Language

"If I could speak in tongues of angels and men, but have not love I am nothing."

My host dad speaks English. He works blowing glass and selling what he makes to tourists up in the rainforest and in town. Last night he acted out his interactions with English speaking tourists...
Tourist: "Wow, did you make this?"
Angel: "Yes, I make."
Tourist: "How much does this cost?"
Angel: "20 million dollars" (smiling)..(it's one of the only numbers he knows)
Tourist: "How long did it take you?"
Angel: "Usually about three hours."
And so on for a couple of minutes until the familiar questions run out. This is how he speaks English.

Many kids at my school are billingual, having taken classes to learn English most all of their lives. We speak Spanglish to each other, Spanish to most teachers, and English to some too. Some kids were out playing soccer and ran into each other, and were both crying. One girl was saying what she wanted and needed to comfort her in English and the other boy in Spanish. When you are hurt it's hard to speak in your second language...you just want to speak in your first and have someone understand you, so they both explained their needs in their first language.
Then, like yesterday, on Abolition of the Army Day, there are moments of silence too. On Abolition of the Army Day it was a silence of remembering wars, of lost loved ones in battles, and to think about where hope among all this is found. Other times silence is open and wandering, wordless. If you think about music, it wouldn't exist without silence. It's as big a part of it as all the notes.

Language is hard to define. It's full of motions, meanings, words. So much to always be understood, but with love...it's universal. With love, we can know that just because we don't understand what someone is saying in a different language or because of something else, it doesn't mean there isn't meaning and thought behind it. Sometimes the love is hidden beneath the words and other times it doesn't have to do with words at all.
In Nicaragua to call someone over, instead of moving your fingers toward you like your fanning your face, you motion downwards with your wrist, as if you are telling someone to duck down. Which is what I did the first time I saw this signal. After crouching down on the ground at the Nicaraguan border so confused as to what was going on, the man calling me over told me "Venga!"..a word I understood means come. It takes patience and listening to be open to language and to learn meaning behind it. There are barriers, flaws, smiles, frowns, bad words, good words...so much to be defined. But one language we all speak is love and that is greater than all these.