Cebuano or Bust!

So this week we had a conversation with our fantastic language teacher, Ate Mimi. We spoke about how much of the program we had left and how we can try to ramp up the intensity to really drive home the learning and acquisition of the language that will be so important to our later ministry here. It's hard to believe that we've been here for six months! But with that comes the official end of our language learning. Mimi would like us to have been going out after class to practice what we learned and to ask cultural questions. This would have been great, but with the kids and the exhausting nature of trying to think in another language for three+ hours a day, we simply couldn't do it often enough.

We are keeping a tally of who speaks more English for "fun"

Into the fracas of the final month of language steps Hollie. She has a brilliant idea to force us to speak Cebuano in class, and if we use English, we pay a peso into a jar (this money will be used for an ice cream party...eventually), if we try to "Cebuanoize" English (perfectly valid use of language skills) but we were supposed to know the actual word in Cebuano, peso in the jar.
In just one week we have put almost twenty pesos away, but we have had good experience forcing us to think and speak and explain ourselves, all in Cebuano.
Our typical class has been transformed into a coffee-shop of Cebuano speakers, and it is fantastic. Normally we would have to listen and try to explain what we heard in English, but now we have to explain in Cebuano, stretching our vocabulary and our comprehension skills in delightful ways. Our grammar (read Jeff"s) is improving, and overall, I think this final section of study will be really productive!