Trip to the Greek Orthodox church

Instead of our afternoon small group, we visited the local Greek Orthodox church, got a tour from Father Aris. Very cool. The pictures will speak now.


Ryan and I had done "the tour" last year, but as students.


Phil is also a doctor; that's why this is such a cool picture.


Ryan and I particularly enjoyed the "Little Grumpy Jesus" window (not its real title, I assure you).


forms of physical prayer


Father Aris demonstrates the censer

Eshinee's first comic strip page

Eshinee's first comic strip page, originally uploaded by eshinee.

Teaching pics

Rob came to the afternoon Greek small group to take some pictures of me while I was teaching, for the August newsletter. My group was very accomodating.









I guess I do a lot of pointing when I teach. Hadn't realized that until I saw Rob's little photo montage.

Business as usual

It's been another fairly standard week. Classes went well, students are learning. Rob has been working on our presentation for this Sunday at Bethlehem Lutheran in Irmo. He's fine-tuning the graphic portion and getting notes together since most of it will be his report on how his southern Africa trip went.

He also did a "tidy" version of graphics designed by one of the students (Rachel, one of our Firefly watching buddies) to use on the Summer Greek 2006 class T-shirts (and other things).

The 2 people in the back of the train are Ryan (the other T.A.) and I. The dude in the chef's hat is Dr. Peterson.

Dr. Peterson

Last week

We did have a little excitement, enough to keep me from blogging but not enough to blog about.

Rob arrived home on Sunday (last Sunday), driving on the donut. The tire, the one that had been leaky-like while he was away, finally went flat, in the parking lot at the airport in Charlotte. We got a friend to bring us to the Firestone on Tuesday and back to pick the car up on Wednesday. I had several outside of class tutoring sessions during the week as we were learning participles. Ah, Greek participles. And on Wednesday night, Rob and I were going to do music for a mid-week praise & worship time for Summer Greekers. Turned out that only 3 of us showed up (again, participle week ...) but it was refreshing anyhow.

Friday night, we had students over to watch Firefly episodes. I helped a friend move on Saturday morning, went to lunch with her at noon and spent the afternoon with students, at Hobby Lobby and Walmart. Then, Rob and I played Neverwinter Nights in the evening. Today, we went to Resurrection Lutheran Church here in Columbia and had lunch at the Rosewood Market on the way home. We now have a new source for our Reed's ginger brew.

We picked up some ph testing strips at the market, to try to get Rob alkaline and maybe make his uric acid crystals in his big toe joint dissolve. We got him alkaline by about 9PM. He should stay that way all night, I would imagine. Just to see what would happen, I took a little (1/2 tsp) baking soda in water myself. Bad idea. I started to feel shaky and fluffy. I checked my urine; too alkaline. So, I ate some cheese to get acidic again. I'm fine now. But I certainly won't try that again.

One of Rob's tasks for tomorrow, now that he's not sick anymore (he was sick most of last week with some sinus thing) is to "professionalize" a design for the Summer Greek T-shirt, done by one of the students. Then, we'll put it on cafepress.com for students to buy whatever items they want.

Impact on mortality of the AIDS epidemic in northern Namibia assessed using parish registers.

A possible answer to a question that I am asked often about AIDS in Namibia, found on Medscape:

"OBJECTIVES: HIV spread rapidly in Namibia in the 1990s. As in most of Africa, however, few data exist to document the impact on mortality of AIDS. Such data can contribute to knowledge of the epidemiology of HIV infection and inform the development of programmes to mitigate the impact of the AIDS epidemic.

DESIGN: This study analyses death records from the registers of eight Evangelical Lutheran parishes in northern Namibia. The dataset covers the experience between 1980 and January 2001 of 4680 couples who married between 1956 and 2000 and their children.

METHODS: We examine trends in post-neonatal and 1-4-years mortality, and the age-standardized death rates at age 20-64 years of both men and women. Poisson regression for rates is used to smooth the data and test for statistically significant discontinuities in the trend.

RESULTS: Post-neonatal mortality increased more than sixfold and 1-4-years mortality more than threefold between 1991 and 2000. By 2000 adult mortality for women was 3.5 times, and for men 2.5 times its 1993 level. The increase in adult mortality was concentrated at ages 30-54 years for men and 25-49 years for women.

CONCLUSIONS: The pattern of mortality increase by age is consistent with the hypothesis that it is entirely due to AIDS. While not widely available, parish registers exist elsewhere in Africa and are potentially a low-cost source of data for study of the impact of AIDS on mortality and demographic trends more generally."

Current events

It's been a pretty straightforward bunch of days, nothing to write home about (or blog home about, as the case may be). Rob is enjoying his conference very much. I went to Incarnation Lutheran on Sunday with Rachel and John, 2 of the Greek students. There was a service on campus in the evening. Weirdest thing: I'm finding it impossible to remember what I did Sunday afternoon. Hmmm.

The students had a quiz on Monday morning. They will have another quiz tomorrow morning. That will finally get them onto the "quizzes on Fridays" schedule. I think that's a good idea as it might give them at least a sense that they could take a day off on the weekend. Somehow, with an impending test on Mondays, it just doesn't seem like one can relax. But, if you finished a test on Friday, the weekend can be a weekend, in some way. Now, I know there will be those who barge on through, studying every day regardless. But they don't have to do so because of an immediately impending test. I used to take Saturdays off, altogether.

I'm back to the "not sleeping" thing. Though it's not as bad as when he was in Africa. At least I get to talk to him on the phone every day.

I was kind of sickesque on Wednesday, an odd thing. It felt like there was something moving inside my forehead. It hurt a little and things felt tight and fuzzy. I ended up taking an Advil with lunch and rubbing peppermint on my forehead repeatedly. A little conventional medicine, a little traditional medicine. Nothing like keeping one's bases covered, eh? The combo did the trick, which is a good thing since I can't do allergy meds; they make my heart race. And that can't be good. Anyhow, I felt better by about 2:30PM. I took it easy all yesterday afternoon and felt great when I got up this morning.

I've watched a few movies and things in the evenings, since I'm solo. One of my students lived through Hurricane Katrina and we talked about that while I was going over Greek stuff with her after small group. She lent me a documentary DVD on the news coverage; excellent. It was neat to see what the news coverage was in Biloxi leading up to, during and after. Really gave a well-rounded presentation. So, while I'm sure I still have no idea what it's like to go through one, at least I have the facts and an overall impression of what happened.



I also watched The Phantom of the Opera, something that Rob has no interest in seeing but that I've been wanting to watch for a while.



Then, I watched Brides of Christ (a BBC miniseries about a convent; great stuff). I think I'd seen most of it before but it made me cry, in a girlish, satisfying sort of way.



Last night, I watched Missing, about a journalist who disappears during a South American coup. Morbid movie, can't say I really recommend it.



I also developed a fairly comprehensive Greek verb indicative formation and English translation rule sheet, for students to employ when getting used to recognizing verb inflection patterns. I'm putting a jpg of that on my exegettes blog.

On my own

Rob left for GCOMM (global conference on music in missions) on Friday so I'm aolo once more. He'll be back on about a week and a half. At least this time I'll have class everyday and preparation for class at night so I won't be missing him so much.

Now that I've gone to the movies, I'm relaxing a bit before beht comes over for dinner. Then, I'll be showing the Firefly pilot (yes, the whole series starts again at the Veith residence ...) at 8PM to whoever of the Summer Greek students shows up.

Therefore, some apartment cleaning has to happen. Soon. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean ... too!

A few of us got dressed up to go to the morning showing today.

And, so, there was taking of pictures.







It's amazing what one can haul out of a closet and make piratey. Though, granted, it is easier when one of your mateys is a costumer (Rachel, on the right).

One of my new rights

I've decided to spend at least part of my Independence Day looking into the nuts and bolts of elections & voting. I know there's an election coming up this fall while I'm in Washington state that I should be involved in somehow but I have no idea what that means, practically speaking. And while I could simply ask my friend Kate what to do (she's been voting in WA for years), I should be able to figure out a few things solo without bugging her in the middle of a family holiday.

EPA SunWise: UV Index

Looking up the safety of spending time outside, I found a website where you can look up today's UV Index by zip code. It's super-UV-dangerous out there today. I just came back in from a short walk around the apartments and I could just tell the sun was burning people up today.

I also checked the air quality; moderate. And the temperature is 92 but it feels like 94.

You may have noticed ...

... that Rob is home. Just realized that I forgot to mention that very important piece of info here on the blog.

Too much fun together

Rob's MacBook Pro comes with a bunch of fun features, including a built-in video camera and a photo-booth feature, with special effects. We took these shots a few minutes ago:








These are our favorites.

Interesting site

I just came across this site (Ran Prieur) while looking up info on how to tell if maple syrup has gone too bad to consume (you can strain it, boil it, rebottle it and it's fine). I haven't read too much here but I like the random way this author thinks and composes. Reminds me of my own mind, most days.