This is my late Christmas/New Year 2007 letter. My excuse is that I've been roaming around five different villages and three provinces here in the Philippines since before Christmas. I even spend a day beside the ocean.
Anyway, 2006 started out with me trying to find out what was wrong with my health. It was discouraging because some of the doctors I went to thought my symptoms must be in my head :-( , but at least the cardiologist I saw thought it was important for me to find out if something really was wrong. After eliminating hyperthyroidism, a condition that has similar symptoms, I had an echocardiogram that showed Mitral Valve Prolapse. I'm thankful that I was able to find that out because the symptoms had been getting bad.
In February, Bob and I became "officially" boyfriend/girlfriend, but I don't know exactly what the difference is between being unofficially and officially bf/gf, or special friends vs. bf/gf, or even where that idea came from, but we did anyway.
At the end of March, I finished my first year at Alliance Graduate School (AGS), and on May 15, I started my second year, which consists entirely of 6 week or 8 week Applied Linguistics module classes with one week between each phase. The most recent module phase has us writing a paper almost every week, usually around 15 pages long, of our analysis of the language we are studying. We have to gather data from our language resource person, then try to figure out the phonology, morphosyntax ect. I'm studying Kalanguya, Bob's mother tongue :-).
In April, I moved into an apartment very near the apartment I lived in before, and was joined by my six Filipina housemates soon after. All but one is or is studying to be a mother tongue translator from the northern part of the Philippines.
In June, Bob moved just a few doors away, and resumed his studies at AGS, taking an M.A. in Community Development this time. He already got a diploma in Applied Linguistics when he was at AGS the year before last. It's been good to be able to spend more time with him now that we're both going to school in Manila.
As for the biggest news of 2006, Bob proposed on December 22:-). Our wedding date is set on April 7 at CFM. We wouldn't have the wedding that soon, but it's important to Bob that the missionaries who reached out to his village be able to attend the wedding, and they'll be in the Philippines in February and March this year. I'm also grateful to the missionaries. If it hadn't been for them, Bob might be in his village making sacrifices to the spirits to try to appease them…maybe even headhunting….
We've arranged that people coming up from Manila or elsewhere can stay in the New Tribes Mission guesthouse in Bambang for $5.00/night per person (I think hotels are around $10 or $15/night). We might have a second wedding or a reception in the US later…
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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