Mexico

23 February 2007

Look out our windows (part 2)

This is part two of our series that started with the view out of our school windows. Today you can have a look out of the windows at our church. Excuse the use of the word “church” – I’m not talking about an official church building, but only the building where our local group of believers meets. I think it’s actually a business of some sort during the week.

Now the view during the service is actually not that fantastic. Far away to the left are the windows you see at the top. You can see about as much as I can. And the windows on the right are large, and run along the length of building, but they’re high up and we’re on a hill. So all I can see is the sky or these trees you see on the right. I have no idea how tall those trees are, because I can never see the bottom of them.

Now to be fair, if you move around the room you can get a better view. Go up some stairs and look out the window, and instead of sky you can see what’s in the photo below. That’s a little more hopeful, isn’t it? Click on it to see a close-up view in our Photo Gallery (you know how to do that, right? Just click the “size” menu on the top right and choose the biggest size).

Finally, I’m going to cheat – this isn’t a window, but if you go outside the door and look out in the same direction, you get the view below. Beautiful! Click on it to get a better view. Too bad I can only see those two trees most of the time…

I’m linking to Amanda’s continuing series that inspired these posts one more time, since she said we should all share. 🙂

18 February 2007

4th Anniversary of our church

Jim Mexico, Video Blogs 2

This Sunday our congregation at Iglesia Bíblica El Renuevo, celebrated 4 years together…

18 February 2007

Blogging friends

Jim Computers and internet, Mexico, Other missionary blogs 3

It’s been a while since I highlighted other bloggers. There’s probably a lot of people out there that I know who blog, but they don’t always tell me. So if you know us in the offline world, and you have a blog, leave a comment!

First of all, we have friends that we got to know at vti who blog. Stephanie Gartner (nee: Nesdoly), has been blogging for a while. Her newer blog has had a lot of shockingly cute pictures of her son, and other family stuff. For sure it’s Guaranteed Good Times.

Brand new to the blogging world is Alan. Shari was one of his team advisors in 2001/2002. It’s funny talking about the history of these people again, because I don’t necessarily associate them with a mission team any more. Anyway, we like Alan and he has a blog called Thought Holder.

There are other vti related bloggers, but some have not been blogging so much – I already mentioned Ken, for example, in an earlier post. There’s also Amy Nixon, who recently moved her blog here. Hopefully that link will work. Amy’s cool.

For family members (and a vti contact too – Amy Winger was on my team to Trinidad and Tobago), we’ve mentioned Shari’s sister Amy over at Under the African Rain before – check it out.

Also new to the blogging world is my friend Daryl. Daryl and I go waaaaaaay back to … well, sometime in the 80s. His question is, What’s a Blog? Personally, I think his post Three Certainties in Life should be required reading for all boys entering adolescence. 😉

If I start writing about friends who are missionaries, the list gets very long. Among those we know offline are Matthew and Rhonda Slaubaugh, who have also started a Blogger blog here: Slaubaughs in Madagascar. I’m very excited about that. I like blogs that have news feeds. Don’t miss the Fry family in Mexico at In the Shadow of Volcanos, and the Smith family (soon to return to Mexico) at The Smith Connection. You already know about our friends the Harers in Mexico at .:. The Harer’s live journal. We just recently met Jon in Mexico.

There are many more we keep in touch with, who we’ve never actually met in person. But this is getting long, and I’ve probably already forgotten some people. If I forgot you, leave a comment!

10 February 2007

Not-so-dry season

Jim Mexico, Video Blogs 5

It doesn't usually rain during dry season. But much to everyone's surprise, it's rained actually a few times since we've been in Cuernavaca.

But today beat all – not only a downpour, but hail. When we went outside, we could see our breath – it was that cold. I just had to take some video of our yard…

10 February 2007

Look out our windows (part 1)

Jim Mexico 4

When Amanda over at following an unknown path put up the fourth post in her series “thru my windows”, I finally realized what a great idea it was. So in shameless imitation, I’m going to start a similar series here, to show you what we see through our windows. Her title is better, but I didn’t want to steal everything. 🙂

So I’m starting with the view from my language school classrooms. Actually, there are many buildings and our classrooms change from week to week, so this is the view from this past week. I’m keeping the pictures fairly small (and low quality) so they don’t take forever to load – just click on them to see a larger and better version in our Photo Gallery.

Classroom 1-207

We’re on the second floor, looking out over parts of the school. On the bottom you can see just a corner of an area (on the right) where there are tables and benches. The students (Mexican mostly, since this is a Mexican University) meet with their books and iPods and laptops.

Classroom 7-303

This is on the third floor. You can see the railing of the walkway out the top window, and the school logo to the right. All the buildings are numbered – you can see the “5” across the way.

The bottom window looks out toward the mountains. I’m not sure if that building out the window is on the school campus or not.

My conversation class is outside, so there were no windows to look out of. 🙂

8 February 2007

Learning Spanish?

Jim Mexico, Practical matters 4

Are you learning Spanish too? Cool. I just wanted to stop by and share some of the resources that I’ve been using so far. Maybe you’ll find one of them helpful…

First of all, here’s something I really think every Spanish student should own. I’ve used a few different Spanish/English translators over the past few years, but nothing else even comes close to comparing with the Merriam-Webster Spanish-English Dictionary. Here are some of the reasons I’ve found it so useful:

It’s got lots of words.

Millions of translations, which means a lot of words other translators don’t have.

If you misspell or enter a word phonetically, it will find the correct word.

It has definitions for words that are used differently in certain countries, such as Spain, Venezuela and Mexico.

It includes a grammar guide.

You can add words youÂ´re learning to a word list, then study the word list or use it in several games (there are 7 different games), which can teach you gender, definitions and spelling.

This is my favourite. The DBE-1470 includes the conjugations of each verb. Not just the present tense, but also imperfect, preterite, future, conditional, present subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, present perfect, pluperfect, preterite anterior, future perfect, conditional perfect, present perfect subjunctive, perfect subjunctive, present progressive, imperative, and more (oh yes, there are more!)

It has a couple of thousand phrases (not including basic verb conjugation), which show up in the definitions or you can browse by category.

There are other features like a calculator, converter, world time clock, phone list, and currency converter.

I also bought the download kit, which means I can download books from the internet and include them in there too. Now I have something to read while I’m waiting for…whatever.

I found a case to put on my belt that fits perfectly (here it is – a Roots case for PDA/Blackberry), so it’s now a part of my body. Well, I take it off when I shower.

Now most of the time I use the electronic translator instead of the paper dictionary, because it’s faster and usually has all the information I need. But if I want to check another source I use the excellent Collins Spanish Dictionary Plus Grammar. Actually, I think there’s a new edition out now, but I haven’t seen it.

There are lots of other resources out there, but those are the ones I’ve used the most so far. One other one that I’ve used a little, and I’m sure I’ll use more of as time goes by, is the Spanish Verb Manual, by Alfredo González Hermoso. It’s a small book containing 5000 verbs (yes, that’s right), with conjugations, regional and idiomatic use, and an overview of Spanish grammar. Thanks to Greg and Shelli for recommending this one (see their site for other recommendations).

What about resources on the net? I’ve had trouble finding a good dictionary, but I eventually found this Spanish/English dictionary which does the job. If you want to listen to the language, try a Spanish learning podcast. I’ve been listening to Finally Learn Spanish, the rss feed is www.edufone.com/rss.xml. Also, here’s a free sophisticated flash card program you can download. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks interesting. You can enter your own information, or they have a whole page of lessons you can choose from (languages, geography, math, etc). Finally, don’t forget the Spanish words of the day (bookmark the page and check it everyday to expand your vocabulary).

Are you learning Spanish? What resources have you found helpful?

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