Kailei and I, enjoying the decorations outside our banquet. ...This must have been a Tuesday, because I'm wearing my proper 'Tuesday' shirt! So this week we had our Mid-Service Conference, and in addition to the medical review, information about writing grants and other ways we can be more useful to our communities, we get to have some further language courses. The other day in the middle of one of those classes (Structure II!) we were talking about different uses of the word 'naa', and in order to use it properly to indicate duration, you need to use the classifier for a given word. If the word is 'page', the classifier is the same as the word, and then our class got sidetracked for a moment about how the word and classifier for 'page' is the same as the word for 'face', because it is the face of a page! Neat!
There are always fun surprises like that in language, aren't there? You find out that a more complex word can be broken down into two more simple words you know already. For example, the word for diarrhea, 'tong sia', literally means 'stomach broke'. Fun, right? And I already mentioned how 'butterfly' is literally translated as 'ghost shirt' and gives you a fun mental picture, smile.
Aside from language classes, information about committees and organizations like Books for Thailand, the Brighter Thailand Foundation and other sources of funding, or sessions about how to go about moving on to a third-year project, we simply had a good time getting together and seeing one another. Not only have we had some major staffing changes this year, but It's rare that our entire group gets to see one another as we're scattered throughout the country.
There are always fun surprises like that in language, aren't there? You find out that a more complex word can be broken down into two more simple words you know already. For example, the word for diarrhea, 'tong sia', literally means 'stomach broke'. Fun, right? And I already mentioned how 'butterfly' is literally translated as 'ghost shirt' and gives you a fun mental picture, smile.
Aside from language classes, information about committees and organizations like Books for Thailand, the Brighter Thailand Foundation and other sources of funding, or sessions about how to go about moving on to a third-year project, we simply had a good time getting together and seeing one another. Not only have we had some major staffing changes this year, but It's rare that our entire group gets to see one another as we're scattered throughout the country.
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