Blog

What I did last Friday

Today I put in more than 8 hours of language learning time! Thanks to Steve for looking after Oscar 🙂
I started off looking at the sunrise this morning, which I intended to do on my own, but a dog saw me and started barking, so people got up and came to me wondering what stranger was sitting on the field in the middle of the night… They thought it was weird for me to look at the sun coming up. But I learned some interesting language from it. And the sunrise was so pretty!

By Gerdine Stanley, ago

Jungle conkers

A huge advantage of getting out on the trail is that new things come up constantly. On today’s hike I paid attention to what the kids were foraging for while we were walking along. While we hike kids are constantly in the bushes either side of the trail looking for different things. One thing they got their hands on was the curly shoot of a particular tree.
They gathered a bunch of them and played a game similar to conkers that we play in England.

By SteveStanley, ago

First consultant check

This week was an exciting change of pace. It was the first time in 8 weeks we’ve had a helicopter land here so we could see other faces 🙂 Two CLA (culture and language learning) consultants stayed with us for 2 days to both check our language ability and answer questions we have about the language learning process.

By SteveStanley, ago

A wedding

Can you image getting married without a ceremony, without your family and friends, without presents, without really knowing your groom, and moving to a new place, new people, in a house full of people?

By Natalie Hansen, ago

Fence making

The best way to learn language is to engage all of your senses and experience what you’re learning about. You’re much more likely to remember the names of things and names of actions if you learn it as you’re doing it. Not only that you’re much more likely to get language that makes sense because you hear it used in context (if you ask your language helper nicely I’m sure he’d agree that yes you could say that you plural were holding a new, clean, red, small bowl in the past tense – but no one would say that!). Hence our language learning style emphasizes being out and about far more than labouring at a desk.

By SteveStanley, ago

Dictionaries, learning and medical

We’re all starting to feel like we need a break, Culture and Language learning is tough! It’s also enjoyable though. I often wake up in the morning and dread getting out of bed; wondering “how on earth am I going to get 8 hours of language learning in today?”. The good news is that it’s usually really good fun and I end up going over hours!

By SteveStanley, ago

I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do

It’s strange to be in a position to say those words, but that’s exactly where we’ve ended up as missionaries to a remote, rural people group. It doesn’t feel good to say that, and it also doesn’t feel honest.
It’s prompted some reflection on what those words actually mean as I work through the guilt of saying it quite often.

By SteveStanley, ago

Slow food

Today’s Culture event was making ‘Mamuni’, which kept us occupied from 9:30 to 12:45 🙂 Having invested a bunch of time into eliciting and analysing verb endings in 4 different tenses for 6 different actors (I, we, you, yous, he, they) we’re starting to engage with what we can series activities using photo books. A series activity is what it sounds like, an activity that has steps that you get a photo of. Then you show the photos and ask “What are they doing?”, to get a (hopefully) simple clause that introduces you to being able to actually string vocabulary together in a grammatically correct and natural sentence.

By SteveStanley, ago

Gardentrip

Gardens are essential to their lives. There is all their food, there is their work, there it is were a lot of live happens. Everyone has several gardens, old and new ones. They have garden houses were they sleep, or there is a small shelter. Families work often together or help each other in the gardens. It is often a steep hike to get there. And if it rains, it is really muddy too.

By Natalie Hansen, ago