A bittersweet parting

Well, Mobius moved to a foster home yesterday. The shelter waiting list to put a cat up for re-adoption is two months. (That's a long time to deal with a cat who at any moment may fling herself out the window.) Apparently, though, my flatmate has a co-worker who has been wanting a cat for a long time, but couldn't get one because she's a student and will be leaving in the summer. She was thrilled to hear she could take Mo until the shelter is able to take her back. Last night she came over and met the cat, and decided to give it a try.

I hope to find a good home for Mobius between now and her turn on the shelter list, so she doesn't have to go live in a little cage again. I'm glad I don't have to worry about her falling to her death every ten minutes, but I miss her. She's such a sweet and affectionate and quirky cat. Sigh. If only we didn't have these windows. :(

La iglesia (church)

I went to Spanish church today. It was fantastic. I think this might be the new Sunday routine: English service at 9, Sunday school at 10, Spanish service at 11, Cambodian lunch at 12. I was excited to find that I understood the sermon, and didn't even have to concentrate so hard to understand it that I missed the content. The pastor speaks extremely clearly, and apparently Spanish had soaked into me pretty well, even given the four-year French-only environment I suffered in Canada. The people there, too, were happy and friendly and glad I came, and say I'm welcome to come worship with them and practice Spanish any time. Oh, and the music was mariachi. Perfecto.

My nephews are cute

'Nuff said.

Week #4 - Talking (Finally)

Yesterday went really well. At least, as far as I can tell it did.

I had been feeling somewhat discouraged, just that I wasn't helping them as well as I could, you know? All their homework is reading and writing, which--while good--doesn't help at all with pronunciation or daily language use. Especially since they do their homework the way I did mine: skim for keywords to fill in the right answer as quickly as possible, without necessary bothering to read and figure out every word.

But I was at a loss as to how I could get them to practice talking more. Talking is intimidating. Even if you have the language in your head, getting it to come out of your mouth can be a huge struggle. I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have that war within yourself: recognizing and wanting that advantage of native-speaker help that comes only when you actually talk and take language risks with them, yet fearing to be misunderstood or offensive or look stupid by using the language "wrong" ("wrongly"?). Even with non-scary native speakers, the intimidation is there.

The only time I've had that intimidation lessen was during my own Karen-learning in school, actually, where it was just my friend and I hanging out with two native speakers and talking and playing simple games and trying language experiments and goofing off. We had structure, but it was organic and relaxed. And relationship-oriented. And fun.

So, anyway, with the help of my brilliant-at-planning flatmate, I went in yesterday with some simple maybe-this-will-start-us-talking supplies: storybooks, a stack of cards with simple pictures on them, and a mini whiteboard. Success!

We read the storybooks. Great pronunciation and reading practice, even if they didn't necessarily know what they were saying. But the best was the picture cards. I pulled out two at random--"tree" and "flowers"--and said "The flowers grow near the tree." They immediately started trying their own: "The flowers are in the forest with the tree." "The flowers are under the tree." The next pair: "book" and "television." "The book is on the television." "The book watches television" (tee hee hee). The more ridiculous the pairs, the more relaxed and fun we had making sentences. "Fish" and "chair": "The fish sits on the chair." "The fish sits on the chair and watches TV!" Lots of laughing and making jokes. And lots of talking. Yay! (And man, do they know more English than they let on before.)

Then they suggested another game: one person pulls a card, then has to describe it to the other people while they guess. Great language use. Even Karen Dad jumped in and guessed some, and Karen Mom would laugh at the jokes and practice saying the words she heard. We used the white-board to double-check spelling, and write new words to describe and guess. The neighbors came over--six of them at one point--and watched and laughed and joined in a bit. One of the neighbor boys in Junior-High-Son's class plans to come every Thursday he can: "To practice talking. It is very good." Aw. Good times.

Wrong Number

Real text message conversation I had today:

Unknown number to me: Hey, it's Steve. So, when are you officially back on?
Confused me: I'm sorry, who is this? I think you have the wrong number...
Steve: Are you an actress?
Me: No.
Steve: Oh. Sorry 'bout that.

Can't say that's a question I often get with the "I think you have the wrong number" thing.

Week #3 - Fu! Fingra! Ni!

Hm. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I'm learning. (Oh, and by the way, after all that trouble of giving my people Karen-ish pseudonyms, I keep forgetting what they are. So I'm reverting to the tried and true descriptive-words-as-names method: Karen Dad, Karen Mom, Oldest Son, etc.)

So, yesterday, for the first time Senior-in-Highschool and Sophmore-in-Highschool greeted me with an English greeting: "Hi, how are you?" They're getting more confident, and that makes me happy. I must not be too scary.

However, about halfway through my time there, there was a lull. A borderline-painful stretch of silence during which I felt like I should have something to say, some sort of lesson or plan to help get things going again. Bah. The last half hour was great; I had to interrupt them to gather my books and catch my bus. Now I just need to find some way to move that enthusiasm and involvement up a half hour or so, so I won't have to leave just as things are picking up. Junior-High-Son asked me to bring him some picture storybooks next week, so he can try to read them. Maybe that will keep conversation going.

I think, actually, that the key is Karen Dad. He loves the picture dictionaries, but I have three of varying levels. When he gets stuck with the "advanced" one, he seems to get bogged down and doesn't even know what to ask. When he has one of the simpler ones, though, he has no shortage of pronunciation questions. I wish I knew what the parents were learning at their English classes during the day, so I could reinforce those lessons. Maybe I can find that information somehow. They're definitely very genuine beginner beginners. Even the boys--who all "know" quite a bit of English when it comes to rules and grammar--have such thick accents that it's hard to understand them (it makes me wonder what I must sound like when I try to speak Karen).

Karen Mom is great, though. She likes repeating words she hears me teaching to Karen Dad from the dictionary. Yesterday we were going over basic parts of the body, and I could hear her repeating to herself : "Fu. Fingra. Ni." ("Foot. Finger. Knee." The Karen language doesn't have words that end with consonants, so words like "foot" and "finger" are really hard to say.) When I was leaving, she grinned at me: "I have three English! Fu! Fingra! Ni!", pointing at each. We cheered, and laughed, and I found myself loving them all even more than I already did. They have such grace and good humor even with all the challenges they're facing. Crazy. Crazy and beautiful.

Pixiliation

I learned a new word: pixilated. Tipsy. Given to whimsy. Etymology: being influenced by pixie dust.

Pixilation.

Tee hee hee.

Kiva

I joined Kiva yesterday, and I'm excited. It's sort of like Opportunity International's micro-financing meets World Vision's sponsor-a-child. I loaned a few dollars to a group of entrepreneurs in Cambodia, who will be paying me back over the next eleven months. It was started by some people who wanted to fight poverty by empowering business-owners in developing countries, but who were having trouble funding the process. Their idea: get lots of people involved with small person-to-person loans. I'll be getting updates on how these businesses in which I've invested are doing, and--since it's a loan--it eliminates the worry that I'm undermining anyone's self-sufficiency by giving them handouts. I get to fight poverty with the abundant resources God has given me, by helping people help themselves. I'm an investor, not a donor. I like that. It seems less patronizing somehow.

Anyway, it's cool. You should check it out.

I think it could get addicting.

Kings of Britain

I had my Kings of Britain class yesterday. It was fun, although it was hard to decide whether the material or the people-watching was more fascinating. There were thirty of us--probably three of us under age forty--sitting in a big circle of tables, discussing fact versus truth and the historical merit of "legendary histories" and whether the book was exciting or boring and why the heck ancient Britain and the King Arthur story is so well-beloved in the first place. Good English-classy stuff to discuss.

But the people: the guy who knew everything and pompously threw in dates and names extraneous to our text just because he could, the couple who was about to make a visit to Roman England and wanted some solid background, the sweet elderly lady next to me who seemed happy that I too got quite lost in the myriad names and battles throughout the book, the twenty-something girl who looked like she had wandered away from a medieval festival somewhere, the eager-but-timid woman who found the courage to say she in fact didn't like King Arthur (so there)...very entertaining. Apparently many of them are coming back next time for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Bring it on.

Umm...

Burger King now has a cologne, called Flame. In their words: "The WHOPPER sandwich is America's Favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat."

Am I the only person very disturbed by this?

Annoyance

Bah to online forms. I spent an hour applying for health insurance, and one mis-click erased the whole thing. Grr.

Adventures in So-Cal

Overall, my business trip went really well. It was fun to finally meet all these co-workers I email every day, and we had some good let's-improve-office-efficiency brainstorming sessions. Everyone there is as nice and good-humored as they seemed to be long-distance, which is always good, and the two ladies I roomed with were as hysterical as expected.

However, Monday night didn't go so well. For me, anyway. So, I hadn't been feeling particularly well all day: perhaps a combination of being a bit sleep-deprived and having my eating schedule thrown off by traveling. By dinner, though, I was starting to feel nauseous; I almost tried to skip out on going, but this was where I was going to meet my boss for the first time, and I thought maybe food would help. I thought wrong. It was an Italian restaurant--normally one of my favorites--and thus filled with the smell of baked cheese and rich spices. Long story short, when we'd been there more than an hour and hadn't even started on hor d'ouevres yet, I decided I wouldn't be able to last much longer in that room. My traveling companion suggested I go sit outside in the fresh air or lay down in the car, and I was going to do so, but my boss--who is probably one of the nicest people I've ever met (fortunately)--hated the thought of me sitting around feeling sick and offered to take me back to my hotel. Which was really close. Or really close, anyway, if you turn the right way down the main street. Which we didn't. Thirty minutes and several stomach-tossing U-turns later, we were finally pulling into the hotel parking lot, and I had a moment I was convinced that we were too late. But it all turned out okay. I ended up only suffering the embarrassment of interrupting a nice dinner and forcing my boss to leave mid-conversation, mid-meal, not of actually being sick in the car. Phew. Although I guess it's not as exciting that way.

I felt much better the next day. And, really, the trip was good. But business meetings aren't as exciting to write about as embarrassing first impressions. So, there you go. My first-ever business trip. Memorable.

Home again

Well, I'm home safe and sound from my first-ever business trip. My favorite part, I think, was almost throwing up in my boss' car less than an hour after meeting him. Great first impression, eh?

More on that later, though. Now, to bed. :)