Moments with Karina

This past week and a half has been an experience in and of itself, so I'll just take a quick moment to recap some of the highs and lows.

Ana Karina Ojeda Mondragon came all the way from Morelia, Mexico, to join our family on Saturday, July 5th, and our shy little Mexican maiden has since been adjusting quite well to life in Wisconsin. We regret that she can only stay a month, and I do believe at least one of my brothers is considering the possibity of hijacking one of her suitcases on the return trip for sinister stow-away purposes.

One of the many wonderful things about Karina is that she speaks Spanish. Really well. And she's very patient, and very gracious. In fact, she typically refrains from laughing at my attempts to speak Spanish, save for one or two memorable instances in which I accidentally said something completely and unforgivably preposterous while earnestly believing that I was communicating something rather different.

Sunday evening we went to the local park and took her down to climb on the rocks by the waterfall. She had never seen a crawdaddy before, so my younger brother, Josiah, caught two of them and spent a good five minutes trying to convince her that their pinches aren't fatal, and that she should touch one. (I was on her side on this particular issue). The crawdaddies were finally sent sailing back into the water in a series of graceful underhand pitches. Josiah had also found a tadpole, however, which he convinced her to hold in her hand for a moment while we examined the legs sprouting from its slimy little body and commented on the unusual shape of its strange puffy head. She squealed every time the tail flipped, which Josiah found tremendously amusing.

I thought it would be fun for her to learn to play racquetball while she was here, since she's already an avid tennis player, and there's some similarities between the two sports (meaning that both involve a ball, and raquets. I have found that the similarities end there.) However, she graciously agreed to spend an hour with me last Wednesday morning hitting the ball around and learning some of the basics. The two of us played as a team against a friend for the first half hour, and then she asked if she could sit out for a bit and watch us play to get a better idea of what this crazy game is really all about without having to worry about decapitation due to poor raquet handling in the meanwhiles. (Did I mention that she's intelligent? She is.)

The guy we were playing with that morning is a more experienced player than Karina or myself, and he was hitting fast drives down the center of the court after she stepped out to observe. On the third one, I went in for it a little bit too low and a bit too stretched out. As my racquet connected with the ball, there was an odd popping sound in my right knee accompanied by a strange searing sensation...and that was the end of the game. I spent the rest of the morning playing "take the X-ray" and "meet the doctor," accompanied by my wonderful Mom...one of the primary rules of this new game is apparently "ice it." What fun. We'll find out what the damage was after the MRI, but in the meantime...

Karina and I spent Monday evening at the Langhaven, enjoying a wonderful time of reading, talking, laughing, and eating tasty food as we discussed the finer points of Hannah Hurmand's "Hind's Feet on High Places" with a number of lovely ladies. There was a lot of very good discussion as everyone began to compare notes. When asked on the home trip how much of the evening conversation she had understood, Karina laughed sheepishly, shrugged a bit, shook her head, and said, "It was very...fun." What a trooper! English is a pathetically tough language to master...

We've enjoyed many great conversations since she came, and her language skills are certainly improving. Being laid up for the past week has forced me to slow down a bit and focus more on the relational aspect of her visit than I had originally planned for--it's been good, although I confess that having to give up some of the things we were hoping to do together hasn't set well with me on various days.

Pictures to come shortly! I'm discovering that a month is a surprisingly short span of time!