Translating, and babies, and mice, oh my!

7/19

Tonight we discussed at dinner our highs and lows for the day.  Let’s just say that the biggest low for me was seeing a mouse scurry across our office floor during Lusoga language class.  Polly and I nearly died.  Other than that, today was quite a challenging day.  The women bring their babies with them everywhere so we had two little kiddies in the class and they would not stop crying.  And I’m not talking a whimper or a normal baby cry, this was blood curdling, choking on their own tears, screaching crying. So everyone was talking louder than normal to hear each other.  I was trying to write and teach at the same time and the second I wrote something not to do to the deaf woman I’m working with, she did it again.  I completely lost it and I was mouthing and flailing my hands saying “No no no!” I quickly apologized and recomposed myself.  I stepped away for a moment and saw Tara looking at me like “Ah this is crazy!” Over lunch, we all laughed about it and came up with a game plan to pull the class back together in the afternoon.  My high for the day was finally seeing Victoria understand the patterning concept I was teaching her and me writing “much better” and “perfect!” on our communication notebook.  I’m praying that I get a translator for her tomorrow!  Sign language in English is hard enough but throwing Lusoga signs on top of that...yeowza. I hope I’m retaining some of these languages! :)