All Posts

Some of you know that before I left for My Countryf I had learned “clicks,” which are used like letters in some languages. In Jula clicks aren’t letters. They are used as sound effects, like in English. Earlier this week I learned some of them: – The “kissing” sound is used to call your dog. […]

Can you figure out what this is a picture of? In a few days I’ll post to explain what it is and tell you about when I took it. If you check my blog before that you get to try to figure it out. . .

A large part of my life here is learning the Jula language. Since I’m now getting into some fun (and funny) parts of the language, I thought that you may want to join me on my adventure. So I’ll post some interesting things I’ve learned in Jula today and some in the future as well. […]

What happens when a child loses her teeth? Everyone knows – she puts it under her pillow and the next morning the tooth will have been replaced with money from the tooth fairy. But living in another country, it’s all those “everyone knows” things that I don’t know and have to learn. Today I learned […]

What would you think if you saw this guy walking around your town? This weekend as we were getting a tour of the old part of town, we saw several people dressed up in “masks” like this. They almost reminded me of Sesame Street characters. 🙂 It’s a traditional thing that people dress up in […]

I got to spend this weekend with a friend! It was great to see a familiar face from my Houghton College days and get to speak a lot of English (even though it was mixed with French and Jula so it wouldn’t be widely understood in the US). She also works in My Country right […]

Here are some traditional music instruments of My Country. The one in the middle that looks like a glockenspiel (yes, I remember that from elementary school music classes, and I can’t think of other names for it right now) is called a balafone. The traditional music sounds rather repetitive to me, so I prefer the […]

What do you think of this river? Most of you probably think that it should be called a brook or a creek or something else smaller than “river.” But here it is definitely a river. And do you know what? The entire region is named after this river! I guess it’s a big deal that […]

Have you ever been to a blacksmith shop? I’ve only seen the ones in Old World Wisconsin, a place where you can see what life was like a long time ago in Wisconsin. But this is what a real blacksmith shop looks like today in My Country. The little boy is working the bellows. Those […]

A few of you have already said that you wanted to see the back of my “new do,” so here you go. It’s not the best picture, but you asked for it. . . . 🙂