Once again, the end approaches

It's crazy to think that the semester is almost over. Just a few more weeks! Of course, that means I have a lot of final papers, projects, and two exams to prepare for. Trying not to think about that too much, lest I panic.

Winter finally seems to be fading. The huge piles of plowed snow in the TWU parking lots are almost gone - helped by the steady rain we've been getting for the past week. There are crocuses blooming in the yards of the houses in the neighborhood, and robins and Canada geese on the campus lawns. (I prefer the robins.) Today, it happens to be partly sunny outside.

Classes continue to go pretty well. I had to do interviews with three people from the library, which is where I have been doing my Ethnography observations. I had been nervous about them, but they were actually pretty fun. And we read through 1 John 1 and 2 in the original Greek as a class, which was really cool.

Anyway, on to Greek homework. When I finish this workbook assignment, I'll be working on memorizing the Lord's Prayer in Greek. I've got about half of it down so far.

Reading Week

So, we're just about done with our Reading Week break. For those of you who have never heard that term before, it's a mid-semester break, kind of "Spring" break except you're definitely supposed to still be doing schoolwork. ;)

Mackenzie and I got to spend most of the week down south at our parents' house. We caught up with friends - including some we haven't seen in months! - and got to relax with family as well. I'm glad we were already planning to come back up before the end of the week, though, as it turns out, since the weather has turned iffy again! There was significant snowfall in especially northern Washington last night, and in the Langley area as well. Fortunately, today was mostly sunny and warm enough to melt all of what was on the roads - but there's still snow in the forecast, so we'll see.

Classes are still going very well. I think we ended up with a very good combination of courses this semester. We're translating a text in Principles of Translation, which means definite overlap between what we're learning there and in Discourse Analysis, since you mostly look at texts in that class as well. Ethnography has also been quite fun - and when we learn about observing another culture, that definitely applies to our other classes as well.

The second semester of Greek is quite a bit more difficult than the previous semester. After a rocky start, I think I'm doing pretty well. And the Canadian Bible Society gave all the students in the course a free Greek New Testament, which is cool! I can read some of it (mostly the Gospels), albeit slowly and haltingly.

It's kind of amazing to think that there are only two more months of classes for this year! I'm looking forward to spring - for many reasons.

A cool experience

So tonight Mackenzie and I went to a dinner night for MKs (missionary kids) that we were invited to by a woman who works at CanIL (her husband is a professor and the director of the MA Linguistics program). We had delicious home-cooked food, lovely dessert, and a chance to just hang out and spend some time with some other MKs who go to CanIL/TWU - as well as two of the host and hostess' sons and their 14-month-old granddaughter. It was a lot of fun! We met some new people, chatted, laughed, and played Telephone Pictionary. And as Mackenzie and I had thought before, even though our family never lived overseas, we've still got plenty in common with other MKs.

This is going to be a monthly thing, and I'll definitely be looking forward to it!

Weekend

This weekend is Missions Fest in Vancouver, and CanIL and Wycliffe Canada share a booth there. Mackenzie and I signed up to help out at the CanIL booth today - she teaching Language & Culture Acquisition, and me Syntax & Morphology. Student (and staff) volunteers all signed up to take on a short "class" at the booth, which had two "classrooms" where visitors could sit in on 7 minutes of LACA, syntax & morphology, phonetics, and a Wycliffe presentation. Everyone got a class-specific script to follow. Even with that, I had never taught any linguistics - or really taught anything other than Sunday school - before, so I was a little nervous about it before we got there. But more on that later.

Mackenzie and I took the Sky Train to Vancouver, right to the exhibition centre, with Daryn (a TA at CanIL who's very cool). The Sky Train is rather like the Metro in Paris, except of course totally aboveground. Not exactly exciting, but certainly convenient and not a bad price. It was nice to see Vancouver again, though - if only briefly on the way inside the centre. It seems kind of a shame that we've been up here for over a semester and still hadn't been to Vancouver since we first visited CanIL about a year ago.

So anyway, teaching? Was a lot of fun. Sure, there were a few small issues to deal with - such as magnets that were annoyingly hard to actually get off the whiteboard when I was switching between things to display, but I really enjoyed it. And that's cool because I have never really thought of myself as being likely to be a good teacher. I guess it really helps to be teaching something you love, for one thing. Maybe if I end up TAing at some point in the future (which would be good, I think), it wouldn't be too bad to have to teach the class once or twice.

You know what's cool?

Watching a Canadian news channel's coverage of the US presidential inauguration and seeing shots of people all over the world - especially across Canada - standing to cheer and clap when your president is sworn in. They looked just as excited as the millions of people who were actually there at the Mall to see the event in person. How cool is that?

I listened to President Obama's first speech online at about 4 this afternoon, and found it very good. I got a little bit emotional, but felt a bit disconnected due to distance and not watching live. However, tonight during dinner, when I watched GlobalTV's coverage and saw Canadians joining many of their neighbors to the south in celebration, I definitely teared up.

Though I know Obama isn't going to solve all of the world's problems, it is a very cool and different feeling to have people around the world celebrating with us as the US looks to the future.

New classes

So I have now had all of my classes (except for Greek, but that's just a continuation of last semester). My thoughts:

Ethnography is quite a full class, mostly with people I had in LACA last semester, so that's cool. One of my favorite teachers is teaching it. It sounds like it will be a fair amount of work, but also fun.

Principles of Translation seems like it will be as cool as I thought it would be. However, it is at exactly the time of day when it is hardest for me to stay awake and aware, so that will be a challenge.

Discourse Analysis also seems like it will be very cool. Just the intro stuff we looked at today was pretty fascinating. The professor also seems like a very friendly, intelligent, helpful person. Always a good thing.

I also had my first shift of my new job last night. Mackenzie and I are doing the evening shift of custodial work at the CanIL building, 5 evenings a week for two hours. May not be glamorous, but it will pay much better than last semester's job, and it's not too difficult, of course.

The snow has melted almost a foot due to the all-but-constant rain. It's getting a little easier each time to get out of our neighborhood. Maybe by the end of the week, our street will be a two-way street again!

The Great White North, indeed!

So Mackenzie and I were a little nervous yesterday about the drive back up to Langley, since the last fairly heavy snowfall in Kent was very recent. But the drive up was fine: no snow other than on the grass beside the roads, and only a little bit of rain.

And then? We got to Langley. There were HUGE piles of (I assume) plowed snow beside the streets, and when we got off the main roads into our neighborhood... well, let's just say I'm very glad we have studded tires on our intrepid little Corolla. The street has clearly not been plowed, there's only one lane with cleared tracks for tires, there is no street parking (cars that were parked on the streets are half-buried), there is at least a foot of snow in everyone's yards, and the piles of snow from people's shoveled driveways are just immense. We were very grateful that our landlady's husband cleared a spot on the driveway for us. Otherwise, I have no idea what we would have done.

And of course, we have heard from many friends who live in the greater Vancouver area (including our landlady's husband) that this kind of weather is just as abnormal for the area as the less-severe but still quite heavy snow that has been hitting Seattle and most of western Washington for the past weeks. Central and eastern Canada are much more used to dealing with this. Everyone is just amazed!

On a different subject, tomorrow is the first day of the semester (assuming we do actually have class. We'll be watching that closely). I think I'm ready to tackle a new set of classes. On my schedule is Ethnography and then Principles of Translation. While both sound quite interesting, I'm most excited about the latter. I have always enjoyed translating, whether in French class or when learning a little bit of other languages, and also in Greek. It's like the best game or puzzle to me. Though I know it will be challenging, I hope the class exceeds my expectations!