Author: Hazel Frost

As writers of Christian song-lyrics descend to unfathomed new depths…

As with Calvin, the revenge of the Killer Bicycle has been an on-going theme in Joni’s life for quite some while.  However, having banished it to the darkest corner of the garage for several months, it appears to have learnt its lesson (helped by Joni growing a couple of inches in the interim).  It was finally brought out of its dusty exile this week, and of course now he can’t get enough of it;

  

Danny comes along for the ride, and to wipe chocolate down Daddy’s back by way of a side-show;

  

Everyone’s a winner! 

Still here, still translating.  I finished the Manchester document.  I’ve started on the Cambridge one.  That took quite a lot of preparation.  Imagine a photocopy of a document from the 1980’s.  Then scanned in and saved as a PDF.  Not wonderful quality but legible; to the human eye.  But in order to upload it into the translation software it needs to be in Word.  So convert from PDF to Word.  Machines are pretty good these days, but for reading poorly photocopied then scanned and saved as PDF documents clearly you need the human eye.  So it took me the best part of a couple of days to go through the Word doc and render it into recognisable English in order to turn it into Spanish. That was even less fun than it sounds, and even now while I’m translating, I’m discovering various places where arc should have been rendered are.   It was rather tempting on the other hand to decide that leaching might be a more socially useful occupation for children than wasting teaching on them… I could even think of a few specific examples to put forward as potential candidates; starting with that year 9 geography set.

Then I need to have the whole lot printed out in both languages, not on our printer it’s rubbish, so that’ll be a trip to town.  I’m hoping to be able to present the whole thing to the University next week. 

There’s loads of other things going on, which half of me would stay and blog, but it’s been a ridiculously long day, and the other half of me has already gone to bed. 

I’m busy translating.  The University of Santa Fe kindly furnished me with a shiny new list of documents that I need to present along with my degree certificates.  The list includes a translation of the syllabus and programmes of study from both my degree courses.  Manchester kindly furnished me with a course handbook ninety-two pages long.  Cambridge kindly informed me today that their course handbook tops the hundred and wonder if I would like it scanned or posted.  The professional translator here in San Francisco charges one hundred Argentinean pesos per page.  Since there are around eight Argentinean pesos to the UK pound at the moment, that’s two hundred pages at twelve pounds a sheet, so that won’t be happening. 

I’ve started on the Manchester document.  First I reduced it down to the pages which are actually relevant to the course content, having sacked everything about student loans, policies on plagiarism and library services.  Now I have thirty pages, of which I’m on page 18 and hoping to have this one out of the way before the Cambridge beast lands in my inbox or on my doorstep.  My theory is that even if the University of Santa Fe insist that it is properly stamped by a professional, it’ll still work out cheaper for someone to read and correct it if I’ve done most of the work for them. 

Fortunately I have discovered Wordfast Anywhere, a free online translating tool, which you can find at https://www.freetm.com/  It’s not entirely intuitive, and the manual’s huge so I haven’t read it all yet.  But it is making a huge time saving even if I am still somewhat confused about my source tags and fuzzy matches. 

So even if I never manage to validate my degrees, now I have another transferrable skill to add to my CV.  Unfortunately despite all my linguistic brilliance, I haven’t yet discovered any language in which to persuade my youngest child to stop pooing in the bath.  Maybe that’s the bit of the manual that I didn’t read yet. 

It is no secret that I have no patience with models of mission which measure success in terms of who has clocked up the most air-miles.  I’m not planning any air-miles this year, but the last couple of weeks we have been out on the road for various motives;

First was our Latin Link team conference to the province of Salta.  We didn’t drive it this time.   Our unreliable beast,  in the words of the old refrain, “won’t get that far”.  Luckily there’s a good bus route.  I left home in possession of too much evidence suggesting that this could well be the worst Latin Link Conference ever (despite some stiff competition), and it actually turned out to be the best ever.  Lots of things seemed to fall into place, and we reached what I think will turn out to be some significant milestones in our discussions.  I suspect there quite a few people praying for us.  And with such stunning scenery as a back-drop, really what more could anyone have asked for:

   

Then we went home for long enough to wash clothes and repack, and me n’ the kids were off to Scout camp at the agricultural college a few kilometres outside San Francisco;

Scout camp survived, and then I had a rare trip out on my own, across to Santa Fe where the University are trying to do something with my qualifications in order to render them useful in this land of much bureaucracy.  I’ve been playing this silly game with various institutions for literally the last four years, and I think last week’s phone call was about the most sensible thing anyone has said so far; “Let’s not try and figure this out over the phone, how about just bring everything you have and we’ll have a look at it…”  Now there’s a plan.  So off I went.  The upshot is that I have yet another new list of bits of paper that I need to generate (naturally), of which item three on the list is a sworn statement made in front of a judge in which two Argentineans have to testify that they know me to be a professional of Special Education.  Spot the flaw?  How about, if I’m trying to get my qualifications recognised here, then until I can get them recognised it isn’t actually possible for anyone here to know me as a professional.  So really I’m looking for two people who like me enough to lie for me.  Lucky I found a plethora of willing volunteers at tonight’s prayer meeting!  Hoorah. 

And just in case I start becoming tempted to measure my own self-importance in all these not-air-miles travelled, we spent this weekend fully tied to the ground, making and selling one thousand eight hundred “pastelitos” (deep-fried jam-filled pastry things) for a Scout fund-raiser:

And now I’m too worn out to go anywhere. Airmiles Schmairmiles. 

I’ve just put up my latest sermon on John 10 11-18 from a couple of weeks ago.  Short and simple but it seemed to work out OK.  It’s in Spanish and you can find it under the sermons tab. 

I’m just about back to functional after having my rucksack stolen last week.  Me n’ the boys were on our bicycle made for three, as ever, and some young scroat with too much unharnessed ability came up behind us on his motorbike, grabbing my rucksack on his way past, and the rest, as we say, is history.  So, for a few days life was a blur of gathering copies of bits of paper and getting them rubber stamped in the right places.  In France philosophy says I think therefore I am, in Argentina it is I have an ID document therefore I exist.  The good lady at the civil registry cheerfully informed me that my replacement ID should take between three and six months to come through, so until then I’m sure there will have plenty of opportunity to get used to the idea that I am a mere figment of my own imagination. 

On a more cheerful note, it stopped raining for the second week of the kids’ school winter holiday, so these are our latest Miramar photos; (The photographically aware will notice that I am still struggling to get the hang of that long lens, compounded by the fact that it was blowing a hoolie so the tripod wouldn’t stay still). 

School goes back tomorrow, and then on Wednesday we’re off to Salta for our team conference.  We’ve just booked the bus tickets at some ridiculous price; apparently there’s some cartel which ensures that the price of the buses are set at just enough per cent below the price of flying to maintain passenger numbers.  It hardly seems worth sending the kids back to school/nursery for a couple of days, but believe me I will be making the most of those few precious child-free hours, not least to organise us for the trip. 

Every so often Joni hijacks my camera for a little sojourn.  These are a selection of the shots that I found on my data-card after his circuit of the house today. 

There were several of Danny from close quarters.  He loves his brother.  They play and fight, and play and fight, and play and fight.  Although Joni normally likes to keep his distance when the snot levels reach these proportions. 

He lost his first baby tooth this afternoon, which he’s been looking forward to for months.  “See that white spot on that picture mummy?…

… That’s my tooth!” 

Monday is usually house-blitzing day, so he follows around after me n’ my mop bucket requesting regular estimates as to when I might be available to do something more interesting. 

We bought his first second hand brio train set for his second birthday, and nearly four years later, of today’s 35 photos, 10 are of his current layout. 

This is his wall calendar which I made to help him understand the distance between Danny’s birthday in May, and his in September (i.e. before he drove me crazy asking every half an hour whether it was nearly his birthday yet)

And this is our wood stove which comes into its own at this time of year.  He loves helping to light it, and to feed it with paper and wood.  A true Scout my boy. 

“In our haste for a cosy walk with Jesus, we turn him into a soft toy”. 

This week’s quote from our friend Ben, (someone whose spiritual common sense I most admire.)

A family of mice were out for a walk when they were ambushed by a cat.  Quick as a flash, father mouse jumped up and bellowed, "Bow-wow!"   The cat ran away.  "What was that about Dad?" asked the baby mouse.  "Well my son, now you see why it’s important to learn a second language."

Unashamedly plagiarising… uh I mean drawing your attention to someone else’s work… Maybe I need to do something about my caffeine addiction, but I am right with this guy;

I have heard several Christian songs use the line “Grace like rain”, speaking of God’s great grace pouring down on us. It’s not a BAD analogy, but I have always felt it could be better. Who (besides health freaks) really loves water? Yes, I know we need it, but what do we enjoy and need more than water? The answer is obviously COFFEE. Can I get an Amen right there from the choir!

The blog entry is actually mostly about his experience of learning Spanish (in Spain).  He has some interesting points to make as well as the coffee analogy, and you can check it out by following this link.   Since I’ve acknowledged the source of the quote I’m not plagiarising at all, so caffeine remains my only vice…  Maybe ask my husband for a second opinion on that.