Keeping Perspective

Disclaimer: I've been pretty lax on this blog. Between school and family life, I'd put blogging on the backburner for a while-just some occasional rundowns of what we've been doing. I'll try to do a little more these last 3 weeks.

I was a wreck Wednesday night. I was emotional about Jodie and the kids leaving the next day and already starting to feel lonely. It didn't help that there was still lots of packing and cleaning that I needed to do to get them ready to go at 6:30 in the morning. And I was feeling stressed about the pressure of school: projects, grades, tests to study for, etc.
Then Thursday morning I was walking to class with my classmate Alex. He said "I keep reminding myself I'm here to learn, not for the grades." That was just what I needed to hear. But I must have needed to hear it more than once, because 3 more times over the next 27 hours I heard something similar. "You never lose by learing" was said in chapel; "Don't base your self-esteem on this assignment" came on the paper with the test instructions; "Even if you don't do well on this test, it doesn't mean you won't be a good field linguist. Sometimes persistence is the most important quality of a linguist" was offered as encouragement before a test.
But then I did well on the two tests I had yesterday. And I started to feel like I was good again- that these 2 A's meant I was a good student, Christian, father, and husband. I needed to hear some of those messages again. This time as a kick in the pants, not a pat on the back. "I'm here for the learning, not the grades"; Don't base your self-esteem on this assignment". This morning we sang "Oh Lord, You're Beautiful" in worship & prayer service. And I heard the lyrics to the 2nd verse that I'm not sure I'd ever noticed before- And when I'm doing well, help me to never seek a crown. For my reward is giving glory to you..
It's so cool seeing the different ways God can tell us the the things we need to hear.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Today marks the halfway point of classes here at SIL-UND. It's been a busy last couple days for school work. Sociolinguistics take home essay midterm, Syntax test, Phonetics production & dictation quizzes have all been keeping me busy the last couple days. I need to catch up on sleep soon.
Here are some quick random thoughts & highlights:
- We've been having a lot of fun as a family. We went to the movies (Mr. Popper's Penguins), hiked at Turtle River State Park, and saw fireworks over the river in the last few days. I can't believe Jod and the kids will be gone in just 8 days.
- Jod and I have had a few good discussions about long term possibilites for our family. We don't have any clue yet, but we are excited about continuing to pray, talk, and get more information and counsel as we think about what steps could be next for our family.
-There are lots of cool people here. I've enjoyed getting to know so many new people and hear their stories. Young kids in college, wise veteran missionaries, families in ther process of change...
- If I hurry home, I might be the first one in bed tonight instead of the last. Time to go.

Family Time

In spite of all the work that's keeping me busy out here, we've still found time to have some fun family activities together. There's a park with a swimming pool just a block away from our house, so we were there a lot on Friday & Saturday afternoons/evenings. There's one big slide that the kids kept going down until they got welts on their back from where the pieces of the slide go together.
Shea, Micah, and I played soccer with other SIL-UND folks on Saturday morning, then we all went to the Red Pepper for lunch. After lunch, we stopped by the Grand Forks Fair and had a fun time at the 4H tent and Petting Zoo.
Tonight, the kids all ran at a local "open track meet" for kids. It was so much fun to see them sprinting with smiles on their faces.
We've taken lots of pictures but have been having trouble uploading them to the blog. Hopefully, we'll be able to share some with you soon.

School Days

School's starting to get busy here. There are articles to read, lesson plans to write (for our Kirundi language acquisition lab), sounds to learn how to pronounce, and sentences with verbs, noun phrases, and direct objects to analyze. It's a little overwhelming and I'm still learning what works best for managing and organizing my time and workload. I've been able to have some afternoon & evening time at home with Jodie & the kids, and have been back here at school working later in the evening.

I've enjoyed meeting many of the other students and teachers here at SIL-UND. There are people here from across the country (Florida to Oregon, Massachusetts to Arizona) and around the world (China, Brazil, England, and many other countries). It's been fun to hear their stories and learn about where they've been and where they're planning on going after this summer. Jodie and I hope to talk and learn more from others this summer as we discern what direction God may be leading our family in the months and years to come.

Jodie and the kids arrive tomorrow!

It's time to turn my "bachelor pad" into a family house. Jodie and the kids should arrive around dinnertime tomorrow. They've had a good road trip so far. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Our friend Colleen was able to make the trip with them to help Jodie out. Thanks Colleen!! Jodie's dropping her off at the Minneapolis airport around noon tomorrow. Then it's about 5 hours from the airport to Grand Forks.
It's been a pretty good trip so far from Jod's updates. They left Wednesday and stayed with our friends Ken & Amy Stoltzfus (and Katie & Dylan) in Canton, OH. After hanging out with with the Stoltzfi Thursday morning, the crew headed down to Columbus where they went on an ice cream factory tour before spending the night in Indianapolis. Today they made an excursion to Lake Michigan and got their feet wet a bit. Last I talked with Jodie, they were stuck in traffic outside of Milwaukee, but hoping to arrive in Rochester, MN around 9 or so tonight.

Lunch

One of the highlights of my first two weeks here has been having lunch with Shedd and Kris Waskosky most days. We met Shedd and Kris in Shell, Ecuador when we lived there in 2008. Shedd and Kris have been working on Bible translation in Salasaca Quichua for the last 20+ years. They have recently moved back to the U.S. (Sioux Falls, SD) but, thanks to technology, will still be actively involved in Salasaca translation work. They are both teaching this summer. Since we both live off-campus, we usually pack our lunches and sit in the booths and eat together while everyone else heads over to the cafeteria. It was Shedd and Kris' encouragement that helped land me here in Grand Forks this summer and I've enjoyed being able to pick their brains, hear their stories, and soak up some of their wisdom.

Fricatives, Stops, & Vowels

I have my first "test" this summer on Wednesday. It's a dictation quiz for Articulatory Phonetics. So I've been practicing saying sounds that we don't make in English, watching my aspirated stops (like p, t, & k), and trying not to glide my vowels (i.e. o, not oouu & a, not aaeee).

Lazy Saturday

My first "day off" here in Grand Forks. I mowed the yard, talked with our neighbor, did some homework, watched a little track & field, baseball, & horse racing, ran some errands, and saw the US lose to Panama in soccer.
Grand Forks is a pretty nice city (at least in the summer). There are lots of parks- including one just a block from our house- and the streets are very bicycle and pedestrian friendly. Every street has a sidewalk and there are lots of bike paths. I'm looking forward to exploring more of Grand Forks with Jodie and the kids when they come out. Only 7 more days!!!

random bit of trivia

Here's a useless fact that may interest only me... I've watched a little of the NBA Finals out here. That makes North Dakota the 7th different state I've watched at least one NBA Finals game in; joining New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire Virginia, Massachusetts, & Florida.

I've updated the blog template, as you probably noticed. I think it's an improvement.

And that's all I've got for a Friday night

* I updated the NBA Finals/states to 7. I forgot about Shandon Anderson missing reverse layups & Steve Kerr hitting the game winner on our honeymoon in New Hampshire.

Classes

First two days of classes and my heads spinning a little bit. I'm taking 4 classes this summer. Here's a brief summary (in very non-linguistic terminology).

Second Language Acquisition- this class provides models and practice for learning a new language. A major component of the class is the lab where we work with a native speaker of another language. I'm learning Kirundi this summer. We spend an hour every afternoon listening to Pascal, our nurturer. The focus is on listening and understanding. So we won't work on speaking for a few weeks yet and not on writing or reading.

Articulatory Phonetics- we will learn to identify and produce sounds used in spoken languages. I've never spent so much time thinking about what my lips, teeth, tongue, & diaphragm are doing when I'm making a sound. There's lots of sounds used in languages that we don't use in English, so that's fun (read- very hard) to figure those out. We also learn to classify each of the sounds. For example, the f sound (as in fun, four, family) can be written as "voiceless labiodental fricative with egressive pulmonic air". Sounds fun, no?

Syntax & Morphology- a study of how words (morphology) & sentences (syntax) are formed. So far (we only started that class today), it's been an intense review of English grammar.

Sociolinguistics- This class looks at how language is impacted by the culture and how it impacts culture.

Starting Up

I'm sitting at McDonald's in Grand Forks. It's 9:15 at night, but it's not even close to being dark yet. At about 4:45 tomorrow morning, it won't even be close to being dark still. Long days here in North Dakota. It's been a bit of a whirlwhind the last couple days. Here are some random comments about Sunday & Monday.
- it gets progressively easier to go out to eat with our kids every time. We had a great "last breakfast" at Oregon Dairy yesterday morning.
- family group hugs in the airport are awful and wonderful at the same time.
- looking out the airplane window on takeoff and landing has lost some of its magic. I blame google maps satellite view.
- speed limit on the North Dakota highways is 75. I love going 80 and not worrying about sirens in the rearview mirror.
- lots of meetings and new faces at orientation today.
- the house we're renting is going to be pretty lonely the next 12 days. Can't wait for Jod & the kids to arrive.
- did some reading for my Articulatory Phonetics class today.
-Classes start tomorrow. I'm feeling excited and scared to death.
-I've been married 14 years (tomorrow) to the most wonderful person in the world. Happy Anniversary Jod, I love you!

Atmospheric Noise

Atmospheric Noise? Let me explain. Actually, just go to random.org and read about the statistical science behind atmospheric noise and randomness. The plan for this blog is a random collection of updates, musings, anecdotes, and trivia about our family. Or maybe nothing to do with our family & merely something that popped into my head. The topics may range from linguistics to sports, family life to faith, pop culture to demographics. Some of it may be useful or interesting. Some of it probably won't be (at least to anyone but me). I hope you enjoy.

The impetus for this blog is to keep friends and family updated on our summer in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I will be attending the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of North Dakota. Jodie and the kids will be out with me for much of the summer too. I hope to share some of what I'm learning inside the classroom. But I mostly want to share what I'm learning and experiencing outside the classroom: relationships, insights into life direction, family time, and more.