the midwest project

jet lagging behind

2006-01-26T23:25:00.000-08:00

i have been hitting the books lately. adrew radford's english syntax and john wolff's indonesian book, mainly. this weekend, i'll be pretty heavy into some noam chomsky, but in my breaks i have been working on my website. it should be up within the week.

palawan to phx

2006-01-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

i am just relaxing in the taipei airport until my flight leaves in a couple of hours. the couches are really nice here and they have all the best stores, so i am pretty pleased to be waiting in this airport. i started this morning off waking up early to david and phil (my legend hotel roommates) packing getting ready to go. lucky enough for me, i packed the night before. but i got up and got on the van to the airport in palawan. the computers were broken there, so we spent quite a lot of time waiting in line, sweating due to the lack of air con. i was happy enough talking to a nice guy dave i met at the conference who lives in kl, malaysia. we also talked quite a bit with some ethnomusicologists. after taking off in palawan, i arrived in manila said my goodbyes to my conference buds and went to the international airport and waited for about four hours before taking off. that leads me to where i am waiting in the taipei airport. from here i am going to la and then on to phoenix.

i have been saving my many pictures until now. my trip is coming to a close and overall it has been a really great trip. i learned a ton at the conference and met quite a few people there, too. these are kind of the celebrities of the austronesian linguistics world (i’ll explain what this means later). one of the great things about going to the third world is things that you wouldn’t see other places, so as i look back i am including two of these moments.

as I was waiting at the baggage carousel in manila i saw a guy pick up his pet chicken
a pastor fell off the stage at church on sunday

i also wanted to go through and give you some idea where i was and who i met. so here's my first picture of some a beach i went and saw. they call it white beach and it was really beautiful. it was nice too cause it wasn't full of euros. i also met a nice palawan family that didn't speak much english, but enough to get me to take pictures on my digital camera and show them afterwards.

besides the good conversations with people at the conference about life goals and dissertation research and the such, i made some good indonesian friends who i could have fun with. obing works in jakarta and is a language researcher for the government, and june is the director of the english depart at a univeristy in kupang in eastern indonesia. so i was glad to meet them and just laugh and hang out with them.

well i have more pictures, but i don't want to overload you all, so i'll stop here and fill you in more later.

jeepnees

2006-01-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

here's another picture of my trip across town yesterday. they call these jeepnees (i don't know if i spelled it right, but you get the point). on my way home yesterday i also saw a lady walking her cow outside of the apartment i'm staying at. i don't know if that happens in nebraska, but i don't see too many people walking their cows in arizona.

i also had a nice conversation some with ex-pats about two word verbs in the english spoken in davao. they tend to either find a new word or they take the preposition and turn it into the verb. for example, if i wanted to turn off the lights in davao, i would just off the lights. a different example is if you were take something apart you would disassemble it. the even stranger part to this (although the avoidance of two word verbs is not strange) is that they call a store manager the in-charge. i know it's a little strange.

not for hire

2006-01-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

yesterday after eating baked potatoes for lunch, i decided to go out on the town and go to one of the local mall called sm. they had all the hippests stores (dr. martins, guess, oxygen). the mall was really big and not the only one in town so i was pretty impressed. i grabbed this picture riding in the back of my taxi. the driving here is a pretty out of control, but you get used to it.

apartment three

2006-01-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

this is my spot here the philippines. i came here at about 8:30 last night and fell right asleep, waking up again at 2:30. it wasn't one of those 'groggy go to the bathroom wake ups', but a 'i slept until eleven wake ups'. in the end i stuck it out and fell in and out of sleep until 5:30.

besides some great meetings here (which again is my purpose for being here), i am not doing too much tourism. i hope to go to one of the malls today to buy some batteries and soak up davao culture.

with the time that i am not in a meeting or eating, i am doing some reading. so here are the books and papers i brought on the trip.

1. the Bible. (reading matthew to be specific).
2. english syntax by andrew radford. (an alright syntax book that's pretty easy to understand)
3. three factors in language design by noam chomsky (a syntax article that's not so easy)
4. beyond explanitory adequacy by noam chomsky (again, over my head)
5. spirit of the disciplines by dallas willard (i think i'll leave a quote next time to inspire others to pick up this book).

out of my bathroom window

2006-01-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

for my second day in davao i thought i would show you all a picture looking out of my bathroom window.

i got a pretty good night sleep last night, so i am feeling good today and getting ready to eat hamburgers for lunch.

Davao City, Davao

2006-01-12T01:41:00.000-08:00

It only took about two days, but I am finally in davao (pronounced dabow, if you want to sound like a native). over the past two days i have gone from phoenix to los angeles to anchorage to taipei to manila to davao. that is really just the short version.

the birth of the suburbs

2005-06-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

i know the suburbs technically started in new jersey, but i think after the suburbs in nj, they came right over to grand forks. anna and i went a on a bike ride all over the town of grand forks. we started in new grand forks, trying to a find a place to rent movies. we finally found a hollywood video. we weren't ecstatic about it since it is no mister movies, but we settled for a couple of movies i don't want to admit to seeing. after passing the usual barrage of super-target, wal-mart, sam's club, old navy, famous footwear, and hugo's (i'll explain another time), we couldn't find a way over the train tracks and happened upon a nice little downtown area that we quaintly called old grand forks.

now old grand forks is a lot more exciting than new grand forks, which means that it is as exciting as the pool at la cresenta. our two and a half hour journey led us to half the population of old and new grand forks: the grand forks speedway. i'm not sure what machines they were riding, but i am sure they were pretty tuff, judging by the rusted out broncos in the parking lot. we eventually made it back to the university with enough time to eat supper. that means dinner in the midwest dialect.

my blue no namer and anna's red schwin

2005-06-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

talking to the operations manager up here at the harvard of the midwest (university of north dakota), resulted in me buying two bikes for ten bucks. anna and i haven't had much of chance to ride our 26 and 27 inch ten speeds, but if they can make it through a winter in southern canada, we can trust them.

shower shoes and cafeteria food

2005-06-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

dorm life has not brought us down yet. our room is nice and small and both anna and i have the privledge of using our own closets; and besides pushing two twin beds together everything in the room is comfortable. we did, however, make the mistake of not bringing any pictures to help us remember our families while studying syntax. so mom, dad, mark, barbara, isaac, brooke, phil, jen, joe buck, wesley; if there is anyone out there with some pictures please send them to us. in the meantime, we'll use the famous february 1992 teen beat picture of joey lawrence in his signature ripped jeans and leather biker jacket to cover our bare walls.

on a lighter note, i was delighted to see that our bathrooms have little shower rooms with more than you will ever need: a toilet, a shower, a sink and a mirror. all of this behind a locked door. my only dilemma is the two foot by two foot shower with a shower head that reaches to the sky. besides not knowing how to use shower shoes without getting the floor all wet, dorm life is working out.

begs, begs and more begs

2005-06-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

the middle west adventures of anna and i began yesterday with a visit to minneapolis. we ate at a hip pizza place in downtown, saw my sister's work spot, and saw where the internet comes into minnesota. we stayed at my sister's house. it isn't an ikea showroom, but it's pretty close. we will begin our journey into the heart of middle west today. pray for us.