It must sound like I have been talking about the weather an awful lot. But it really has been a shockingly hot heat wave. The worst in a century. It does make me feel like Australia is just a bit too hot. A regular Summer has lots of 35 degree weather, but we just had a week of 40+ getting up to 45. Every day we went to the swimming pool after classes to try to cool off. By the end of the week it barely seemed to be working. Saturday rolled around and it was only 38. So we headed off to the Yarra River with some of our new friends, Brad and Amber who are studying with us at Equip SIL.
Swimming in the river makes a nice change because it is so much more natural. It was lots of fun to sit in the rocks and listen to the water flowing over them. The water was actually warmish, but still refreshing.
Praise God, because as I write it is raining. I am wet from my pledge to stand in it no matter the time of day, or what I was wearing. It hasn't rained nearly enough (we are experiencing a very bad and log drought), but I am praising God for every drop. The earth is parched and so am I,
Our friends Brad and Amber. Their 5 year old is playing with Abigail in a rock pool. Abigail was not happy when we left. Abigail also greatly enjoyed swimming with the ducks!
This is the fourth week of our six week intensive Summer School. It's not easy studying when it's so stinkin' hot, but some how we are pushing through. This week is a little cooler in the low 30s, but will get to 40 by Saturday again.
I just handed in my essay on planning language learning sessions for Evenki when we get back to Siberia. I handed it in a week and half early, so I hope the lecturer does not mind that I went 1300 words over the limit.
Now I'm on to analysing the sounds of the Evenki language. I have two different sources, and frustratingly the two different sources disagree on a number of sounds. Still, this is what the assignment is all about, being able to interpret different linguistic materials. I am forming some conclusions on what the actual sounds of Evenki are, but it would sure be great to listen to some. Maybe I should track down some audio on the internet somewhere!
I am cooling down gradually. Now that my body is acclimatising to ridiculous heat again, it will send my head for a spin when we face our next Siberian Winter.
5 comments:
Glad your studies are going well - the six weeks will be over all too soon - and that you found somewhere nice to swim in the river, it's so much nicer to swim outside like that.
Did you know we will be here the whole year?
Paul would it be impossible to contact Yura by phone ? Wouldnt that be a "source"? I was curious
The simplest answer is that, just being a native speaker does not mean you are aware of all the sounds in a language. (For example Australian English has 20 vowels, not 5).
Secondly, it would take a LOT of recording data, to break down a language to find all of its sounds. The idea is to analyse the work of those who have already broken the language down. (This probably took them a few years before they wrote their books.)
Yes, and Z and I are coming out in July - we arrive July 5 and leave July 31 - so maybe we will have a chance to catch up - with Lisette and Kolya also.
It'll be cooler then! Probably not much cooler than our English summer
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