First presentation

Rob and I had were involved in group projects that we completed and presented today. Rob and his group went over a case study on the K'iche in Guatemala, did a language program plan. My group did the Fulani of West Africa.


Fulani woman, from National Geographic website

Our stuff finally arrived this evening ... yay! We've unpacked half of it already. I was so excited to get my sneakers and gym gear out of the boxes that we nearly ran off to the gym to exercise in something other than Docs and pajama bottoms. But we decided that toting 42 boxes of stuff into and around the apartment was probably exercise enough for one day.

Espresso machine unpacked; lattes in the morn. [sigh]

Social damsel flies

The week seemed to whiz by. Classes have been mostly sociolinguistic theory with a dash of language program planning towards the end. BTW, there is only one class, per se. The course is VMS (vernacular media specialist) training. It just has a bunch of sections of related materials, like most courses. Much lecturing, so far. Rob gets to do most of the technical, hands-on stuff in 3 weeks. I'm only doing the program planning portion with him. It's all been a form of review so far. I did a course in sociolinguistics in the summer of 1999 (as Rob did last fall) and a course in language program planning in spring 2001.

(from the JAARS website) "The purpose of the VMS training is to develop personnel especially equipped to produce high quality vernacular media tools for use in language communities. Specialized training is essential for recording with nonreaders in village settings for the production of vernacular audio cassettes, radio programs, and audio sound tracks for video."

Here's a quiz: Who can tell me what JAARS stands for?

We've had a very social week. Class is from 8:30AM to 4:30PM but, after that ...
Wednesday: Lenten soup supper at Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church in Weddington (where Rob got bit by a damsel fly)
Thursday: dinner with the Hydes and a bunch of people from JAARS/VMS department
Friday: potluck with the VMS department and all the students and their families, followed by a get together with a small group that we were invited to by a next-door neighbor.
Saturday morning: I jammed (playing bongos) in the attic of the Crossroads coffeehouse with some local jazz musicians while Rob worked on his VMS project (due Monday)

Tonight, we'll either drag some classmates back to the coffeehouse to hear a local artist or go over to a classmate's place for some birthday gaming (Outburst, Cranium, etc.). I'm trying to whine Rob into going for a free square dancing lesson at Spirit of Joy tomorrow afternoon.

In other news; I'm trying to figure out possible activities for myself while Rob takes the last 10 weeks without me. Looking at local seminaries for Greek and Hebrew courses, etc.

Class begins

We had our first class yesterday. It looks like it will be manageable and engaging. Our manual is well organized, expectations are clearly laid out and our classmates are interesting and motivated. Yay! We were let out early and Rob and I had a chance to run into Monroe to the gym. The Enterprise workout center is having it's 25th anniversary celebration this week and we signed up to workout for 3 months. We went as guests a few times last week, in the morning. Eddie set us up with a weights routine. After last night, though, I'm thinking about going evenings for the aerobics stuff. It was like everyone in the house freaked out at 5:30. The energy level in there was palpable, infectious. I can always use a little palpable, infectious energy.

We're here!

Yes, we've arrived at Waxhaw, NC. Woohoo! Here's where we drove:

Thursday - Dallas to Monroe, LA
Friday - Monroe to Smyrna, GA
Saturday - Smyrna, GA to Waxhaw, NC

Each day, we started as early as we could in the morning and went until just before sunset. The before sunset thing was my request; I'm the navigator and loathe trying to read street-signs in twilight (or complete darkness, for that matter). It worked out well. Arrived safely and even got to unload the car into the new place in daylight.

The highlight of our trip was the overnight in Smyrna. Met up with a friend who has been an internet-buddy of ours at a yahoo.com message board, spent the better part of the night having great conversation with him, with a movie break for M.P.'s Holy Grail, with his daughter and daughter's friend from next door. I began to lose consciousness around 11pm, of course, as I am wont to do. Just can't keep the late hours anymore, man.

This morning, visited a Lutheran church in downtown Waxhaw, Amazing Grace Lutheran. While looking for a site to link you to so you could could see more about this church, found out that a Messianic congregation meets there on Saturdays. Coolness abounds!

Also is a coffeehouse with wireless internet access and a bead store in that downtown area, surrounded by oodles of antique stores. Me likey Waxhaw.

Moving day?

Well, we thought that the truck was coming to get our stuff on Friday or Saturday; that didn't happen. Looks like JAARS will be getting our stuff from the Wycliffe warehouse the week after we leave for NC. We finished transferring our stuff to pallets in the warehouse on Friday. Saturday was sort of an adventuring day. We figured that it was time to do a touristy thing in Texas, having been here since July 2004. So, we went to the Creation Evidence museum in Glenrose and the oldest Dr. Pepper bottling facility in the world in Dublin. I forgot to check how far these places were from home when I was copying the maps from the internet so we were kind of driving into the unknown the whole way, never sure when we'd arrive until we saw the highway signs to the next destination. However, the trickiest part of the trip was actually the last 15 miles, on the stretch of I-20 that we've travelled dozens of times. There was an accident for which they shut down all lanes of I-20E and made us exit. We ended up finding our way back to Camp Wisdom Rd while trying to get back onto I-20 post-accident site and then getting waylaid again by construction and a poorly marked detour. However, we did make it back safe and sound, in time to catch the last half of the expanded version of "Return of the King", playing in the apartment next to ours. A nice day. Tomorrow, the Cleaning of the Apartment begins.