S'wati ka!

Greetings from a different part of the world: Chiang Mai, Thailand!

As you probably know I am getting my masters in TESOL through APU. As a result I have an excuse to spend two weeks in Thailand studying and exploring a different part of the world.

This past week our cohort (class) took "Sociolinguistics." Basically it is a mix between sociology, linguistics and anthropology. It was really interesting learning about language, dialects, language shift, death, and planning, World Englishes and things like that. We had class every day from 8am-3pm. Then we read a bunch, go for a swim, eat lots of Pad Thai and sleep. Today we had a quiz, which was more like an essay test. I think that I successfully described the difference between a language and a dialect, a pidgin and a creole, language planning in terms of status and corpus planning, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and what diglossia was. Spell checker does not like the word "diglossia" but I promise it is a real word with a real meaning in Sociolinguistics.

Tomorrow we are going on a little tour of Thailand: elephant trekking through the woods, riding a bamboo raft down a river, visiting some waterfalls and a mountain village. It should be a lot of fun and a good cultural experience.

I will be here another week taking Second Language Acquisition, then I go back to Hungary.
Please pray for me and everyone in our cohort to stay healthy and study well.

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Sometime soon you will probably get an email or letter from me about fundraising for next year. The total for the year to cover all my transportation, APU, ESI costs, etc. will be about $10,000. Let me know if you can help out and I will let you know how!

Please pray for funding to not be an issue. It is difficult to focus on ministry when you are distracted by monetary concerns.

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I will update more on Hungary when I get back!!!