My Korean Skit was over on Thursday. The picture above shows a portion of the taxi that we "took from the airport to the Seoul Hilton Hotel". I remembered my lines. Our "judge" was able to understand what we said. After 6 hours with a Language Helper (LH), we could barely repeat 3 and 1/2 minutes of dialogue in Korean. The point was not to learn Korean, but to learn how to plan sessions with a LH when you do not share a common language as a base. We tried different techniques over the 6 sessions and quickly learned what worked and what did not.
After the skit was over and debriefed, we ate a brief lunch and took the afternoon off. We had been very busy every afternoon and evening since the Second Language Acquistion classes had started and felt like we deserved a break. 5 of us took off for the Oriental Antiquities Museum in "the city" (what the locals call downtown Chicago).
The museum had an exhibit with antiquities from Iraq. My favorite part was this giant relief of Sennacherib. It also had a small sand prism that told the story of his battle with King Hezekiah. On each side of the prism it told a different version of the battle. On one side from the annals of King Sennacherib, it told of his victory over the children of Judah. On another side it told the Biblical story of how the Angel of the Lord slew all of Sennacherib's soldiers. Still another side told a story of how field mice had eaten the weapons while the soldiers slept over night and how they mysteriously died. I love the clarity of the relief. You could see the laces on the King's sandals, his jewelry, and even his fingernails. The prism from thousands of years ago confirms the biblical account.
That evening we had Giordano's pizza with our class. This was our only authentic Chicago pizza experience while in Illinois and our last night to be all together. After dinner we went back to our rooms to finish studying for our final quizzes on Friday. I sent my Portfolio project to my instructor (a 22 page word document on what my plan will be in Greece for language acquistion including reference material I acquired throughout the course in an Appendix).
Our quizes went well. I only missed 3 points on my production quiz (how well I can pronounce the sounds from the written phenomes). This was my best grade of the course and usually the part that gives me the most grief. I had a hard time with the transcription quiz (taking the sounds given orally and writing them on paper using the international phonetic alphabet), but it is over and my other transcription quizes had really good grades. Thank you so much for praying me through this class.
The classes were over around noon. We said our "good-byes" and went back to clean the apartment and move out. We got on the road about 1:30 pm. It looked like we were ahead of the 2-sided storm due to arrive later that night. 2-sided storms generally produce heavy rain and tornados. We arrived in St. Charles, Missouri about 7 pm and spent the night with friends. We arrived well before the storm and with only a minor detour .
Saturday morning we awoke to rain and were back in the car by 8:30 am headed towards Plano, Texas to see my brother and his family on our way back to California. We drove through heavy rain as we headed south. The rain later turned to wind and it blew a path of sunshine for us to drive in, with each side of the 2-sided storm divided by our patch of sunshine. Later in the day we drove through a dust storm that reminded me of what the dust bowl in the 1930's must have looked like. In the end, we made good time and arrived safe but dusty in Plano around 7 pm.
Today we rested. We went to church at Prestonwood Baptist. My brother, Craig BBQed a roast for dinner. Courtney, my niece is building a bridge out of notebook paper for her physics project, so the house sounds like saws buzzing and smells like glue. If it will hold 11 pounds of weight without breaking, she will get a good grade. It has all sorts of rules about how much it can weigh and how many supporting pieces it can have. Kayla, my other neice was home for a while from the University to see her boyfriend who is home from Iraq. Both were home for lunch. It has been a good day.
Monday we will drive 1o to 12 hours to Albuquerque and on Tuesday we will drive another 10 to 12 hours and should be back home in California. We have developed a rhythm to entertain ourselves as we drive. We listen to music "shuffled" on my ipod for a while. Then we listen to podcasts on Kenn's ipod. Then I read to Kenn for a while. We are reading Charles Martin books. He writes Christian fiction sets in South Carolina. He is a masterful storyteller as he makes us laugh and cry. I found the last book of his that I didn't own at the bookstore in church this morning. I could have danced. My favorite book thus far is "Wrapped in Rain". Then we start all over again with music. That's life on the road.
