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October 20th, 2007
 | 12:37 am - Successful phone contact!
 teaotter & I finally succeeded in contacting our beloved amberite. We even found an on-line phone card that only costs $1/hour which seems nearly ideal. So, we talked to China for a bit over an hour for pocket change - the modern world is a wonderful and amazing place. amberite is doing well, but is also quite lonely, and we all miss each other a great deal. We talked a great deal about food, which sounds amazing and delicious there. I'm very happy, and even moreso to know we can now do this with ease.
Current Mood:  pleased
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You guys could also try Skype, its how I communicate with my mate in Germany and its worked wonders. | | From: | heron61 |
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| Date: | October 20th, 2007 05:27 pm (UTC) |
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We were considering it, but at a cost of $0.1/minute, using this is essentially cheaper than purchasing headsets. Oh, wonderful!
(incidentally, I'm reading What Becomes You and enjoying it immensely -- I was reading parts of it to my friend Casey while we were escorting yesterday, and she may want to use the chapter "Token" to try to get some ideas through to her intro soc students; we ended up ordering two copies of the book from my local bookstore, since I don't really want to give it back to the library, and now Casey really wants to read it too) Excellent news! One thing I remember from my time in Russia was that even fluent (but non-native) English speakers really couldn't follow humor or word-play very well, so, for most of the time, I was restricted to short, direct, declarative sentences. And after a while, speaking nothing but Hemingway-ese will drive the verbally inclined quite bonkers. But I didn't really notice what was going on, or why, until I got back to the States. I know that amberite has some native-speaking colleagues (or at least one), but I'd guess that the opportunity for unselfconscious banter is -- among other things, of course -- a tremendous relief. Well, my main native-speaking colleague at the moment never drops out of ESL-teacher-ese -- slow, clear, declarative sentences with lots of gesturing. I think she's been doing this for a while and would rather stick to it than switch back and forth.
So it's a great relief, yes. The harder part is really being without the steady flow of text past my eyes, though. You don't realize how ingrained it is until it's not there. By the way, I'm glad you're enjoying my posts! |
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