This Sunday, I understood more of the sermon that I have every before. It felt that I was catching about 25% of the major words. It was probably lower than this, but it felt good to be able to recognize every few words.

I think I'm getting pretty good at recognizing "church vocabulary" but that doesn't necessarily translate into being able to easily tell a cab driver where you want him to take you. I remember reading a book called "God Smuggler" about a guy who smuggled Bibles into foreign countries. He learned to speak English by sitting down with a English language dictionary and the King James Bible. He once passed on a dinner request by saying:

"Thus sayeth the neighbor of Andrew, thou wouldest be pleased to pass the butter."

I want to avoid sounding like that. I don't think it will be a problem. The church we are attending uses regular Spanish, not whatever the KJV equivalent would be.

A few days ago we were at Soriana (kind of like a Super Walmart), and I was looking at the televisions. They were showing a Spanish rap video. The rapper was rapping away in Spanish and holding a handcrank mixer toward the camera. The only word I could catch was "Sabe" which I think means "do you understand?" I didn't, so I moved on. Learning Spanish from rap videos is probably a pretty dangerous idea.