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Here is a copy of our Christmas Card, just in case you didn't get on in the mass email!

Ben's First Bee Sting

Last Friday received his first bee sting. He was on the ELC Fall Hike (with teachers and students from the ELC, of course) and a bee flew into his stomach. It stung him through the two shirts he was wearing. It was swollen and itchy for awhile, but he is fine now.

April Snow

Well, Alison and I arrived safe in Utah. Yesterday it snowed a whole bunch. Nothing accumulated here, but it did in the Mountains. I had the opportunity to go to an ELC Retreat in Aspen Grove near Sundance. I went cross-country skiing for about 1hour. There was about 12in of new powder. Underneath that, there was about 3-4 feet of packed snow. It was nice. The coolest thing about the event was that it was almost 50 degrees outside. I needed no winter clothes. The snow was melting, but it was slow enough to be enjoyable.

A Picture of Us

My family will recognize this picture--it is the one from Dad's blog.
I downloaded it, and then decided to post it here so our friends
and other family members can see what we look like these days.
Obviously that is me on the left, and Ben on the right.
It was a warm, Texas winter day, a Sunday, actually.
That is Gmom and Pop's ward building in the background.
We went to church with them one Sunday just for fun.

A Sudden Change

As of January 12, 2006, we are Texans. We came down for Christmas vacation in December. Ben had time to think and realized he didn't like the PhD program at UIUC. We had a month long winter break from the university, so we spent time job hunting during our vacation to get an idea of the job market here. We both had interviews within a week and got part time jobs lined up. So Ben dropped out of the program at UIUC and we moved.

Moving was a pain.
We drove to Champaign on a Tuesday. Actually we drove to Missouri. Our car broke down on the highway. Ben said, "Hey! I can't accelerate. Why can't I accelerate?"
His brother said, "Then engine is off. Try restarting the car."
It wouldn't start. And it wouldn't start. And it wouldn't start. Meanwhile, we were coasting and quickly decelerating (is that a real word?) from 65 mph to 10 mph. We were in a lane on the highway that had concrete barriers on both sides for some reason, so there was no shoulder to pull over. At 10 mph Ben's brothers (Mattew and Andrew) got out and pushed the car. While they were pushing the car, Matthew tripped and was dragged by the car for a little way. Fortunately he wasn't hurt at all. Eventually we found a place with some room and pulled over. Then the highway patrol came, and then roadside assistance, and finally a tow truck. I think we waited about 30 minutes total. The tow truck only had room for two passangers. Ben and I rode in the tow truck, and Matthew and Andrew rode in the police car. They said it was kind of cool and kind of not cool.

We were towed to the next exit, which had a Ford dealership. But since it was 8:00 PM, it was closed. We walked from the dealership to a gas station to buy some "food," and then walked to a hotel. Keep in mind that it was dark, and raining, and we were carrying our luggage with us. The attendant at the gas station thought we were weird. Fortunately, it was about a 10 minute walk and the hotel had vacancies. We watched a lot of TV. And I ate the whole bag of licorice we got at the gas station. And we slept.

On Wednesday morning we called the Ford dealership to check on the car. The timing belt had broken and cost $300ish to fix. We were on the road again by 1:00 PM. And we got to Champaign at 3:00 PM.

From 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM we packed boxes, went to the apartment leasing office to end our contract, ate dinner, got the moving truck, and closed our bank account.

From 7:00 PM to about 10:00 PM, we loaded the moving truck. Then we went to bed.

On Thursday we got up around 7:00 AM and cleaned the house. And we finished loading the car and moving truck. We left Champaign around 9:30 AM. Ben drove the moving truck, and his brothers drove our car. We arrived back in Texas at 11:00 PM. It was a long day, but at least the cars worked fine and we were ok. Just tired.

On Friday, we got a storage unit, changed banks, changed our cell phones, took care of some paperwork for new jobs, and unpacked our clothes and stuff we are keeping at Ben's parents' house with us. We are living with Ben's parents until we find a place of our own.

On Saturday we put our "nonessential" stuff in storage.

Now it is Sunday and I am very tired.

I already have a job tutoring math, reading, and writing at Sylvan Learning Center in Plano. Ben is still looking for a full time job. He had a part time job lined up teaching ESL at a community college, but the enrollment was too low and his classes were dropped. We are realizing that ESL is not a stable job field. We are looking to make a career change soon to something more stable.

So that is the story of how we moved all of a sudden from Illinois to Texas.

The end.

Hi everyone!

I thought I would give you all an update on my schooling and stuff.

First, the semester is almost over. I don't look forward to returning to school tomorrow though. I have to go for two weeks, then one week of exams and then I'm done!

Of particular note, I have been carefully examining my career and what I actually want to do. As I have been here, I have had some interesting experiences with the ESL community. I won't go into detail, but I don't think that teaching English is what I want to pursue. It is a good skill to have, but focusing my current education on it will not strengthen me. I have been prayerfully considering a change in my linguistic focus.

Having said that, my current plan is to pursue computational linguistics. There are many advantages to this. First, I can still realize my dream of being a linguistics professor. With my Ph.D. in Linguistics I can get a job at Universities. Second, studying computational linguistics opens up many more job opportunities.

What is computational linguistics? That's a big question. A lot of it deals with computer applications to solve linguistic problems. Speech/text recognition and natural language processing are just two areas. You know the automated phone conversations that recognize you saying yes or no or maybe numbers? That was developed by computational linguists and computer programmers.

So I will keep you all posted!

Life at UIUC

I just thought I would give everyone an update of what is happening with my new college life here at the U of I.

I LOVE IT!

This is a totally cool place. It's great to be among non-members once again. I love answering all their questions. I always tell people that I am from Texas but just moved from Utah. Then the flood of questions begin.

All of my fellow students and colleagues are very nice and friendly. I am starting to make some good friendships.

On another note, I went to introduce myself to the Department Chair today. He is a very nice man. He recently went to BYU for some training and had wonderful things to say about it. He asked me some basic questions and then asked how I planned to support myself. He was aware of the Assistantship that I have where I will be teaching business writing to ESL students. I told him that Alison would be working part-time and that we had begun applying for student loans. When I said that, he said, "We don't want you to have loans, could you use some more financial aid?" I told him that it would be nice. He asked what languages I spoke and told me he could get me a position teaching Spanish. Then he realized that it might be too much to teach two classes. He then asked if I had any web experience. When I said yes, his eyes lit up and he offered me a job doing web development for the Linguistics Arabic page. I was so excited. Hopefully that will work out. I am constantly amazed  at how the Lord blesses Alison and me.

We love you all and are happy to have this new experience. Thank you for all your prayers and fasting for us. And . . . if you ever come to visit, we'd love it!

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