A Happy Linguist, Technical Difficulties and Working with the Youth

This week we start my virtual bilingual call center. An elementary school and a high school will be able to call a toll free number whenever they need to talk to Hispanic parents and I’ll be on the other end interpreting for both parties. It’s a trial run that I’m doing for free until the end of the month. We’ve already run into some technical difficulties, which is quite frustrating, but I hope to find solutions for them with the help of my good friends Dan and Cameron, who I eventually would like to hire on full time.

We had a scare this week. Becca has been having some very weird symptoms off and on for the past two week or so. She gets achy bones and a headache for about four or five hours, usually in the evening, and then the fever breaks and she’s fine the next day. My mother-in-law, a former nurse, said that it sounded like textbook pneumonia so she went to an urgent care facility where she was told that she didn’t have pneumonia but did seem to have some other type of bacterial infection. They gave her antibiotics which seemed to rid her problems but then last night she felt sick again. That was frustrating to say the least. Perhaps the antibiotics haven’t really had enough time to work and maybe these are allergy symptoms. We’ll see. The important thing is she doesn’t have pneumonia, which took Bernie Mac’s life a few weeks ago.

My language blog is getting more popular. I was interviewed about language learning on a more popular language blog and the recording of the interview, as well as a link to my website, is posted here. That got me a lot more hits. In June my site was averaging 53 views a day; in July it averaged 65 and this month it averaged 92. On Tuesday some friends of mine and I will get together via Skype and have a conference call meeting. We’ve decided to form a club of linguists/business men where we share ideas, set goals and try to keep ourselves motivated and competitive in the language area of business. I’m actually pretty excited to get that going.

Today Becca and I were called to work with the youth of the Church. The bishopric had some miscommunication about where Becca was going to serve and she was accidentally asked to serve in two spots: teaching the little kids and helping the teenage girls. It was decided that she would serve with the teenage girls but when the bishop asked for a sustaining vote in Sacrament Meeting he accidentally said Young Men’s Organization instead of Young Women’s. He caught himself after he said it but it was still pretty ironic. I will be teaching a class to the 15 and 16 year-olds boys about becoming men in the Kingdom of God. I’m actually really looking forward to it.

Thank you for you emails. We love being close to my side of the family (we’re barbequing at my dad’s tomorrow!) but we really miss our family that’s in Utah and Michigan. We’ll have to take a trip some time.

Good Produce, Two Cats and a House

We survived the move and are about 80% unpacked. Once the essentials are nicely put away it’s hard to find the drive to put away everything else. I remember my dad saying that if a box of things has gone unpacked for two years you might as throw it away. With the exception of things like picture albums I have to say that I really like his idea. Since we’ve been married Becca and I have moved many times: from our respective apartments to the tiny white house behind the Provo library; from the tiny white house to my mom’s house for a couple of summer months; from my mom’s house to a basement apartment; from the basement apartment to São Paulo Brazil for a couple of summer months; from São Paulo to our third story apartment in South Orem; from South Orem to a house in Central Modesto. That makes six times in three and a half years and not staying any one place for more than a year. We’re ready to break that old record and stay in this house for at least two.

We love California. The abundant agriculture products of the Central Valley are rich and flavorful. I remember preparing a refried bean and ground turkey mixture that I make and chopping a clove of garlic for it. The garlic’s odor was rich and strong and made for some delicious tacos. We also love the strawberries, peaches, nectarines and tomatoes here.

Each time we moved we felt that we had to start all over getting to know our neighbors, church members and new friends. Here we have been invited over to most of my relatives homes (we’re still waiting for my dad’s folks to give us a call J) and many of our friends have been over to visit us as well. I still have to get back to a few of them. It’s nice to feel wanted.

Our wonderful landlords have allowed us to get two cats. One is a kitten that my step-mom and step-sister Tristine went and got but had to give up since their current cat kept hissing at it. They asked Becca if she wanted it and Becca accepted. She is several months old and weighs not quite four pounds. She was the runt of the litter. They didn’t think she would survive when she was born so Tristine named her Mira, being short for miracle.

We went to a nonprofit rescue center to get our second cat. The night before we went I had a dream of a dark colored cat in our bathroom. When we went to look at the animals I saw a full grown, dark colored cat the reminded me very much of the cat in my dream. Curiously, I felt like we should get her instead of getting a kitten like we had planned on. Fortunately, Becca felt the same way. Compared to the tiny kitten she looks quite large so Bertha sounded like a good name for her. Don’t ask why.

Becca likes her bosses and coworkers and is impressing clients left and right. She does at least four massages a week for people who request her because of work she’s already done on them. This is after working there for barely a month. After not practicing her profession regularly for about a year and a half she’s feeling the stress of it physically. Hopefully she’ll get back into the grove soon.

I’m starting a new pilot program with a high school and an elementary school here in Modesto. We’ll be providing live interpretation for them during school hours via the internet. It’s actually very exciting and I have high hopes for this new service. I would explain more but it’s time to go to church. Thanks for reading.