Sapir-Whorf and cocaine

Today I am...

temporarily kicked out of my bedroom.  Rachel and I share a room, and right now she's taking a nap.  I like to listen to music most of the time, and I either hum along or sing to it, and she hates that when she's trying to sleep, so I'm having to relocate for a little while.

so happy that I'm finally done with my anthropology class!  I took my final yesterday, and I think it went really well!  I felt like I should have been more nervous than I was, but it turned out that it was fine.  Though it was an incredibly difficult class, I feel like I learned a lot of interesting things.  The stuff I was actually supposed to remember didn't seem to really stick with me, but I'm retaining a lot of useless, albeit fascinating, information.  For instance:
- did you know that the language you grow up speaking can influence the way your brain works?  It's called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  We watched a film about a tribe in Africa focusing on the different words for color in their language, versus in English.  This group only had about five words for color, while we have nine(?).  When showed a circle of squares with nine green squares and one blue, the people in this tribe couldn't really see the difference because, in their language, they use the same word for blue and green.  However, they have two words for different shades of green.  Our teacher showed us the example that they gave to these people of nine squares of green, and then another square that was a different shade.  For the life of me, I couldn't tell which one was different, but these people could because of the language they spoke!
- did you know they used to actually put cocaine in Coca-Cola?  We were learning about coca, the plant that cocaine is made from.  But I kind of feel like the ship had already sailed by the time I learned this since everyone else seemed to know about it already.  But better late than never!

almost done with all my classes.  I just have two more online finals to take, and then I'm done!  Then I have a break for about a month, and it'll start all over again.  I feel like this was such a great semester in terms of learning about things pertaining to my degree--education.  I loved going and observing at schools, I loved my intro to teaching class, and I just had so many opportunities to learn this semester!  God is so good.

looking forward to going tomorrow and visiting the new Bible club that my mom started at a new school a few months ago!  Look at all those Christmas cards to hand out to the kids!  They have about 90 kids from kindergarten to 10th grade, making them the biggest club in this area by far.  God has been working so miraculously there!  Now that I'm done with my classes on Wednesdays, I can actually visit the club. :)

a bit angry at these little guys, who woke me up way too early this morning.

trying to remember to water Ferdinand.  It just slips my mind, but so far he's still alive.

worrying over Jonah.  It's getting so cold here, and since my room is the coldest in the house, I'm kind of worried that he'll get too cold.  But so far he seems to be doing okay--just eating all the time!  He's going to be chunky pretty soon if he keeps this up.

excited about going through this book in our women's Bible study at my church!  My mom really loves this book, so I've been hoping to read it, and I'm so happy that we'll be going through it as a group starting next month!



learning to play this song on the guitar, as well as this one.  This song is why I was kicked out of my room.  I just love it--I've probably heard it twenty times already today!  Rachel was not having that. :)

14 days til Christmas!