Jill has gone to Portland with her family,
where David got a job working on the new Intel building
under construction there.
I hope she's doing all right,
living in an apartment with "free range" kids.
But I do believe they're enjoying life
on the "left coast" after red, red, red Nevada.
You can read about Brian in the last Blog post,
We all went out to Amy's wedding in June, and enjoyed our visit very much. She is building up her clientele as an instructor at
the horse stables where she works in Northern Michigan.
She's looking to do some training in Spain
after the new year (I knew she'd go back to Spanish)
She notes that a large part of horse and cowboy terms came from Spanish,
laughing that people say mccarty when the original term was "mecate"
Mark and Mai are still in China.
Mark sees life through the lens of linguistics
and writes long letters about how
"every word in a language is not just a piece of vocabulary,
words are information packets with an entire cultural force behind them"
He's finishing his master's degree in linguistics at Szechuan University
(yes he studies in Chinese)
He says the Chinese call out "pay bill" or "receive money"
when they ask for the check in a restaurant.
"because of the syntax..you can't even add "Please"
That's a little bit offensive to my Canadian sense of politeness..."
Valerie studied abroad in Costa Rica this year and has another study abroad in Iceland
She'll graduate in May with a degree in
Environmental Science Policy and Management.
She has an internship in Puerto Rico in February to study whales (how cool is that?)
Spanish has been very useful to her too--
Katie is finishing up her 2nd year in psychology
at Virginia Common Wealth University
in Richmond. We liked Virginia so much she chose to stay.
She was very successful at lifeguarding this past year
Because she and tolerated the highs, lows, and adreneline rush of the job, we wonder if some kind of emergency service is in her future.
(Michael is on the far right) Grade 7 is kind of an in-between-year, and Michael is taking guitar lessons,
getting good grades, taking online classes in astronomy and marine biology.
(But extremely resistant to scouts)
And here are the parents of a pretty busy family!
