A Good Day

Today has been a good day.

The highlight was my trip to the mail room. I wasn't sure there would be anything, but I had been alerted to the possibility. I had to wait on the housing assistant to get off the phone, and then I followed her to the mail room. There were boxes and letters all over the place. She navigated to the LSA pile and started looking through the stack. The first few were addressed to other people. They were sizable envelopes, which was as much as I expected to get, and I began to think there wasn't anything for me. Then she looked at the large box underneath the letters and saw my name about the same time I noticed the Godiva tape on the box. I literally gasped for breath.

I muttered some incoherent things as she told me to enjoy, and grinned all the way back to the dorm. Therein, I found a beautiful birthday package of mixed chocolates with a sweet note from Trey. I think I complained to him once that I didn't have any chocolate out here. (I've been complaining that he's not out here, but I don't know if he can ship in a box.) In the spirit of good Christian giving, I offered a piece of the chocolate to my roommate, Yoko, after I'd had a few pieces, but I think that's a case of motivation that will definitely have to be covered in the blood of Christ :). Chocolate is wonderful! and I want it all for me. Thank you, Trey!

This morning, my intro to morphology class started. A friend yesterday told me that if I like puzzles, I'd like morphology, and I can see how that's true. Instead of messing with truth and the meanings of things (like the semantics), morphology is more about how the pieces of language fit together. It's different from syntax (though some apparently define it as the last step in syntactical analysis), and some languages don't even have morphology! I'm just regurgitating some of the facts I garnered from class this morning; hopefully by the end of the course, I'll be able to speak more knowledgeably on the subject. But I do think it's something I'm going to enjoy if I can get a grip on the terminology.

My other class on literacy acquisition was very exciting. It is dually taught and both professors are passionate about helping kids learn to read and using linguistic tools to help them. They look at phonology and how that relates to the written word, but they also take into account things like kids' discouragement about learning to read and teacher/student misunderstandings, lack of family support, etc. as obstacles to literacy acquisition. It makes me wish that I wanted to/could work with kids on reading and had had some experience doing it. It seems like something that would be so useful, especially at Redeemer's tutoring program or Alice Lusk's summer reading program that is going on at Redeemer while I'm out here. Maybe I'd do better tutoring than in a classroom. I'm not sure what I'll end up with from this class, but I hope I can pull out something I can put to use back in Jackson.

Also, on Sunday I'm going to Peninsula Bible Church with Jeeyoung, my friend from Korea whose name I now can spell, and her husband. I think I'll go with them to get either Vietnamese or Korean food afterwards, too. She usually goes to lunch with her bible study group, and invited me to come along.

God is good!