Tree climbing

more to come.

 

Getting close to leaving!

So as many of you know I have been raising support to get out on the M field doing agriculture development. My very optimistic goal was to be ready for a mid-June departure. I actually think it might just happen. God has been so good to me in His provision. I am at 95% of my monthly support needs and 85% of my outfitting (read ‘one time’) support needs. Things just seem to be falling into place faster then I thought they really would. Part of me is totally excited. I mean I’ve been headed this direction (long term work overseas) for almost 8 years now and its finally here. The other part of me is a little overwhelmed by the reality of it all. I already quit my job (and moved back to my parents place), got rid of a lot of stuff I can’t take with me, been to my brother’s wedding, applied for my visa, gotten more vaccinations, raised a majority of my support, been to linguistics training and yet there is still so many details to take care of. Not to mention that my sister is now engaged (congratulations Laura and Jerry) so I am spending some time on that. Amazingly I find myself looking for dresses online and setting up appointments to try them on! My sister did offer to let me wear pants that one of the bridesmaid’s lines makes. But we decided that if we got floor length dresses I could wear pants underneath to keep me warm and then I would be happy. Plus the pants they had did not look at all warm or comfortable. I guess it is my sister’s wedding so I can be a little bit girlie….. or at least pretend for the sake of weddingness fun. I really should get all my stuff done (and help Laura as much as I can) in the next two months or so since after that I will be in SE Asia and it will suddenly become much harder to go try on dresses and such I plan on coming back only a couple weeks before the wedding on my vacation time. Actually two months from today, God willing, I will be in Malaysia for a training conference. Two months… two months…. wow…. that really is getting close!

 

Linguistics

OK time for some pictures of what I have been doing.

Here we are leaning a technique where we write down a conversation, then make it into drawings and learn to recite looking only at the drawing. Then you progressively erase a drawing until you can say it with no props. Just one of many such techniques we are learning. We try them all out with a language helper. I am trying it all out with a mandarin language helper.

Here we are watching our mouths as we do phonetic drills. Basically we are trying to say a bunch sounds in different combinations. Some sounds are familiar others are totally new. It helps us to both hear and say the differences between the sounds.

 

culture & nature

So I am currently sitting in a little coffee shop called in the small Colorado town of Palmer Lake. It is a small town atmosphere. We just came from ice cream shop where they sell homemade ice cream. I had “rum raisin” ice cream and I am pretty sure it was the only time I have had raisins in my ice cream but it was good. At the Coffee shop they have really god chai tea. Interestingly enough they have wine and beer as well as all coffee, espresso, and tea items. Tonight they also have live music. It is four guys plating a guitar, banjo, ukulele, and bass. I guess I would say it is roughly a county blues or bluegrass sort of sound. Hopefully they will let me take pictures of them and then I can add them to this blog entry.
Earlier today I went to “Garden of the Gods”, some Anasazi cliff dwellings, and drove about three quarters of the way up Pike’s Peak. So I got to see some of the most interesting rock formations I’ve observed yet, and some pretty amazing views. Unfortunately the altitude really effected how much we really hiked at each of these places. We started out at just under 7000 ft and got up to a little over 11000ft. Part way up we got out and went down to a lake. After we we climbed back up we were definitely sucking in the air as much as we could despite the fact that it was only a couple hundred feet. Funny thing about your lungs - they kinda like oxygen. they said that at 11000 feet there is about half the oxygen there is at see level. It sure seems we were huffing more than twice as much.
All in all a good but mostly relaxing day.

 

MTI

I am in Colorado at linguistics training. It is really good. I am learning all sorts of things. New sounds, new techniques, new everything. If I could chose one adjective I would say it is wholistic language learning. No part of the language is used in total isolation but it is added gradually enough that you can handle it. So everything you learn is in context. Lots of fun but lots of brain power.