Thursday, April 16, 2009

Class, mice, and other random things

Five weeks of 1st semester flew by and we are now on our Easter/Fall break for two weeks. I was ready for a break but timing won't feel so nice when we start back and have 10 straight weeks until the end of the semester. Ah well. So far I've only gotten pictures in Grammar class but here are some fun examples of the kinds of crazy things we do in grammar: treeing out the order and structure and grammatical relations of various languages. Somehow I made it through elementary, junior high, high school, and college and never once learned any sort of grammar so this is all new to me. Those of you who diagrammed sentences growing up will recognize this but note that we are learning how to do this for languages whose word order is completely different from English. It's kinda fun really. :)

Just before break we celebrated Jesiah and Addy's birthdays. Jesiah was 4 just before Christmas, but we were so busy packing to come to Australia that we didn't really celebrate. One day a few weeks ago Gretchen said she was tired of something. Jesiah sighed and said "well I'm tired of not having a birthday." Whoops, that was a good reminder to have it! You don't always expect a 4 year old to remember those sorts of things! Addy had her 1st birthday the end of March so the baby is turning into a toddler, wow!

For the final bit of randomness here, I have to tell about our mouse friends. We've caught two and seen evidence of others. They are super cute little buggers but definitely make it hard to keep pasta, cereal, and crackers on hand... I'm realizing new things about how I'll have to keep my dry goods in Vanuatu. Multiple ziplock bags just don't do the trick.

The most significant thing about our break is that my parents are here to visit though, yay! Check out my other post for pictures from them being here. They've helped out a ton in babysitting and we've loved being able to hang out. If anyone else wants to come check out Australia, we'd love to have you come!! :)