We were instructed to wear long-sleeved, white collard shirts and closed-toe black dress shoes for our graduation.

there were 47 graduates this year

Some of the SIL people took some of the Applied Linguistics graduates and anyone else under scholarship from SIL, out for dinner at Chowking, a Filipino/Chinese fast food place. I was feeling hungry because, though there had been some snacks provided after the graduation, they were all gone by the time we got there. Then when we went to Chowking, they served only pork and rice, and I don't eat pork. But eventually someone ordered chicken for me and another person who doesn't eat pork.

graduation dinner

Our Room- A Sonnet

[I admit this is a little silly, but I wrote it after coming back to our room in the province after being away for more than a month. The events in it our true, but don't worry, it's not usually that bad in there.]

A hungry gecko gazed with envy, smug,

At greedy daddy longleg spiders. All

Were sucking tasty big mosquitoes’ blood

In giant webs that graced the corner wall.

A thousand tiny aunts were marching down

To drink my tea and eat my mango; bite

When I am lying down. A sudden sound-

A little mouse was dashing out of sight.

At night, an eerie noise: a crash, a shrill

‘He! He!’ The mouse, perhaps, but strangely loud.

A scuffle, thud, and yes, my husband killed

A rat, not mouse, and wrapped it in a shroud.

Tomorrow let’s go squish the aunts and slug

The mouse. And let the geckos swallow bugs.

Leaving Mother Lake-Namu and Christine Mathieu

I just read Leaving Mother Lake: A Childhood at the Edge of the World and thought it was a fascinating book. It's about the Moso girl Erche Namu who grew up in an extremely remote village between China and Tibet, ran away when she was 14, and eventually became a famous singer. It took a few days to hike to the road from her village, then a few days to travel to the city.

This book is full of interesting cultural information about China and about the Moso and other tribal people in the 1980's. For example, in Namu's village, property is passed down to daughters, not sons. They didn't marry. After a girl had her "skirt ceremony" after her period started, she became a woman. A women would stay in her own room in the home of her mother (men never owned houses), and a man would knock at the window of a woman at night, and if she liked him, she could let him in.

The Afterword mentions that the Chinese government tried to make the Moso culture become more like the mainstream Chinese culture. They didn't succeed at first, but gradually, after much work, (sadly) did influence the Moso and other tribes to leave behind some of their cultural heritage and become more Chinese.

Don't Waste Your Life-John Piper

I just read this, and it's a great book! It goes deep into the matter of what it means to waste your life, how not to waste your life, and how to find joy. John Piper expresses his thoughts very well. Here are a few excerpts from the book:

"God created me--and you--to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion--namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life."

"We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is."

"The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness."

"Television is one of the greatest life-wasters of the modern age. And, of course, the Internet is running to catch up....The main problem with TV is not how much smut is available....A mind fed daily on TV diminishes. Your mind was made to know and love God. Its facility for this great calling is ruined by excessive TV. It's content is so trivial and so shallow that the capacity of the mind to think worthy thoughts withers...."

"Since we all live in a world created by television, it is almost impossible to see what has happened to us. The only hope is to read what people were like in previous centuries. Biographies are a great antidote to cultural myopia and chronological snobbery."

"Is then their joy a resting in your worth or in their own?"

in a village

A Political Celebration

One of the Kalanguya was elected as mayor (or something important) recently, and had a huge celebration in one of the villages. He had several pigs and two carabao butchered for the occasion, not to meantion the rice and vegetables. The carabao meat tasted a lot like beef. The pork was boiled in chunks, and a guy with a flat basket went around and handed everyone a big chunk of pork and a slab of pork liver (I don't eat pork, so we put my share into a bag and gave it to someone else to take home).

Video: How Toothless Old People Chew Betel Nut With Gusto In a Village

The Wedding of Woolim and Shiloah

The place where the wedding was held was a really big house in Tagaytay (a few hours south of Manila) owned by a famous singer. Our attire had to be "strictly formal."

There were orderves and drinks before dinner and after the ceremony.

This is the bride and groom with a bridesmaid and groomsman.

Here we are with a few of the other students from AGS who are the groom's friends.

My Graduate Testimony

I'm graduating on April 6, 2008!!! The following is my "graduate's testimony" that will be put into the yearbook (I hope the editor won't change it):

M.A. in Applied Linguistics

I was motivated to go to AGS because of my desire to be a missionary and to learn about and understand other cultures. I had been taking Applied Linguistics at ACTS Seminaries/Canadian Institute of Linguistics. I enjoyed the summer session and the year that I spent in Canada, except for the cold weather and constant rain from fall to spring, and thought that ACTS/CanIL was great school and had high academic standards, which I appreciated. But I thought it would be valuable to spend time in a more foreign country (Canada is almost just like the US), and transferred to AGS.

After I graduate, I plan to do several things. One is to take up further studies in Applied Linguistics, especially in the area of grammar, my primary linguistic interest, either formally or through self-study. Another is to study nutrition in a graduate school. Nutrition is my primary interest overall, and God must have given that interest to me so that it can be one of my ministries when I become a missionary. Of course, another of my plans is to become a missionary, write down an unwritten language and make a grammar for it, and do something in the area of nutrition. Finally, because I like writing (and editing), I plan to improve my skills in that area and hope to write novels, biographies, articles for magazines etc.

I’m currently waiting to go back to the US to work and raise support for a year or two with my husband. We plan to come back to the Philippines to mobilize and strengthen his people, the Kalanguya, for a few years, then go as to another country in South East Asia or whatever part of the world God will put into our hearts.

a nice visit

We visited a couple when we were in Baguio. The husband is from the Netherlands, and works in construction here, and the wife is from the Philippines.

Graduating Students Retreat '08

My husband I and went on the graduating students retreat in Baguio city this February. My husband is graduating with and M.A. in Community Development, and I'm graduating with an M.A. in Applied Linguistics this April 6, 2008. It was at least as cold there as it was when we went to Baguio in the winter-cold at night and not too hot during the day.

The retreat was only two days and three nights, and

the schedule was really busy. It went something like this: Breakfast 6-7, Chapel or Devotional time 8-11:30, Lunch 11:30-12:30, touring Baguio 1:30-6:30, Dinner 6:30-7:30, after dinner activities 8:00-11. My husband brought me breakfast in bed every morning cause I don't like to get out of bed that early:)

We also went on a tour of the military academy.

I think my favorite place on the trip was the Strawberry Farm in Baguio. The strawberries were really fresh! I also

bought a small container of blueberries, fresh carrots with the leaves still on them, and large, seedless oranges.

going up to the village

These are some pictures from our recent jeepney ride up to a village. I remember that I was holding my hat and a lot of other stuff, and somehow I must have dropped my hat. I was never able to find it after that :-(.

in the village

We went to a village far up in the mountains. It took a six-hour long, tiring, bumpy jeepney ride on the edge of the cliff to get there. In the village, we went to a family reunion, where people eat a feast of boiled pork with rice. (Someone gave me sayote tops cause I don't like to eat pork.) When we came down several days later, I talked my husband into hiking, and we made it down to the lowlands in only five hours. It was great to get some exercise, but I could hardly keep my legs moving by the time we got down to the lowlands. We hadn't brought enough water, and couldn't find anyplace to buy water on the way down, and I was really feeling dehydrated under the sun. Finally we stopped and drank the juice of a coconut and some bottled water.

Community Development Day

My husband held a meeting with the village community for his Community Development internship. He asked the people who came to from small groups (with either just men or women) to write down the things that they think need attention in their community, then arrange these into categories. Mainly what they came up with had to do with taking care of the environment, which is also what he thinks needs attention there. His Community Development classes emphasize helping people with what they think is important rather than telling them what he thinks needs to be done.

our five-hour hike from the village to the lowlands

The second picture is of the town in the distance that we were heading to.

We saw a baby carabao, a goat, and crossed a long hand made (not using machinery) hanging bridge.