October | 2018 | Our Giggles and Grimaces

Monthly Archives: October 2018

What a Marvelous Feeling

Posted on October 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Today, I became a collector of half marathon finisher medals!! I read that once you have three of something, you have a collection. Today, I added my third half finisher medal!!

Three months of squeezing in runs, building miles, letting other tasks and hobbies slide, culminating in 13.1 miles from the USA over to Canada and back again.

I dragged my family out of bed at 4 am–yelled and fussed until I was in my corral at 6:30–over an hour before sunrise.

Patrice was the holder of the cowbell. She walked around all morning saying, “I have a cowbell!”

Sue was none too impressed with this early morning start.

As I waited in the corral, I met three people with whom I struck up a bit of a conversation with–in Arabic. This was their first race and they were planning to walk the vast majority of it. We wished each other well and were off.

My average running pace puts me in with a lot of walkers, but I am not one of them. It was quite the task to weave in and out of the people in order to keep running, but I did it.

This is the bridge from the Canadian side. We ran over on the bridge and ran back through the tunnel. You are actually running under water for one mile of the race.

I had the privilege of running this race because of a lovely friend who was born Canadian but is now an American. This spot marks where you go from one country to the other. There were lots of pictures being taken. Again, I didn’t stop to take any…I clicked and ran. I did end up walking my one and only step at this point when a person was dead in the way taking a picture and an old lady shoved me to get through. I paid her back by passing her and never seeing her again 😉

At mile 9 I ended up catching up with one of my friends from the start. She was really struggling so I slowed my pace to run with her a bit. We chatted and kept moving. I ended up moving on, but I found it a great privilege to run with her.

Then mile 11 came. And this running gig started getting harder. By mile 12 I was hurting pretty badly. And all the sudden a lady came alongside me and said, “I have been following you the whole way and you have been inspiring me to keep running.” I was really not able to talk anymore at this point, but she stayed with me, chatted just enough to keep me moving, and helped me find that last bit of oomph to dig deep and speed up for the finish line.

I owe her a great deal.

She and I crossed together, she gave me a hug and thanked ME for inspiring her. And then another lady came up to me, gave me a hug and thanked me for inspiring her.

Me. They thanked me.

I had gotten my medal and my warming foil but was still at the finish line when my friend from the beginning finished. I was so excited to get over there and tell her “Mabruuk (congratulations)!” She thanked me and gave me a hug.

And that for me, is the perfect race recap.

I never dreamed I would ever get confident enough in my running to help others, I never dreamed I would inspire someone who didn’t know my story. I never imagined I would run 3 half marathons in 13 months.

Perfection got a little better when I got home and found my race results on-line. I finished in 3 hours, 2 minutes and 32 seconds. That is 22 minutes faster than my first half and 25 minutes faster than my second. My overall pace this time was 13:56. I was hoping for a pace in the 14-minute range. I never dreamed in a million years I would get under 14!!!

I am tired and hungry and thirsty. But I am happy on so many levels!!!

I am looking forward to very gentle activity this week and finding my next race…

Blessing or a Curse

Posted on October 2, 2018 | 2 comments

Our family has had the privilege over the last year or so of learning Arabic from native speakers who started as friends and are now family.

Our family has had the opportunity to experience how badly your brain can hurt from learning Arabic.

There’s a reason it is considered the second hardest language for English speakers to learn.

Many of the sounds are different. Sentence structure is often different. Greetings are very different.

Let’s start with the alphabet.

My girls have been painstakingly working their way through the alphabet as well as adding vocabulary. My lessons have not involved written Arabic, rather, I am trying to sort out the spoken.

Turns out Arabic has 18 conjugations for almost every noun and verb. By way of comparison, Spanish has 6 verb conjugations.

And Arabic has these greetings that not only said at specific times for specific reasons but also have particular answers. I’ll give you an example with it translated into English.

You come home from work and have been busy, I say–“God give you strength.” You say, “God strengthen you.” There are many others. My favorite is “Kaif Halik (how are you)?” “Alhamdhallah (Thanks be to God) or Ashkurallah (God is good).”

I enjoy seeing how they all fit together, but I find it hard to remember what I am supposed to say when and how.

Yesterday, Caitlyn was struggling to remember her new words for this week’s lesson. She is used to everything except math coming very easily. Arabic had her mad. How dare it be so hard? I totally relate!

Today in history we were studying the tower of Babel where the people on the earth had gotten very proud and decided that they could build a tower that would reach all the way to heaven. Rather than letting the people be destroyed by their own pride, God introduced many languages, so the people no longer could talk easily to one another, rather, they had many different languages and communication was instantly more complicated (Genesis 11:3-9).

3And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

And it has worked, hasn’t it? Things are much more complicated than they would be if we had just one common language.

So Caitlyn, building on what she had said yesterday about it being hard, said, “see it’s a curse!!”

But is it?

Yes, it definitely makes things harder, but our language is also part of our identity. It is part of what makes us who we are. It is not just a bunch of sounds strung together. It is how we see the world, how we do things. It is the respect we show, the respect we expect.

It is also a way to bond with people. If you even just try a little to learn someone’s language when it is not your own, you have instantly shown them honor, that you value them. And when the words don’t come out right–you can bond over laughter–like the day I told a lady, I would bring her a house (bayt) when I meant to say I would bring her a book (ktaab).

Yes, learning Arabic is hard. Really hard, but that first time I was able to tell one of my friends that I loved her in Arabic, it was all worth it.

So, while Caitlyn may be convinced it is a curse to learn Arabic, it will continue to be part of our