Wednesday, the 20th, was our last day at the Language Center. We have spent a year and eight months studying at the language center with over 13 different tutors. At times it was tedious to go the two hour language sessions, but other times it was like getting together with friends. It is exciting to be done with our formal national language study, but it is also sad to loose the frequent interaction with friends. Please remember our tutors as our future interaction with them will be very infrequent.
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| Our language tutors (and two office workers and another student's daughter) |
Both John and I also had language and culture evaluations last week. This was our third evaluation and we hope to hear soon that we have reached our goals, not that language and culture learning will ever really stop. Our language evaluations are actually quite enjoyable, if you can forget you are being evaluated. A friend of ours has a consultancy business and thankfully is a big help to us in our learning. Our evaluations basically consist of one hour of conversing with a local, in which we go through various role plays as our consultant listens and records our conversations. Then we spend about another hour listening to the recordings (my least favorite part) and getting feedback from the local about how I spoke; everything from pronunciation, words choice, grammar, and manners. We usually spend at least another hour just with our friends talking about cultural aspects we've learned. Afterwards our friend spends who knows how much time writing up the evaluation and giving us a rating on a scale of just beginning to highly capable. The write up really helps us to see how our studying time has been effective, how it may need to change, and in what ways it can be improved.
On another note, I spent an hour yesterday with a local friend learning how to cook local food. First I learned one way of preparing tempeh, which is a favorite of mine. I didn't think it existed in the US until I just recently found it in a magazine my mother-in-law sent me. Who knew!?
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| See #6. Easily available and very cheap here. A brick as pictured above would be less than $1 and would be more than enough for our family.(Huckleberry's Taste For Life Aug 2013 issue) |
The second thing I learned to prepare was a hot ginger drink. I really like the flavor, but it is usually too strong, or spicy, to finished when ordered at a restaurant. Now at home I can make it just right for my taste buds! Give it a try, it is very easy:
Hot ginger drink:
2 cups of water
2" fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2-4 Tbs palm sugar (or brown sugar)
2-4 Tbs coconut milk or creamer (my friend prefers creamer)
-Combine ingredients in a small pot. Bring to a boil. Pour into a mug through a strainer. Enjoy! (Adjust the amounts to your liking. Here is it usually very strong.) This is most often enjoyed with friend bananas on a rainy day.
