Okie Doke is being discharged from critical care tomorrow! We can't wait :o!
She will go straight to Dr. Holland's office for an examination and the doc will determine whether or not she needs the endoscopy. We are hoping that she doesn't so she can come straight home.
He healing has been quite miraculous, she was in pretty bad shape. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Coming Home Soon!
Talked to the vet this morning. He said Okie Doke is doing great! She is eating all on her own and very active. He said her blood work is so perfect that they are not even going to check it again! She is still not back to 100% as the doc says though. I asked him when she might come home, and he said if she didn't have the endoscopy scheduled for tomorrow, he would probably release her tonight! We have to talk to Dr. Holland tomorrow and see if she still needs the procedure, and maybe she can come home tomorrow! We can't wait! We have been missing her like crazy!
Saturday, October 13, 2007
She's Eating!
Guess what? Okie Doke IS EATING ON HER OWN!!! We are so excited!!! They gave her a special food that is already partially digested, but as of our last visit she had eaten real food and kept it down for quite a few hours! It is step 1 for coming home. They said the might even take her G-tube out tomorrow if everything is still going well. YAY!
A Good Day!
Okie Doke is doing much the same. Her personality is becoming more and more normal by the day! Today she was her usual sweet, but bossy, self demanding tummy petting every second of our visit (which she received of course)! She also stood up on her own outside! So, she is stable and waiting. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for her and for us, keep it up!
Here are some photos from today's visit. You can probably see how much better she is looking!
Petting please!
Relaxing outside.
Sitting up on my own!
Here are some photos from today's visit. You can probably see how much better she is looking!
Petting please!
Relaxing outside.
Sitting up on my own!
Friday, October 12, 2007
Some Encouraging News
She pooped! I have never been so excited about a bowel movement! What is mundane and gross for the rest of us is a good sign for Okie Doke. They told us tonight at the clinic that she stood up on her own outside and went numbers 1 & 2! Unfortunately though, she did vomit once today, even though they have been suctioning her stomach out regularly. They told me she is "stable" though she cannot eat yet. So, now it is just a waiting game. We are hoping she will get stronger and stronger over the weekend in preparation for her endoscopy!
More pictures!
Okie Doke is doing well, acting more dog-like by the day. When we arrived today they were giving her plasma. Made me wonder where the doggy plasma stations are located, and how ethical sharing dog plasma could possibly be (honestly, I have no clue where they get it). The doc this afternoon said there just must be some kind of hole in her system somewhere. Hopefully, with the endoscopy, we can find it! We took some more pictures with the camera on David's phone today. They let us take her outside again! She had a great time sitting in the sun. In all of these pictures her eyes are closed, but she was very alert while we were there (eyes open and looking around a lot), but was closing her eyes to bask and rest in the sun. She was so cute and pitiful, she kept raising up her little IVed leg for us to rub her tummy. They also said she was growling today, which I would say is a good sign--she's a feisty one!
Keep praying!
Keep praying!
The Endoscopy
Okie Doke needs the endoscopy. Dr. Holland said she wants to wait until Monday though, when OKD will hopefully be more stable. So, for now we are shooting for Monday morning!
Pray for Okie Doke's health and for us too, we are stressed out in more ways than one!
Thanks Everyone :)!
Pray for Okie Doke's health and for us too, we are stressed out in more ways than one!
Thanks Everyone :)!
OKD update for 10/12/07
I called about Okie D this morning. The tech said she tried to suction her out during the night, but her stomach was empty and she's had no vomiting (yay)! She still can't thermo regulate, so pray for that. Don't know yet whether or not they are going to do the endoscopy.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
update
Well, I took a cute photo of Okie Doke from our visit tonight to post on the blog, but it didn't save. She was much the same, though very sleepy as it was past her bedtime. As we were leaving they were giving her some pain meds so she could sleep. She is still bleeding in her stomach and hopefully they will go in with the scope tomorrow. Please pray for her as they will have to put her under for it (though the doctor said the risk would be no more than usual).
She let out a big sigh when we were there (though it sounded more like a cell phone buzz because of the tube in her nose), like she does sometimes. It usually signals a mixture of, "I'm glad your here" and "can't we get this over with." It is the kind of sigh she makes on long car trips, etc. The vet tech said she was really cute because when she was attending to Okie Doke she started to roll on her back a bit for stomach petting. If you know OKD, it's a good sign! That's our girl! Keep her in your prayers please :)!
She let out a big sigh when we were there (though it sounded more like a cell phone buzz because of the tube in her nose), like she does sometimes. It usually signals a mixture of, "I'm glad your here" and "can't we get this over with." It is the kind of sigh she makes on long car trips, etc. The vet tech said she was really cute because when she was attending to Okie Doke she started to roll on her back a bit for stomach petting. If you know OKD, it's a good sign! That's our girl! Keep her in your prayers please :)!
It all started when...
About two days ago OKD started vomiting. We took her in to our regular vet across the street. I guess they see vomiting all the time, so they gave her some subq fluids so she wouldn't dehydrate and some oral medication (I have never understood oral medication for vomiting by the way). Overnight she couldn't keep the meds down, and she wasn't eating or drinking. We took her back in to the clinic the next day. They ran some blood work on her and found that she was terribly dehydrated. They took their sweet time shooting her up with more subq fluids and dextrose (to get her sugar levels up), then sent us to the critical care/emergency clinic in OKC. That is where she has been since yesterday afternoon. When she first arrived, she was a pitiful sight, she couldn't even lift her head to vomit or stand on her own. She was also freezing (she had a temp of 96 and the norm for dogs is around 100), and couldn't thermo regulate on her own. This made me feel like a horrible "dog mom," like I hadn't acted quickly enough, even though we took her in the first day we saw trouble. I guess she went downhill so fast because of her incredibly small size. She was so depleted that she required a 24 IV just to get her well enough for testing. They gave her the IV, 3 medications to stop the vomiting, antibiotics, and pain meds. Of course, all of these had to be alternated because her system is too small to handle them all at once. We have been visiting twice a day (which is rather draining since the clinic is about 40 minutes away), and it seems to lift Okie Doke's spirits each time. This afternoon she was looking much better, and they allowed us to take her outside, which I think gave her a much-needed break. When we got there, we found they had put a little tube in her nose leading to her stomach. They had suctioned her stomach a couple of times, and found what the vet described to be mass amounts of horrible stuff, much of it blood, in her tummy. They have been treating her with something that is rather like a strong version of Pepcid AC to control the bleeding in her stomach, and for the moment it seems to be working. The vet also told me that all of her electrolytes, sugars, etc. were all at good levels now. All of her organs seem to be functioning correctly at this point as well. She is still having trouble thermo regulating, even with her heated cage, IV fluids, and rice sock. And now that the tube is in and her stomach is cleared, she is not longer vomiting as far as I know. So, that's the story to date. Sorry if it made you queasy. David and I are going to go up and see her here in a little bit. Keep praying for her, she is such a sweetie and we love her so much!
Okie Doke
Well, we were all set for another big traveling adventure (this time to the UK), but we are still here in Oklahoma dealing with an adventure of another kind. The littlest member of our family (that would be Okie Doke) became violently ill day before yesterday. She is currently at the critical care hospital in Oklahoma City, and we have been visiting twice a day. She is doing quite a bit better today, and I will post updates and details later. For the moment, here are a few photos from David's camera phone from our visit!
Please keep her in your prayers!
Please keep her in your prayers!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Glad to be home
Things for which I am grateful for and far less picky about as of late:
Beds and sofas
My kitchen
Running water
My dog
My car
AC
Exterminators
Lentil Curry
Harry Potter books
Pavement
Drainage systems
Grass
Cell phones
to name a few.
Really, there's not much that could make me less than content with my environment at the moment. As a matter of fact, the first night we were home, the AC was out (and we are not exactly having cool weather at the moment). I was so glad to be in my bed, sleeping inside, that I didn't realize it was on the fritz until well into the next day! Really, I haven't gotten much to complain about, which is usual and refreshing for one like me who is generally such a whiner.
I have decided the difference between a vacation and an adventure is that a vacation is generally just a good time, and an adventure is a good time, but is also very difficult.
David has had two birthday parties since arriving to the States. One in Houston at P.F.Chang’s, and a small gathering here at the apartment. During his Norman party we discovered David’s freakish limbo abilities. He beat out Aubrey (though with far less style), who is a dancer at OU. And here is the strangest picture I've ever seen:
Though about 3/4 of our pictures from our trip are lost on missing memory cards or trapped in the broken computer, here are a few I have salvaged from the journey:
View of Taxco, advertised as the most romantic city in Mexico!
The lovely church in the Taxco town square.
Church in San Francisco. Bodies upon bodies are buried here because of the cholera epidemic around 1847. There was another cholera epidemic about 20 years ago in many of the villages, Oapan included. When it had passed, a doctor was sent by the government to examine. He concluded there had been a "stomach flu." Cholera is easily treatable.
Oapan lies on the banks of the Balsas River (though not at this particular point).
David with a "wei" cactus (sorry it is sideways-computer troubles).
Storm blowing into Oapan.
Of course, when we it's time to leave, an enormous bus gets stuck in front of us.
This sign in the Oapan clinic should be explanation enough.
Walking to class each day was always as adventure, one that did not usually stray too far from what you might catch on National Geographic. I am told by my classmates that this is the most mild pig picture mating picture of the bunch since Clips apparently captured a pile of four.
Beds and sofas
My kitchen
Running water
My dog
My car
AC
Exterminators
Lentil Curry
Harry Potter books
Pavement
Drainage systems
Grass
Cell phones
to name a few.
Really, there's not much that could make me less than content with my environment at the moment. As a matter of fact, the first night we were home, the AC was out (and we are not exactly having cool weather at the moment). I was so glad to be in my bed, sleeping inside, that I didn't realize it was on the fritz until well into the next day! Really, I haven't gotten much to complain about, which is usual and refreshing for one like me who is generally such a whiner.
I have decided the difference between a vacation and an adventure is that a vacation is generally just a good time, and an adventure is a good time, but is also very difficult.
David has had two birthday parties since arriving to the States. One in Houston at P.F.Chang’s, and a small gathering here at the apartment. During his Norman party we discovered David’s freakish limbo abilities. He beat out Aubrey (though with far less style), who is a dancer at OU. And here is the strangest picture I've ever seen:
Though about 3/4 of our pictures from our trip are lost on missing memory cards or trapped in the broken computer, here are a few I have salvaged from the journey:
View of Taxco, advertised as the most romantic city in Mexico!
The lovely church in the Taxco town square.
Church in San Francisco. Bodies upon bodies are buried here because of the cholera epidemic around 1847. There was another cholera epidemic about 20 years ago in many of the villages, Oapan included. When it had passed, a doctor was sent by the government to examine. He concluded there had been a "stomach flu." Cholera is easily treatable.
Oapan lies on the banks of the Balsas River (though not at this particular point).
David with a "wei" cactus (sorry it is sideways-computer troubles).
Storm blowing into Oapan.
Of course, when we it's time to leave, an enormous bus gets stuck in front of us.
This sign in the Oapan clinic should be explanation enough.
Walking to class each day was always as adventure, one that did not usually stray too far from what you might catch on National Geographic. I am told by my classmates that this is the most mild pig picture mating picture of the bunch since Clips apparently captured a pile of four.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
A post from this morning
U.S.A., land and of the free and home of high speed wireless internet. We are so excited to return!
We said our tearful goodbyes to our host family early yesterday morning, though not before they loaded us up with semi-perishable Nahuatl food, that which they would normally take when tekipanowah (they work the fields). They gave us some spicy corn digestive biscuits because when you eat them supposedly xtonxixas (you can’t poop), and they were very worried because they were not sure if planes had bathrooms. They half jokingly asked us if they threw the waste off the plane.
We are here in Mexico City for one last day. We planned to go to Xochimilco, but have decided to simply “hang out” and perhaps go to the artisan market and the Templo Mayor, which is near by. Frankly, I am just thrilled to have a shower and sleep inside on a bed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the lifestyle differences, and I don’t think the Nahuatl way is in any way less civilized, but I have preferences based on what I am accustomed to.
I think the most difficult part of our trip (and I’m sure Mark and Laura know what I am talking about) was going from being someone who is educated and well respected at home, to someone who can communicate and partake in daily Nahuatl life at a level somewhere near that six year old. It is definitely a humbling experience.
We will post some pictures when we get home, though after I finish the new Harry Potter book, of course :o!
Pray for a safe trip home!
We said our tearful goodbyes to our host family early yesterday morning, though not before they loaded us up with semi-perishable Nahuatl food, that which they would normally take when tekipanowah (they work the fields). They gave us some spicy corn digestive biscuits because when you eat them supposedly xtonxixas (you can’t poop), and they were very worried because they were not sure if planes had bathrooms. They half jokingly asked us if they threw the waste off the plane.
We are here in Mexico City for one last day. We planned to go to Xochimilco, but have decided to simply “hang out” and perhaps go to the artisan market and the Templo Mayor, which is near by. Frankly, I am just thrilled to have a shower and sleep inside on a bed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the lifestyle differences, and I don’t think the Nahuatl way is in any way less civilized, but I have preferences based on what I am accustomed to.
I think the most difficult part of our trip (and I’m sure Mark and Laura know what I am talking about) was going from being someone who is educated and well respected at home, to someone who can communicate and partake in daily Nahuatl life at a level somewhere near that six year old. It is definitely a humbling experience.
We will post some pictures when we get home, though after I finish the new Harry Potter book, of course :o!
Pray for a safe trip home!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Cultural Differences
I don’t think I fully understood the cultural differences between us and our host family until this weekend. We have taken Jaunita to Taxco with us. We are having a great time, but I think she is experiencing cultural overload. She didn’t want to buy a swimsuit because she has never seen or been in a pool before. At home, they swim in the river in their clothes. She asked David if there are this many cars everywhere. She is mesmerized by the tiny T.V. in our room with 20 color channels. She has never used a shower or a bathtub, though I tried to teach her this morning it my broken Nahuatl/Spansih. It is just so crazy to me that seemingly every experience I grew up with as “normal” is so foreign to her. For instance, she didn’t grow up getting raisin fingers in the bath tub! Of course, she had her own experiences that I know nothing about. No wonder they laugh at us so much in the village, if we are as out of place there as she is here! This is what I mean when I talk about the difference in moving to another big city in a different culture, and moving to a village. The former is unarguably a huge shock, but living to a village, albeit only for 6 weeks—I don’t even know what to call it!
I will try to post a picture of Taxco later today if I can. It is a really beautiful city.
Home in about a week :)!
I will try to post a picture of Taxco later today if I can. It is a really beautiful city.
Home in about a week :)!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A little update
Things in Oapan are grand! We are both feeling better, and David’s birthday is tomorrow! Our host family is so excited about the American cake!
I have discovered that I can no longer read, write or speak Nahuatl, Spanish or English. Nahuatl spelling in generally phonetic and I just tried to write the above “cake” as “kak.”
I have decided that most of the difficulties in learning Nahuatl draw on one language feature, that of agglutination. I think the main difference is that they don’t use prepositions. You have prepositional phrases in English, the romance languages, etc, etc. In Nahuatl, instead of saying, “I am going to the store” you would have to inflect the verb. In other word, you would have to add prefixes of suffixes (or both) to indicate you are going away from where you are to somewhere else and when (like “before leaving”). In addition you also have to mark the verb for person (and if it is transitive or ditransitive for objects, primary and secondary). The line up of these prefixes and suffixes next to one another often cause sound change, so that complicates things as well. Basically, you end up with some fairly massive words that carry a lot of meaning.
There are some things that I do here that make me chuckle to myself. One of these things is feeding eggs to chickens. If I don’t finish my meal, the leftovers go to the pigs or to the chickens. Occasionally, I have leftover eggs, and I toss them to the chickens. They all go crazy fighting over it. It makes me feel a little guilty, then it makes me laugh, and then I think, “How strange.”
David and I are planning to go to Xalita this weekend to look at some amatl (amate), since no one in Oapan paints them anymore. Then we will go to Taxco, known as one of the most romantic cities in Mexico. They are also supposed to have a lot nice silver there. We will head back to the village for one final week. Our final exam is on Thursday and we will have a going away party on Friday. We are so excited to see Okie Doke and sleep in our own bed, but we are going to miss our new friends! I can’t believe we have made it this far!
On an unrelated note, if you liked the book Kite Runner, I recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns. I read it last weekend, and I thought it was fantastic!
Pray for rain and clouds. It has rained the past two nights and been overcast during the day and it is glorious (because the temperature drops about fifteen degrees)! And pray that David and I do well on our final exam and phonetics project that we are working on! I will try to post some pictures this weekend.
I have discovered that I can no longer read, write or speak Nahuatl, Spanish or English. Nahuatl spelling in generally phonetic and I just tried to write the above “cake” as “kak.”
I have decided that most of the difficulties in learning Nahuatl draw on one language feature, that of agglutination. I think the main difference is that they don’t use prepositions. You have prepositional phrases in English, the romance languages, etc, etc. In Nahuatl, instead of saying, “I am going to the store” you would have to inflect the verb. In other word, you would have to add prefixes of suffixes (or both) to indicate you are going away from where you are to somewhere else and when (like “before leaving”). In addition you also have to mark the verb for person (and if it is transitive or ditransitive for objects, primary and secondary). The line up of these prefixes and suffixes next to one another often cause sound change, so that complicates things as well. Basically, you end up with some fairly massive words that carry a lot of meaning.
There are some things that I do here that make me chuckle to myself. One of these things is feeding eggs to chickens. If I don’t finish my meal, the leftovers go to the pigs or to the chickens. Occasionally, I have leftover eggs, and I toss them to the chickens. They all go crazy fighting over it. It makes me feel a little guilty, then it makes me laugh, and then I think, “How strange.”
David and I are planning to go to Xalita this weekend to look at some amatl (amate), since no one in Oapan paints them anymore. Then we will go to Taxco, known as one of the most romantic cities in Mexico. They are also supposed to have a lot nice silver there. We will head back to the village for one final week. Our final exam is on Thursday and we will have a going away party on Friday. We are so excited to see Okie Doke and sleep in our own bed, but we are going to miss our new friends! I can’t believe we have made it this far!
On an unrelated note, if you liked the book Kite Runner, I recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns. I read it last weekend, and I thought it was fantastic!
Pray for rain and clouds. It has rained the past two nights and been overcast during the day and it is glorious (because the temperature drops about fifteen degrees)! And pray that David and I do well on our final exam and phonetics project that we are working on! I will try to post some pictures this weekend.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Quick update!
We are heading back to Oapan after a nice long weekend in Pie de la Cuesta. It is about half and hour from Acapulco.
We are going to try to go to Taxco this coming weekend. This next week should be killer. But, David is having a birthday, and I am cooking spaghetti and birthday cake (I know, strange, but it was the easiest thing to bring back to the village).
The computer is about to die. Hope everyone is having a great summer. We can't wait to get home!
We are going to try to go to Taxco this coming weekend. This next week should be killer. But, David is having a birthday, and I am cooking spaghetti and birthday cake (I know, strange, but it was the easiest thing to bring back to the village).
The computer is about to die. Hope everyone is having a great summer. We can't wait to get home!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Dengue Fever
It’s official, I have dengue fever!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue
I guess I could say that I had it. Technically, you have the virus your whole life, but my symptoms have subsided and I am doing fine now. I think David may have had it as well. You would think that if I were going to contract a tropical mosquito borne virus that I would at least be in the tropics! The doctor came by the house and gave our family some solution to treat the water with, so hopefully that will take care of it!
Keep us in your prayers. We are about halfway through the course. We leave for Acapulco tomorrow and can be reached on David’s cell :)!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue
I guess I could say that I had it. Technically, you have the virus your whole life, but my symptoms have subsided and I am doing fine now. I think David may have had it as well. You would think that if I were going to contract a tropical mosquito borne virus that I would at least be in the tropics! The doctor came by the house and gave our family some solution to treat the water with, so hopefully that will take care of it!
Keep us in your prayers. We are about halfway through the course. We leave for Acapulco tomorrow and can be reached on David’s cell :)!
Monday, July 9, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Catching up (a very long post)
I will warn you, this blog post is long, and may contain information that could bore some of you to death. I included some language information for those who are interested (like maybe Sarah Shook :).
First, Here’s a response to Dana’s question about the final sound in “Nahuatl.”: You’re right! The final sound in “Nahuatl” does sound like a “t,” and I will tell you why. Here is the linguistics answer: it is a voiceless lateral affricate. The terminology is really just mumbo jumbo. The break down is this. Voiceless simply means (as you might guess) that the vocal chords are not vibrating when you make the sound. We have many sounds in English like this, such as “p,t,k”, etc. Their voiced counterparts would be “b,d,g”. The “lateralness” of the sound means that the air is flowing around the sides of the tongue. We have a sound in English that is lateral, can you guess what it is? It’s “l” (are you starting to see where is this going? Nahuatl). And affricate just means that the sound is kind of a combination of two sounds, but is actually one phoneme (which another story entirely, but for now, just think of it as one sound that is kind of like two). We have affricates in English. An example of one of them is “ch” as in “church.” Our “ch” noise is really like a “t” and an “sh” put together, but we perceive it as one sound. If you make the “ch” noise really slowly, maybe you can see what I am talking about. Whoever came up with the orthography though that “tl” was the best way to represent the sound in “Nahuatl”, even though it is only one sound, not two (just like “ch”—two symbols, one sound). So, here is my best advice for trying to make the sound if you are interested. First try to get the lateral part down. So, make an “l” noise, then stop and keep your tongue there behind your teeth, then just blow and feel how the air moves around the sides of your tongue (for some people it may only move around one side). Then just make some little “t’ noises. “t” is what is called a stop in linguistics which basically means that the sound is quick, or you cut the airflow off quickly with your articulators. So, if you can (and it takes some practice), use the same quick puff of air like you do for a “t” but let the air go around the sides of your tongue keeping the tip of your tongue there behind your teeth like you would for an “l” or “t” and remember not to use your voice (just like you don’t use your voice with a regular “t”). I probably made it sound harder than it is. Once you think you have it, then don’t think about the specifics, just practice it. It is a really neat noise, and since we don’t have anything comparable in English, it is often perceived as “t” (as you perceived it, and as I would have had I not read up on it ahead of time-haha). So, there’s the long answer!
Some stories/observations from the trip thus far:
1. I wouldn’t do David’s dishes and our family told me they were going to hit me, jokingly of course. Then, they asked me if David would not hit me, to which he replied (though we aren’t supposed to be using Spanish) “No vale la pena” (It’s not worth it). He is probably right!
2.We got home from Iguala last weekend pretty late, and our family was already asleep. We headed up to our room only to find a ko:lo:tl (scorpion), and of course we freaked out! We didn’t know how to kill it so I ran downstairs yelling, “Alacran, alacran!” and woke everyone up. They all start laughing and Ofelia (who is 17 by the way) comes up to our room and swats it with a shoe, and I think , “Oh, that is it?” And David feels silly for making a little girl come kill our scorpion. We have only had two in our room so far, which is a blessing. One of our friends found one next to her bed devouring a roach, which was pleasant. I always thought they had really tough outer bodies and lived on the ground. They are actually more like spiders and climb along our cement walls and squish quite easily. I am convinced one is going to fall off of the ceiling and land on me while I am sleeping on my stick bed in the night.
3. I have made some really good language errors. I was trying to say “my dog” in Nahuat. When they refer to a dog, they just call it a “chichi,” but when they possess one (like “my dog”) they call it “tskwintli.” So, “my dog” is “notskwin.” Before I knew this I was saying my dog as, “nochichi” (which they actually say in other villages), which does not mean “my dog” in Oapan Nahuatl, but rather “my boob.” I have also accidentally said, “I am a pig.”
4. When I got dengue (supposedly), and was running around 103 fever, they were convinced I was unhappy. Apparently, only unhappy people who want to go home get sick. They also have no concept that in illness might last more than one day. Everything they think about sickness is based in what we might consider old wives tales. Our friend Brad was having trouble with his allergies and his family told him, “Oh, a cold wind must have blown through your room last night.”
5. One night we had the Oapan version of tostadas. The way they do this is that first they make corn tortillas as usual (grind the corn, press the dough and put it on the stove). But, the way they get them crunchy for the tostadas is by putting them on the roof for a couple of days. I thought that was interesting.
6. When we arrived, we were actually excited about the prospect of not bathing for weeks at a time (which would have been ludicrous because it is about 110 everyday with no breeze—you don’t stop sweating, day or night). I headed upstairs for bed on the first night and our family looked at me and said, “xmaltis” (bathe). I was worried about wasting water and asked them how often they bathed (I assumed they would say every few days). They said, “Oh, we bathe twice a day.” So, I guess they were thinking that Americans must be pretty dirty, and now I bathe once a day. We are really lucky because our family has a toilet (the kind you dump water into with a bucket) and a bathing room. To bathe, you dip out water from a big trash can and pour it over your head in this little room that has a drain the corner. This is really quite nice all things considered.
7. I watched our little tiny na:nah fight off an angry mother pig with a stick. I think you just had to be there for this one.
8. Everyone laughs at me in the village because I am so tall there. It is so strange. This is the first time in my life I’ve felt awkwardly tall.
9. The mosquitoes bite us like crazy. They think bug spray is a great appetizer for gringo blood. Our family laughs at us and says we are too white and need to get darker because the mosquitoes don’t bite them.
10. We missed the bus to Iguala last weekend and did some Mexican hitchhiking. It was grand.
11. I thought I permanently damaged by esophagus at the festival in Acatlán trying homemade mescal. I don’t do many shots, and this was not a good one to try if you’re not used to much alcohol. They gave me an enormous shot that took me two swallows to get down. It was free, and ladies with bags full of mescal bottles just followed the people in the parade and passed it out to everyone along the way. I found out later that it is tradition to finish all the mescal that was purchased for the fiesta before it concludes, which is why it is free.
12. Our house parents are our grandparent’s age, but I could not discern this for many weeks because they have jet black hair. It seems that only the very, very old have white hair.
Reasons why Nahuatl is very, very hard:
1. There are no Indo-European roots. There are no words like “intelligente” that are very similar to the English words. There’s not even anything like “ventillador” that kind of reminds you of ventilation and thus reminds you of its meaning of “fan” in English. There are a few Spanish words, but that’s it.
2. Verb classes. Before you even think about using a verb, you have to figure out its class. This is not terribly difficult, but there are many exceptions. Take the example of “polowa” (“to lose”) it is a class 2b (of 4). This class takes transitive verbs that end in –owa (with the exception of verbs that end in ‘powa’ or ‘kowa’ because they have a historically long o: which puts them in class 3). Once you have figured out what class the verb is, then you can figure out which stem you need to use. There are 3 stems. Jonathan calls them the lexical, perfective, and future stems, though they contain the stems for many tenses. For instance, if I were to use the optative and say, “let me lose it” or “I hope I lose it” then I would take the future stem of “polowa” which is “polo:” and add “ma” and the first person singular marker “ni” (ni- or just n- if it comes before a vowel). Then I would say “ma nihpolo” (“let me lose it” & and the “o” loses its longness, and the object “ki” goes to “h”). If I wanted to say, “let us lose it,” it would be “ma tihpolo:ka:n.” 3.
3.Making the transitive and intransitive (or ditrasitive) verb distinction is very important, and also very difficult.
4. The phonological rules are crazy. You think you have something right, until you realize that before your suffix w goes to h before a consonant, but that h is then dropped. There are also a lot of rules that are based in archaic forms. The word will basically get tone (an ‘h’ accent) because there was historically an “h” in the word, but there is no way to know this unless you know the historical form by memory.
5. The language is very specific. This is hard to explain, but it makes things difficult. You can’t always just say general things like you do in English. For instance, many things require some sort of orientation (orientation between you and another speaker, or a place, or whatever), and you have to mark this on the verb.
6. There are many different kinds of nouns. There are entirely different rules for possessed and unprocessed nouns, and based on their endings you have to pluralize them all differently. Then within the possessed nouns, you have to decide whether they are alienable (able to be taken away) or inalienable (unable to be taken away) and conjugate them based on this distinction as well.
7. Trying to deconstruct verbs can be really, really hard and practically impossible at times with or without a dictionary. Here’s an example: take the word: “o:timotek.” One thing you know for sure is that the “o:” and final “k” indicate that this in the past, but then you have to figure out what the verb is. It could be “imote” and the “t” could be the subject marker (second person singlular marker, ti- in front of consonants and t- in front of vowels). For the same matter, it could be “mote” with the second person singular marker appearing as “ti-.“ Then it could be “ote” and be reflexive with an abbreviated version of ti-mo (ti-m before vowels) and could also be the verb “te” and have the reflexive prefixes of ti-mo, though, no verb would ever just be “te.” So, then you have to figure out what kind of irregularity is going on. You basically have to try all of these things that you guess could be the verb while not knowing if you have some irregularity. It can be a long a tedious process on paper, and we are supposed to be able to do this while listening to speakers.
8. There some difficult phrase constructions. All languages have different ways of saying things, but I am really not used to this. For instance, to say, “My house burned down” you would say, “I house burned.”
9. This is a dying language. This means that the language is losing some of it “synthetic ness” and uniformity. Oapan is also the most difficult dialect and has many exceptions and tone.
10. There are no infinitives.
11. Though Nahuatl has been studied by linguists over the years, Jonathan is pretty much the expert on Oapan Nahuatl, and you can only do so much in a lifetime. He has written a really great grammar (this is not like a textbook though, I mean linguistic grammar), but there are some things he just doesn’t know about yet. Also, because much of the community is illiterate, many of the people speak differently. In other words, there’s not really a standard, so everything can vary, and does.
Yes, most of these features mentioned here are the differences you might find in any language when you study outside your language family. In other words, though I find the language terribly tricky, it is probably no harder than English (which is a linguistic mess), just very different.
Please pray for our PC! It is functioning less and less each day!
Picture time:
Liz drinking mescal at the St. Juan parade.
David and our good friend Virginia. She is originally from Alabama, but is an art historian and studying for her Phd. at UT.
A tisket a tasket piglets in a basket! Aren't they cute?
That was fun.
I took this picture of an old woman in Acatlan. I thought it was really beautiful.
Rope dancers at the festival.
Yeah, I didn't eat that.
One of the parades at the festival!
First, Here’s a response to Dana’s question about the final sound in “Nahuatl.”: You’re right! The final sound in “Nahuatl” does sound like a “t,” and I will tell you why. Here is the linguistics answer: it is a voiceless lateral affricate. The terminology is really just mumbo jumbo. The break down is this. Voiceless simply means (as you might guess) that the vocal chords are not vibrating when you make the sound. We have many sounds in English like this, such as “p,t,k”, etc. Their voiced counterparts would be “b,d,g”. The “lateralness” of the sound means that the air is flowing around the sides of the tongue. We have a sound in English that is lateral, can you guess what it is? It’s “l” (are you starting to see where is this going? Nahuatl). And affricate just means that the sound is kind of a combination of two sounds, but is actually one phoneme (which another story entirely, but for now, just think of it as one sound that is kind of like two). We have affricates in English. An example of one of them is “ch” as in “church.” Our “ch” noise is really like a “t” and an “sh” put together, but we perceive it as one sound. If you make the “ch” noise really slowly, maybe you can see what I am talking about. Whoever came up with the orthography though that “tl” was the best way to represent the sound in “Nahuatl”, even though it is only one sound, not two (just like “ch”—two symbols, one sound). So, here is my best advice for trying to make the sound if you are interested. First try to get the lateral part down. So, make an “l” noise, then stop and keep your tongue there behind your teeth, then just blow and feel how the air moves around the sides of your tongue (for some people it may only move around one side). Then just make some little “t’ noises. “t” is what is called a stop in linguistics which basically means that the sound is quick, or you cut the airflow off quickly with your articulators. So, if you can (and it takes some practice), use the same quick puff of air like you do for a “t” but let the air go around the sides of your tongue keeping the tip of your tongue there behind your teeth like you would for an “l” or “t” and remember not to use your voice (just like you don’t use your voice with a regular “t”). I probably made it sound harder than it is. Once you think you have it, then don’t think about the specifics, just practice it. It is a really neat noise, and since we don’t have anything comparable in English, it is often perceived as “t” (as you perceived it, and as I would have had I not read up on it ahead of time-haha). So, there’s the long answer!
Some stories/observations from the trip thus far:
1. I wouldn’t do David’s dishes and our family told me they were going to hit me, jokingly of course. Then, they asked me if David would not hit me, to which he replied (though we aren’t supposed to be using Spanish) “No vale la pena” (It’s not worth it). He is probably right!
2.We got home from Iguala last weekend pretty late, and our family was already asleep. We headed up to our room only to find a ko:lo:tl (scorpion), and of course we freaked out! We didn’t know how to kill it so I ran downstairs yelling, “Alacran, alacran!” and woke everyone up. They all start laughing and Ofelia (who is 17 by the way) comes up to our room and swats it with a shoe, and I think , “Oh, that is it?” And David feels silly for making a little girl come kill our scorpion. We have only had two in our room so far, which is a blessing. One of our friends found one next to her bed devouring a roach, which was pleasant. I always thought they had really tough outer bodies and lived on the ground. They are actually more like spiders and climb along our cement walls and squish quite easily. I am convinced one is going to fall off of the ceiling and land on me while I am sleeping on my stick bed in the night.
3. I have made some really good language errors. I was trying to say “my dog” in Nahuat. When they refer to a dog, they just call it a “chichi,” but when they possess one (like “my dog”) they call it “tskwintli.” So, “my dog” is “notskwin.” Before I knew this I was saying my dog as, “nochichi” (which they actually say in other villages), which does not mean “my dog” in Oapan Nahuatl, but rather “my boob.” I have also accidentally said, “I am a pig.”
4. When I got dengue (supposedly), and was running around 103 fever, they were convinced I was unhappy. Apparently, only unhappy people who want to go home get sick. They also have no concept that in illness might last more than one day. Everything they think about sickness is based in what we might consider old wives tales. Our friend Brad was having trouble with his allergies and his family told him, “Oh, a cold wind must have blown through your room last night.”
5. One night we had the Oapan version of tostadas. The way they do this is that first they make corn tortillas as usual (grind the corn, press the dough and put it on the stove). But, the way they get them crunchy for the tostadas is by putting them on the roof for a couple of days. I thought that was interesting.
6. When we arrived, we were actually excited about the prospect of not bathing for weeks at a time (which would have been ludicrous because it is about 110 everyday with no breeze—you don’t stop sweating, day or night). I headed upstairs for bed on the first night and our family looked at me and said, “xmaltis” (bathe). I was worried about wasting water and asked them how often they bathed (I assumed they would say every few days). They said, “Oh, we bathe twice a day.” So, I guess they were thinking that Americans must be pretty dirty, and now I bathe once a day. We are really lucky because our family has a toilet (the kind you dump water into with a bucket) and a bathing room. To bathe, you dip out water from a big trash can and pour it over your head in this little room that has a drain the corner. This is really quite nice all things considered.
7. I watched our little tiny na:nah fight off an angry mother pig with a stick. I think you just had to be there for this one.
8. Everyone laughs at me in the village because I am so tall there. It is so strange. This is the first time in my life I’ve felt awkwardly tall.
9. The mosquitoes bite us like crazy. They think bug spray is a great appetizer for gringo blood. Our family laughs at us and says we are too white and need to get darker because the mosquitoes don’t bite them.
10. We missed the bus to Iguala last weekend and did some Mexican hitchhiking. It was grand.
11. I thought I permanently damaged by esophagus at the festival in Acatlán trying homemade mescal. I don’t do many shots, and this was not a good one to try if you’re not used to much alcohol. They gave me an enormous shot that took me two swallows to get down. It was free, and ladies with bags full of mescal bottles just followed the people in the parade and passed it out to everyone along the way. I found out later that it is tradition to finish all the mescal that was purchased for the fiesta before it concludes, which is why it is free.
12. Our house parents are our grandparent’s age, but I could not discern this for many weeks because they have jet black hair. It seems that only the very, very old have white hair.
Reasons why Nahuatl is very, very hard:
1. There are no Indo-European roots. There are no words like “intelligente” that are very similar to the English words. There’s not even anything like “ventillador” that kind of reminds you of ventilation and thus reminds you of its meaning of “fan” in English. There are a few Spanish words, but that’s it.
2. Verb classes. Before you even think about using a verb, you have to figure out its class. This is not terribly difficult, but there are many exceptions. Take the example of “polowa” (“to lose”) it is a class 2b (of 4). This class takes transitive verbs that end in –owa (with the exception of verbs that end in ‘powa’ or ‘kowa’ because they have a historically long o: which puts them in class 3). Once you have figured out what class the verb is, then you can figure out which stem you need to use. There are 3 stems. Jonathan calls them the lexical, perfective, and future stems, though they contain the stems for many tenses. For instance, if I were to use the optative and say, “let me lose it” or “I hope I lose it” then I would take the future stem of “polowa” which is “polo:” and add “ma” and the first person singular marker “ni” (ni- or just n- if it comes before a vowel). Then I would say “ma nihpolo” (“let me lose it” & and the “o” loses its longness, and the object “ki” goes to “h”). If I wanted to say, “let us lose it,” it would be “ma tihpolo:ka:n.” 3.
3.Making the transitive and intransitive (or ditrasitive) verb distinction is very important, and also very difficult.
4. The phonological rules are crazy. You think you have something right, until you realize that before your suffix w goes to h before a consonant, but that h is then dropped. There are also a lot of rules that are based in archaic forms. The word will basically get tone (an ‘h’ accent) because there was historically an “h” in the word, but there is no way to know this unless you know the historical form by memory.
5. The language is very specific. This is hard to explain, but it makes things difficult. You can’t always just say general things like you do in English. For instance, many things require some sort of orientation (orientation between you and another speaker, or a place, or whatever), and you have to mark this on the verb.
6. There are many different kinds of nouns. There are entirely different rules for possessed and unprocessed nouns, and based on their endings you have to pluralize them all differently. Then within the possessed nouns, you have to decide whether they are alienable (able to be taken away) or inalienable (unable to be taken away) and conjugate them based on this distinction as well.
7. Trying to deconstruct verbs can be really, really hard and practically impossible at times with or without a dictionary. Here’s an example: take the word: “o:timotek.” One thing you know for sure is that the “o:” and final “k” indicate that this in the past, but then you have to figure out what the verb is. It could be “imote” and the “t” could be the subject marker (second person singlular marker, ti- in front of consonants and t- in front of vowels). For the same matter, it could be “mote” with the second person singular marker appearing as “ti-.“ Then it could be “ote” and be reflexive with an abbreviated version of ti-mo (ti-m before vowels) and could also be the verb “te” and have the reflexive prefixes of ti-mo, though, no verb would ever just be “te.” So, then you have to figure out what kind of irregularity is going on. You basically have to try all of these things that you guess could be the verb while not knowing if you have some irregularity. It can be a long a tedious process on paper, and we are supposed to be able to do this while listening to speakers.
8. There some difficult phrase constructions. All languages have different ways of saying things, but I am really not used to this. For instance, to say, “My house burned down” you would say, “I house burned.”
9. This is a dying language. This means that the language is losing some of it “synthetic ness” and uniformity. Oapan is also the most difficult dialect and has many exceptions and tone.
10. There are no infinitives.
11. Though Nahuatl has been studied by linguists over the years, Jonathan is pretty much the expert on Oapan Nahuatl, and you can only do so much in a lifetime. He has written a really great grammar (this is not like a textbook though, I mean linguistic grammar), but there are some things he just doesn’t know about yet. Also, because much of the community is illiterate, many of the people speak differently. In other words, there’s not really a standard, so everything can vary, and does.
Yes, most of these features mentioned here are the differences you might find in any language when you study outside your language family. In other words, though I find the language terribly tricky, it is probably no harder than English (which is a linguistic mess), just very different.
Please pray for our PC! It is functioning less and less each day!
Picture time:
Liz drinking mescal at the St. Juan parade.
David and our good friend Virginia. She is originally from Alabama, but is an art historian and studying for her Phd. at UT.
A tisket a tasket piglets in a basket! Aren't they cute?
That was fun.
I took this picture of an old woman in Acatlan. I thought it was really beautiful.
Rope dancers at the festival.
Yeah, I didn't eat that.
The view from our hammocks.
More of our family. Angelica (the one that follows me around everywhere) is there in the left corner.
One of the parades at the festival!
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Sick :o
Keep me in your prayers! I had a fever of about 103 yesterday. I am sick with something, and hopefully not dengue! They sent my blood off today.
I probably can't post again for a week, but other than the sickness, we are having a great time!
Love,
SB
I probably can't post again for a week, but other than the sickness, we are having a great time!
Love,
SB
Sunday, June 24, 2007
We are still alive!!!
We made it through the first week!
We are weary, but having a great time!
Our host family is wonderful. They feed us lots of great food, and it is all grown just around the corner. Our host dad (Silvestre) is the head of the farmers association so we are lucky! We also have a host mom (who we call na:nah- Oapan Nahuatl for mom), and two sisters, Ofelia and Juanita, that live with us. They are so sweet, and no one will let us do any work! They also have two other daughters, one who lives in Oapan (Roberta) with her husband, two little boys, and little girl (Angelica, who follows me around everywhere even to the bathroom!), and the other lives far away.
I like our Nahuatl classes, but they really hard. Also, the second half of the day (conversation class) is basically taught in Spanish which is hard for me because I was never all that good to begin with and am now rusty.
Today we are in Chilapa. We spent the night here so we could go to a Nahuatl festival in Acatlan. Their Nahuatl is far easier I think. Not only are some of their sounds different, but their greetings are more basic. Here you can say, “Hello mom” or “Hello dad” as a greeting to anyone. In Oapan, you greet based on what the person you are meeting with is doing. For instance, a greeting in Oapan may go as follow, Person A: “You are going to feed cows?” Person B: “Yes, I am going to feed cows.” Person A: “Then go feed cows.” Person B: “You are going visiting?” Person A: “Yes, I am going visiting.” Person B: “Then go visiting.” I am sure you can see the difficulty here. Oapan is the hardest Nahuat to learn according to Jonathan. It is the only dialect with tone!
The Acatlan festival was lots of fun, but everyone kept giving us Mezcal while they ate bull’s bloodl! They did theses crazy dances, and some people even danced on ropes! We also went to a mass at the beautiful little church there.
I’m sorry this update is brief, but the connection is slow and we only have a few minutes. This is also why I have only included four pictures. Maybe next weekend we can find a better connection.
Please remember to keep us in your prayers. Being here is great, but there are so many adjustments in addition to struggling through the language (like no air conditioning in 105 degree weather :o)! Here are few pictures:
Our corn mill!
This is na:nah, though I need to find a picture of her smiling. She is pretty much the cutest little person in the world and can flip tortillas like a mad woman!
Me in traditional dress in my hammock (the only place I can get cooled down).
These piglets remind me of Okie D and make me sooo happy!
We are weary, but having a great time!
Our host family is wonderful. They feed us lots of great food, and it is all grown just around the corner. Our host dad (Silvestre) is the head of the farmers association so we are lucky! We also have a host mom (who we call na:nah- Oapan Nahuatl for mom), and two sisters, Ofelia and Juanita, that live with us. They are so sweet, and no one will let us do any work! They also have two other daughters, one who lives in Oapan (Roberta) with her husband, two little boys, and little girl (Angelica, who follows me around everywhere even to the bathroom!), and the other lives far away.
I like our Nahuatl classes, but they really hard. Also, the second half of the day (conversation class) is basically taught in Spanish which is hard for me because I was never all that good to begin with and am now rusty.
Today we are in Chilapa. We spent the night here so we could go to a Nahuatl festival in Acatlan. Their Nahuatl is far easier I think. Not only are some of their sounds different, but their greetings are more basic. Here you can say, “Hello mom” or “Hello dad” as a greeting to anyone. In Oapan, you greet based on what the person you are meeting with is doing. For instance, a greeting in Oapan may go as follow, Person A: “You are going to feed cows?” Person B: “Yes, I am going to feed cows.” Person A: “Then go feed cows.” Person B: “You are going visiting?” Person A: “Yes, I am going visiting.” Person B: “Then go visiting.” I am sure you can see the difficulty here. Oapan is the hardest Nahuat to learn according to Jonathan. It is the only dialect with tone!
The Acatlan festival was lots of fun, but everyone kept giving us Mezcal while they ate bull’s bloodl! They did theses crazy dances, and some people even danced on ropes! We also went to a mass at the beautiful little church there.
I’m sorry this update is brief, but the connection is slow and we only have a few minutes. This is also why I have only included four pictures. Maybe next weekend we can find a better connection.
Please remember to keep us in your prayers. Being here is great, but there are so many adjustments in addition to struggling through the language (like no air conditioning in 105 degree weather :o)! Here are few pictures:
Our corn mill!
This is na:nah, though I need to find a picture of her smiling. She is pretty much the cutest little person in the world and can flip tortillas like a mad woman!
Me in traditional dress in my hammock (the only place I can get cooled down).
These piglets remind me of Okie D and make me sooo happy!
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Here are some pictures, don't have time to write about them. We are off to the village soon! Keep us in our prayers! We love you!
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