more right than you think. A lot of the native speakers do speak this way, fast and running together words. So that’s what we have been trying to do.

Lunch was next followed by some “team time” which is basically going to be teambuilding games and exercises. Today’s game was called Harbor..something I can’t remember. Basically we had a blindfolded team member (Elise) who was a boat and they had to make their way through a maze of tables and chairs to the finish line while another teammate (Me) yelled directions to them from afar. Like any good game, there were obstacles to overcome like other teammates flicking water on boats, people making loud noises to muffle other people, other people yelling to be heard, and someone going around telling the boats the wrong thing on purpose. It was crazy but fun. 

After the rousing round of Harbor...something I can’t remember, we had a session with John about personal evangelism and just a general overview of what that looked like. He said we’ll go over that more in the coming days. He did talk a lot about what the different schools of thought concerning religion were here in the UK and I thought that was really interesting because it’s so different in some ways to America.  

Later on today we had something Hungarian and really hard to pronounce for dinner. It was some kind of soup. And John played Hungarian music through the speakers while we ate. It’s safe to say we will not go hungry at all this week with John’s cooking. We have had some pretty good stuff and also I’ve had some of the best desserts here. We had like 5000 beignets tonight. John was alluring us to eat them with his deep voice and talk of a winter wonderland. Much laughing happened. 

Tonight we had a panel type session on the sports and music of the cultures in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. There is apparently a sport really big in Ireland called hurling. Look it up. It’s intense. We also had a time of Bible storying which listened to then proceeded to act it out. Storying is a way that we can hopefully reach out to people. Lastly we had a prayer time. We’ll have one of those every night. Every one will get in the “hot seat” and we have to, in 3 minutes, tell how we cam to Christ, how we came to be here this summer, and a prayer request. This is to help us all get to know and pray for each other and also to help us get used to speak quickly. 

Oh also, I’ve had some of the best hot chocolate here. I don’t know what brand it is but it is so good. 

Lastly: yes, I’m excited that it’s cool enough here to actually drink hot chocolate and not pass out from heat.