Every child begins the world again….
~Henry David Thoreau



From far away into my heart
~Author unknown

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Cooking the phone and eating puzzles...

These are among the funniest mistranslations that we have had. Kenley does a fabulous job of helping us and Karwen, but occasionally she makes a mistake that causes some funny looks. These are more honest than the cheap offline iphone app that I tried to use in China. That one took a Chinese persons 'Ni Hao' and translated it as 'From the roof'. When I tried speaking to it for Karwen and translating into Chinese she just looked baffled. The dictionary was not too bad though. Google translate is a life-saver - but it also has some odd flaws. It took several tries to get across the concept of digging a hole (to plant a flower) and I never got a good feel for temperature (as in fever). All in all communication is not terribly hard right now. Karwen is extraordinarily expressive with her eyes and is really patient with her slow parents.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

One video

After the debacle of trying to use this to post while in country, I was unsure about posting when I got back. But, it is difficult to email pictures and impossible to email videos. So I will be posting some things here. First a video!


This one is sort of for Annie (although I think everyone might enjoy it). I wish I could post the one at the Thai restaurant where they came and sang strange American songs at us, with very clear accents. Afterwards it turned out they did not speak any English at all... very strange. That was the dinner where Kellin ordered the juice with red beans at the bottom (which was really pretty good). Well I might try a few more videos later.