The Vernon Journal

In Northern Thailand there are three appropriate greetings (salutations) you may use when greeting the Akha. All are thought to have been influenced by other cultures, but the Akha, especially in Thailand, will understand and appreciate them all as gestures of goodwill.
Most of all, they will appreciate it if you greet them in Akha instead [...]

I’m always whining about how difficult it is to learn a tonal language, especially a tribal one without classes, books or cds. (See, don’t you feel sorry for me?!) Tonal languages are notoriously difficult to learn for ….well, anyone who’s native language is not tonal.
Anyway, my last post reminded me about another funny [...]

In my recent desperation to overcome a serious case of writer’s block, I did a google search on “tips for writing”. Somewhere amidst the flurry of clicks, I ran across this silly page about How to Write Good. While it didn’t automatically cure my writer’s block, it did give me a needed [...]

My husband is always teasing me about how I say certain words… like “egg” and “leg”. (I say them with a long “a” instead of a short “e” …which he insists is the proper way.) We’ve always been curious to unravel the mystery of my little accent , so this silly little questionaire, [...]

Oh, the joys of illiteracy! Take our experiences yesterday. We were looking for breakfast and ended up in a 7-11 (finding this to be the least “risky” of the available options… we’re still pretty new at all of this). We settled on two strawberry yogurts and a bag of plain white dinner rolls.
But I digress. [...]