Photos

So, we don't have a whole lot to say, in all honestly. Since our action-packed Christmas/New Year's time, things have settled back into a routine. Language and culture study is once again the order of the day. And since I know none of you wants to read my analysis of T kinship terms or hear a practice exercise with domestic animals, we'll go to pictures instead.

Above, you can see the ice slide that is downtown. Steve loves to go down it. In fact, winter is a much better time for slide-lovers in T-land. In the summer, you're apt to get a splinter from going down a wooden slide, but in the winter someone throws a bucket of water down and then it's all ice and works perfectly. This one is not set up that way - every winter they build a few slides entirely out of ice, but the principle is the same. We don't spend a lot of time outdoors due to the cold, but the boys do enjoy a change of scenery now and again.

Does anyone know what this is? It's an abacus - sort of an ancient calculator, and the shops here still use them. Whenever we buy our groceries, it's followed by the lady furiously spinning these beads back and forth, and we just trust her figure in the end. One day I'd like to learn how to read them so I could at least have confidence she's not stiffing me! ;-)

Below is a funny picture Bobbie took the other day. It seems Steven might be following his father down the road to bookworm-dom. He certainly picked out one of the biggest books on the shelves to entertain him on the potty!

This week we had over several guests, one of whom was a friend that our coworkers introduced us to. They enjoyed their time, seemingly, and we got along with them really well. They have children around the same age as ours, and their son Norbu loved playing with some of Matthew's toys, including his sunglasses.

And that's about it. We just don't have any other interesting pictures to put up, so I decided to look through my childhood pictures folder for any that might be interesting. This one is when we lived in Indonesia. My little brother Sam looks so much like Matthew, right down to his zealous attitude when guarding food!

And this is me. I think a few months old - and super cute! What happened?

This is one of the indigenous people my parents worked with in Bolivia. He's showing off the results of his hunt - a jochi (a large rodent, and owner of perhaps the tastiest flesh in the world) and a howler monkey.

And I was going to close it with that one, when I spotted just one more picture that made me laugh from our old days in the US. I didn't dare to post it, but Bobbie said I couldn't leave it out, so here it is. The people in the photo are welcome to take it up with her if they wish.