Checking Acts 21:3

So, let's say you were a Tanzanian Bible translator working on Acts 21:3, and you wanted to describe Paul and co.'s journey from Turkey to Syria in terms of how they passed Cyprus. You check some English translations to see what they say. The first you see is NIV, which says they passed it on the south. Then you check NLT, which says they passed it on their left. Since these two differed, you look at another, NET, which says they left it behind on their port side.

Since now you're pretty confused as to what is correct (not to mention you're not entirely sure what "port side" means, being as you're from a land-locked people group), you figure you'd better check the Greek to see how things were in the original. "Left," it is written there. Well, that might work. The people in your tribe certainly refer to left and right hands and use those words. However, you think it sounds kind of funny to talk about a big island as being on someone's left hand side. North and south are a lot more common when it comes to talking about journeys.

In conclusion, you write "left" in your translation draft, because that's what the original has and you want to start with that option. But you also write a note to test this with some villagers to see what they think. If they all think it sounds pretty odd for people sailing through the sea to say they passed an island on their left, you can then test whether saying the island was to their north or saying they went south of it sounds better. Since there is not a word for "port side" in your language, you can leave that one off your list of options, at least!

And there you have it - an average day's problem in Bible translation. I'm checking Acts 21:3 in Ikizu right now and thought you might be interested in what kind of issues pop up in verses. Sometimes there are deep theological issues to check, and sometimes it's a matter of checking to see what natural phrasing is. In this instance, the Ikizu have written that they passed on the east side, so I know what is in their draft is wrong, but there are a lot of options for what might be right. Now my job is to explain all of that in a brief, clear note in Swahili!

Small town America

Indiana, PA map

Our apartment is on the top floor, far right

I've never lived somewhere like Indiana, PA, before. I kind of like it, but it certainly is different than Olympia, Holland, Langley, or Musoma. A few things I've noticed over the past few days:

• People seem very surprised to hear that we intentionally moved here from far away. They like their town, but nobody can fathom why we'd choose it. The only real claim to fame in Indiana, PA, is that it's Jimmy Stewart's hometown. Other places I've been have a greater self-image - residents like their town and imagine everyone else does, too. In Indiana, they are like, "Why here?!"
• It has the friendliest Social Security office I could imagine. When I was there today, everyone was making friends, catching up with old friends, and having a social time of it in the waiting room, and even back in the offices people were introducing themselves to each other very informally.
• There are Amish people around town. I know better than to stare, but honestly, I've never seen anyone Amish before, much less one pushing a shopping cart in front of me at the grocery story. Zarya probably categorizes the women as Muslims or Catholic nuns - women with big, dark clothes from head to foot.
• You can have a year's worth of weather in one week. In the past few days we've had snow, 77 degree sunshine, pouring rain, and 55 degree sun with a little breeze.
• The stores are all different (well, there is always Walmart). I've never been to NE USA before, and sure enough, just like they were different in the Midwest than in the West, and in Canada than in the US, they're different here, too. You'd think that eventually I could even live the same region twice to save myself some on the learning curve for shopping!

The longest move ever

I'm sure there are others out there whose moves have spanned years, but ours sure feels like the longest one ever to us! Today was the big box-loading day. We rented a big box from U-Haul, which we pulled to the house (my parents' house, I mean), and loaded up with all of our worldly possessions. We thought we were going to need two of this giant boxes, but almost everything fit into one, so we decided to leave out just a few pieces of furniture in lieu of having one nearly empty (or doing some mad shopping in two hours or something). It was well-packed, shall we say. (Interpretation: I dare anyone to fit more in there than we squeezed in.)

To those of you who donated some wonderful stuff to us - THANK YOU.

In a way, it's a little scary and stressful to drop nearly everything you own off at a U-Haul place and hope they ship it across the country without destroying it in the process. It's also really nice to have that stage of the move done! It's like when we were finally able to check in our baggage at the Nairobi airport and didn't have to haul our suitcases around anymore - good-bye, huge and heavy stuff, see you later.

So, one more stage of the move done, only like eight more to go. We're over halfway there physically - we've gotten ourselves around the world, now we just have to go across the country. We've done almost all of the packing, and unpacking is easier than packing by far. We WILL make it!

In America

At the Narok bus rest stop

Our lunch on the road

Zarya's one chance to stretch her legs along the way

We are in America! We arrived on Wednesday, Feb. 26, a day later than planned. What DID go as planned was our bus trip! Who knew that Easy Coach bus line would be more reliable than British Airways?! Since we thought it was our last day in East Africa, we took a few pictures along the way. Ha - we had another day, little did we know. But at this point, we were just happy that we were on our way and were feeling pretty good to finally be off.

It was a little odd to be traveling as "that family." We were the ones who had so much baggage that we held up the bus' departure. We were the ones with the crying baby when it was lights out on the plane. We were the ones who had to have the special taxi (or two taxis) just to get anywhere in Nairobi. We were the ones who had the complicated tickets that couldn't be transferred to another airline. We were the ones who needed extra help boarding the plane in order to carry the stroller up and down the stairs. We were the ones who got pulled out of the customs line and were allowed to cut up to the front. Everywhere we went on our trip, we were "that family with the baby and all that luggage." I've never felt quite so conspicuous on a plane/in an airport/at a hotel. But, fortunately, life as a white person in Musoma has gotten me pretty used to being stared at, so it didn't bother me too much.

We are now enjoying paved roads, street signs, carpet, and fast internet. I couldn't believe how fast the pictures for this blog post loaded! Usually I have time to run to the bathroom and write an e-mail while I wait for three measly pictures to pop up, and today I didn't even have a chance to ponder my post before they were there and waiting for me to start writing.

So if you're wondering how we're doing, and if it's nice to be back, and all that, my answer is that, despite the fact we're freezing cold, sure, it's nice to be here. I feel like it's just a quick visit, though, which it is in this part of the country. What I think we're all looking forward to is being settled and starting our new life in Pennsylvania. We're just kind of curious what it's going to be like and eager to get going. But in the meantime, it's really nice to see friends and family in the Olympia area and have a little time between our international and our cross-country moves. Andrew is off in PA right now looking for a place for us to live, so he doesn't get much break, but Zarya and I are looking forward to a quiet few days with the grandparents before the wild adventure starts again. After a couple of really busy and stressful months, it's kind of nice.

Getting ready to go

Look what I found in the dirty clothes pile! Good thing I didn't just toss all the sheets straight into the washing machine. This picture is not really related to this post, except that the reason I was washing the sheets is because they've been sold and it's nicer to give folks clean sheets than dirty ones if they are paying for them.

We're eight days out from departure, and over five weeks out from arrival, and something like three months out from feeling vaguely settled and at home. We are both feeling like we'd just kind of like to skip the next chunk of our lives and somehow wake up and find ourselves magically transported to May or so, all moved in and feeling adjusted. But, since that isn't too likely to happen, we're doing the work of sorting, selling, distributing, sorting, finding more stuff to sell and distribute, and, of course, packing, and preparing ourselves for the idea that we're going to have to unpack and repack and unpack and repack and move again and again and pack again for around that many times. I mean, moving all by itself is difficult enough, but when it's the kind of move where you have to get rid of 90% of your possessions, figure out how to pack all the rest into airline-limited luggage, travel around the world, and then do a big cross-country move after that, it just gets a little crazy.

A different aspect of getting ready to go is the relational side of things - it's not completely about the stuff. Yesterday we traveled out to a village to have a farewell day with a pastor and his family, and tomorrow we're headed to a different village to have a farewell day with my honorary Tanzanian parents. It's culturally impossible to have a proper good-bye last less than six hours, because you need to eat twice - mid-morning snack and a big, late lunch - and have a little ceremony with speeches. We've gotten quite used to the routine and will feel a little unsettled when things don't work quite that way in the States and people only feed you one meal per visit (just kidding).

So, we're down to only a few meals left in our own home, a few more sleeps, and then this adventure will really begin!

A few thoughts on moving around the world

People have been asking me how I'm feeling about our big upcoming move, what I'm thinking about it all, etc. Since there are bound to be folks out there whom I won't see in person to be able to answer this question face to face, it seemed fitting to write a blog post about it.

For the most part, it just seems kind of strange to even think about. When I think about moving, most of my thoughts right now are on the first few stages of our process - selling our stuff and getting packed, the long trip across the world, our time in the Northwest, and our long trip across the States. It's like I can only hold that much in my mind and haven't moved much past "and then we finally arrive at our home in Indiana, Pennsylvania" (which is about an hour's drive NE of Pittsburgh, FYI).

I spent a full year trying to decide where to go to college. Well, really, I started looking seriously at colleges when Alyssa started the process, so it was more like a four-year process. I visited schools, I talked to swim coaches, I read about the towns they were in - I wanted to make sure I was moving to where I really wanted to live. My choices were fewer for grad schools (meaning, there were only two options), but I still visited and talked to a lot of people about them. When it came to deciding where in the world to serve with Wycliffe, well, don't even get me started on what I did to figure that one out! Trust me when I say I put a lot of effort into that decision.

But for this move, it really came down to that we'd move wherever Andrew got a job. Sure, we made sure that it seemed like a decent location first, but that's about it. Andrew is much more "up" on things there, having spent quite a bit of time since then looking into things. For me, I've been so busy that I haven't had much time to explore it online (slow internet doesn't help matters, either). I like what I've seen, but it's been minimal.

So when it comes to thinking about how I feel about moving there, my answer is that I think a lot more about leaving here than moving there, which is a little strange for me, being someone who is a big planner and forward-thinker. This whole thing still feels a little surreal. I think as soon as we leave here, my brain will have enough space to start thinking about going there. In the meantime, I'm happy to focus on leaving well. I want to have good closure on things here, and also make sure there is a system for continuing the translation work from afar. I probably won't see hardly any of my friends here ever again, so before I start focusing on meeting a lot of new ones, I'm just thinking about saying good-bye to my current ones. It's a sad task, but knowing without a doubt that we're called to this new location makes me feel quite at peace about it - both the leaving and the arriving are a lot easier when you know it's the right adventure for you.

Pumpkins in the tropics

So, it seems that we didn't quite succeed in growing a giant pumpkin.  This little cutie was grown from seeds we specially bought online from a very reputable seed company in the States, which promised us it'd produce a great quantity of large pumpkins.  I'm quite sure there was nothing wrong with the seeds.  However, despite our faithful watering and weeding, our vine came up with this: one lame little pumpkin.  We kept waiting for it to grow more, but it seems that this was all the size it could manage under the circumstances.  Tanzanians grow pumpkins here, so it's not like it can't be done, but we wanted big, orange (local pumpkins are green on the outside) pumpkins.  We've attempted peas, zucchini, pumpkins, and quite a few other things that really should grow here, but nothing really does, with the exception of basil.  Our basil plants are doing well - one success!  I think we've learned our lesson - only local stuff grows locally.  Don't mess with the natural system.  I guess the application of this will have to come in Pennsylvania, where we'll need to figure out what grows there and stick with it.  I have a feeling it's probably not hibiscus flowers, which do amazingly well here.  For example:

One of our many hibiscus bushes around the yard, all of which nearly always have a lot of flowers year-round

Stuff DOES grow here - grass doesn't do well, but check out the foliage elsewhere in our backyard!

This is a lily plant, another one that does well here.  We've got some beautiful, huge lilies!  Zarya loves walking around the yard, going from flower to flower, checking on all of her friends.  This one wasn't in bloom this day, but she wanted to examine the leaves after admiring the red flowers next to it.  We might not be able to grow a basic pumpkin, but we enjoy fresh tropical flowers, so it's a pretty fair trade-off.  We, especially Zarya, will miss the daily backyard flower tour.