mis communication

Don't you hate to be mis-quoted? This happens to me on occasion, and I sometimes wonder how things can be so distorted. Maybe I do have a tendancy to miss communicate what I want to say, but I can't imagine it's this bad.

One thing that happened this week was that my teacher spoke about our class sessions with my supervisor. He spoke that I don't accept criticism well to the point that I will make up my own rules in the language. This could not be further from the truth. He speaks quickly and will often correct my sentence structure or choice of words before I finish my sentence, which frustrates me to no end! So I had asked him not to correct me, that I want to be able to correct myself. He speaks very good English and I thought I had communicated that sufficiently to him in Wolof. Since we have spoken about it in English and he has a better understanding of where I stand.

Another thing that was mis-communicated was a conversation I had with a family I have befriended here. They are national missionaries and I'll go to visit them occasionally. One such occasion the husband wasn't there, but the daughter and child were, and we had a good discussion for maybe 2 hours over tea.
Later, Elliott dropped by himself, and heard from her that I had visited. Taking the time to ask about my progress in the language, he asked for her input. She reported that when we were talking about besap trees, she asked if there were fruit trees in America. She said I then started talking about McCain's children. Well this wasn't true. I didn't understand the question she posed to me, and maybe after a brief pause asked what she thought of McCain's running mate? Each time I've visited they bring up politics, and at the time I was interested in what she had to say.

So I've communicated that these are problems with Elliott. He thinks I need to slow down, take my time in speaking. I on the other hand think these are vocabulary issues, and would be normal in anyone's beginning of a foreign language study. Hopefully they are simply misunderstandings and do not happen much in the future. It did, however, make for a rough week. Thanks be to God that it has been resolved.