We get up and eat breakfast with new friends and then worship all together. Then the boys go to their classes and Paul and head to ours. We are all learning the same things, just on different levels. These first two weeks focus on language acquisition. We are practicing speaking correctly and clearly and learning phonetics of symbols that I've never even seen, but will soon be using in my everyday conversation. We watch our mouths in a mirror to make sure our tongues and lips are in the correct position and then commence with the noise making! There is some laughter, but, for the most part, we are each intent on figuring this language thing out. I never realized how exhausting it could be to spend the day learning how to make sounds! Aidan, Paul and I are each training in a different language. The idea is to learn HOW to learn a language, so that you gain confidence and can guide language learning with a language helper on the field. It is an amazing system and we are having fun. Aidan is learning Hindi and, according to the adults in his group, he is doing very well. No surprise there! Paul is learning Bulgarian and I am learning Russian. We are having a great time!
Besides the language acquisition, we are also having counseling and personal growth sessions. We are also talking a lot about expectations and the paradox of excitement and sadness that surrounds the going process.
All in all, it is an emotionally draining process, but the founders of this program are so smart. Each day ends at 4:oo and we are free to process and decompress in the evenings and on the weekends. We love hanging out in the evenings, talking with new friends and getting to know one another's stories. Not to mention, we are living in a truly beautiful place for the next several weeks! The boys go hiking every morning and we all play outside in the evenings.
Yesterday, we went to Pike's Peak and that was an adventure! We got two miles up the ascent and our radiator gave out! We trekked back down, found a repair shop, rented a car and went back up while the minivan was being fixed. It was more complicated than we had planned, but it was so amazing! The summit of the peak is at just over 14,000 ft. We made it to just over 13,000 (above the tree line) before they turned us back. The winds were sustained around 35 mph with gusts up to 80 mph. Our car was being swayed a bit. There were almost no guardrails, but the view was awesome! We got out of the car at 13,000 ft and had to hold on to little Elijah to keep on the top side! They loved it, but were a little trepidatious at being so high with such strong winds. We took some pics and then headed back down 10,000 ft where we had seen a picnic area. There was so much snow and we had plans to have some fun! In some parts, Paul sank up to mid-thigh! For the most part, it was 12-18 in deep. We had never been in snow like that and it was a blast. Snowballs were thrown, snow angels were made, snow was eaten. In general, a great time was had by all!
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