Friday’s highlights:
I was expecting to have very little to do today, since we finished up the training phase yesterday. However, I managed to fill the day with explanations to the consultant trainees, followed by introducing Christine to the Hermit Crab parser (a computer tool for dividing words into its constituent root and affixes). I prepared my own lunch, then went out with some friends for supper. Read on for more details.
When I went to sleep last night (Thursday), I thought that all I had to do on Friday was meet with Leoma and Christine, the two RWC consultant trainees, to explain three things to them: (1) what should be done to find mistakes in the data after the word-collection phase and correct them, (2) how to set up the computer database so that multiple people can type words into it, and (3) how to do the record-keeping during a RWC workshop. In fact, that was pretty much all I needed to do, and I thought our time together was well spent; it simply took longer than I had expected it to.
When we finished with those three topics, I began showing Christine how the Hermit Crab parser works—something I had promised I would do because it seems it would be useful for some of the languages she is working with, but we hadn’t found time before today. We were able to make a start on laying the foundation; now she has to do some research regarding the language we’re experimenting with in order to complete a solid foundation, then we’ll get together and go a bit deeper into the mechanics of the parser.
Since the group of Shilluks did not come today, there was no prepared meal for lunch. So I prepared rice and vegetables for myself. Then for supper, I went along with Leoma, Eileen, and Clement (a South Sudanese who was one of Leoma’s students a number of years ago and is here visiting her) to the restaurant just down the street, where I again had roast chicken—and found that the price had gone up since I was last there a few days ago. (Inflation is a real problem here, so it is not at all unusual for prices to go up from week to week.)
Wes Ringer, a translation consultant with SIL here, is a chess aficionado, and I’ve hung around observing a number of the games he’s played with other people, so he's been wanting me to play him, even though I told him that all I know is how the pieces move; I have little notion about how to come up with a strategy in the game. Well, this evening, just before we went out to eat, I finally found time to sit down with him and play a game of chess—and got whupped good and proper, as I expected. I don’t know if he’ll be able to help me understand anything about strategy if I play him another time or two or not, but I’ll probably give him a couple more opportunities to demonstrate that he’s a far better player than I am. ;-)
A funny thing happened this morning. The generator doesn’t start up until 9am on weekdays, but I’m usually up and ready for action a while before that time. So it was no surprise that I found myself with some time on my hands this morning prior to 9:00, when I was scheduled to meet with Leoma and Christine. As I searched for a useful way to use that time, I hit on the idea of ironing my clothes that I had washed on Tuesday and collected from the line on Wednesday afternoon! So I plugged in the iron and waited for it to heat up—only it didn’t. Puzzled, I was fiddling with the temperature dial on the iron and examining the plug when my neighbor reminded me that the iron needed electricity to work, and that wouldn’t be coming until 9:00. Duh! I felt kind of stupid! The situation gave my South Sudanese neighbors a really good laugh to start their day, though, so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time to have spent a few minutes fiddling with the iron. (Gotta be able to laugh at yourself!)
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