After hiking down for several hours, someone offered us a trycicle ride back to CFM

'AGS Family' Camp, December 14-16, 2006 in Rizal, Laguna

Bob in a tree

I'll finish posting these pictures of the "AGS Family Camp" later, I hope before next year.

table tennis

all you can eat food 3x per day

Rizal Re-creation center is run by an American missionary couple, and most of the food was American. I think they should serve Filipino food.

games

an ugly monkey

Group Picture:AGS Family Camp

ALP students at the AGS Family Camp

Bob and others

King Yuki

Dalmas, me, Lillian, and Ali

Rizal Re-Creation Center Grounds

Ducks and Geese and Chess

The World's Largest Top

The Mall of Asia in Manila

we watched the sun set over the bay of Manila behind the Mall of Asia

Bob with Mexican food (but the quality of the food was very bad)

lunch

I often buy my lunch in the cafeteria ("canteen") for between about .40 and .60 cents. This was .60 cents. The food is usually not hot, but they have very hot peppers avaliable.

Time is like a river...you can't step on the same water twice because the flow that has passed will never pass you again. Cherish every moment of your life...stay happy!!

Speech Analyzer

I've been spending hours recording and transcribing Kalanguya in IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) with the help of the Speech Analyzer program from SIL.

Thanksgiving Dinner!!!

One of the program directors at AGS, a woman from the USA, invited all of the international students to her very nice, large house in Antipolo, about 1 1/2 hours from AGS, on Saturday. We had turkey, stuffing, candied yams, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, pumpkin pie, and various other things. We even had chips and raw vegetables with hummos to snack on. I'm not sure how she came up with all that stuff cause I don't think it's easy to find Thanksgiving food here. I think between 10-15 of the international students came, as well as some of the Gunderson's family and friends.

Thanksgiving Dinner-we ate all afternoon!

the Turkey-these are very expensive and hard to find in the Philippines

we even had pumpkin pie :-)

view from North Ave Station

view of EDSA from North Station

na kamun.'num.num.num 'I'm thinking'

That's my favorite word in Kalanguya so far:-) The u is supposed to be pronounced like a schwa, like in the word number. I think the orthographic spelling is na kamennemnemnem, but I need to check on that.

Kalanguya-a fricativeless language (except h)

I'm thankful that Kalanguya has almost no fricatives (f, v, s, z etc.) and no r at all:-)!!! It does have h, which is a voiceless glottal fricative (and I forgot about it being a fricative at all earlier). It made it easier when I wrote my phonology paper for Field Methods, and I think it's kind of cute and more interesting that way:-).

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Let's give thanks to God today.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.-Anne Lamott

The scientists, thinking that they're too intelligent, assumed they don't need God anymore. One scientist said, "Lord, we don't need You anymore. We're already as intelligent as You. We know how to create humans. See, we can clone people."
So God said, "Verily, let's have a man-making contest. Let's do it the way I did with Adam." The scientist agreed. Then he started to pick up some dust.
But GOD told him, "No, you make your own dust."

The Men We Never Knew: How to Deepen Your Relationship With the Man You Love by Daphne Rose Kingma

This is one of the deep and insightful books that I was devouring over the one-week break we had between our module classes. I ran into it at a bookstore here in Manila, and thought it would be helpful because it's about the inner lives of men, what goes on in their hearts and minds, and how to improve and deepen one's relationship with them. And it greatly helped me to understand what goes on inside of them, as well as to understand myself and how I relate to them, and why I relate the way I do. I think it's especially good for people who love to think cause you can think along with the author in this book as her thoughts build upon each other, and don't have to believe every word, as well as for people who want some really profound info on what goes on inside of men (and women). I put a link to the book on Amazon.com in the title above. You can read other people's reviews there and look inside of the book:-)

Three things in life, when gone, never come back: TIME, WORDS, and OPPORTUNITY.
Three things in life that should never be lost: PEACE, HOPE, and HONESTY.
Three things in life that are most valuable: LOVE, FAITH, and PRAYER.
Three things in life that are never certain: DREAMS, SUCCESS and FORTUNE.
Three things in life that make a person: HARD WORK, SINCERITY, and COMITTMENT.
Three things in life that can destroy a person: LUST, PRIDE, and ANGER.
Three things that are truly constant: CHANGE, DEATH, and GOD.

God doesn't call the qualified;
He qualifies those who are called.
We don't change God's message;
His message changes us.
When God ordains,
He sustains.

We went to a Filipino-Indian church in Manila. Most of the Indian people are Sandhi's from Pakistan (I think).

This is from the Sandhi Bible.

This is Paul Stock. He's a missionary to Pakistan and a talented ethnomusicologist. Bob met him when he was in Minnesota.