The thing Molina, who grew up in Ecuador, finds challenging is learning English.

In the front row of an English-as-a-second-language class Monday, Molina hesitated when the teacher invited him to the blackboard to sketch a timeline of his life. The exercise was part of a lesson on past-tense verbs.

Come on, you can do it, said instructor Kim Kleine, coaxing Molina from his seat.

Molina is in Lancaster because he wants to learn English. In pursuit of that goal, he left a busy practice of five surgeons in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Molina enjoyed his work. He was in the operating room almost every day attending to routine cases and harrowing emergencies.

But as good as he was, he knew that, because he didn't understand English _ the universal language for neuroscience _ he was missing out on advances in his field.

He was unable to read English-language journals or attend conferences where English was spoken. Molina took a night course in Argentina, but his hectic schedule forced him to miss classes and left him with little time or energy to study.

If he was going to learn English, he knew he had to do something drastic.

He told his wife, Carlina, and their three children to pack up. They were moving to the United States for a few years.

Since April 2001, the family has been living on East Lemon Street in an apartment next door to Carlina's cousin.

Five mornings a week, Molina enters an Adult Enrichment Center classroom, next to Trinity Lutheran Church, with 20 other students, most of them natives of Latin America or southeast Asia. Molina is in the level-3 class in a six-level program.

I'd say he's a high beginner, instructor Kleine said. He's probably an average student, but he is very detail-oriented and interested in getting it right. When I pulled him aside once to correct his pronunciation, he said, Thank you. That's what I want you to do.

While Molina studies, his children are going to school, soaking up English so fast that Kevin, 13, is no longer in an English-as-a-second-language class and Jean-Carlo, 12, and Karla Michelle, 9, spend only a part of the week getting special help with English.

When we came to the United States, we didn't like to speak English, said Kevin, but his father insisted that at home they talk English, just talk English. Now the children's English is much better than their father's, and they find themselves interpreting for him.

Living here, it's a great opportunity for my education, said Kevin, an eighth-grader at Reynolds Middle School. I'm hoping, when I go to McCaskey, to learn French. One day I hope to study at Harvard. I want to be an astronaut or a doctor like my father.

Molina's wife also wants to learn English. Carlina was a year away from earning a nursing degree when they left Argentina. Now her rudimentary understanding of English makes it difficult for her to do things like go shopping.

Molina for now is supporting his family on his savings. In months to come he may have to find work, but until then he is focusing on learning English and preparing to take exams for a medical license in the United States.

He realizes his poor English skills may prevent him from passing the test. That's a disappointment he thinks he can handle.

All he can do is try to learn English the best he can. Some days he gets so frustrated he thinks about returning to his successful practice in South America.

English is difficult, he said. You write it one way, pronounce it another. For me, it's crazy.

But when he sees the progress his children are making, he realizes coming to the United States has benefits that go beyond gratifying his ego.

Maybe this isn't for me, he said. It's for my sons and my daughter.

Translating for his father, Kevin added, He wants us to learn many languages so we will not have the same problem he did. He wants us to be better than him. E-mail is welcome at jhawkes@lnpnews.com
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