The Night Before Christmas

Before leaving for church, we labeled our stockings with our names. We wrote our names on our stockings in English and Chinese, the latter with the help of our guests. Dennis and Marie have Chinese names, now. Joe read us the Clement Moore poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," commonly known as "The Night Before Christmas."

Christmas Crackers

The descriptions of Christmas crackers in English novels always confused me. In my mind, 'cracker' denotes something edible and crunchy, like a saltime. But apparently English crackers explode, at least at Christmas.

After dinner last evening, my confusion was finally put to rest. Dennis Cope, native of London, brought over a box of Christmas crackers, sent by his brother. They are actually low voltage which contain tiny amounts of explosive. They open with a loud pop, offering crowns and small toys-- kind of like a pinata. Inside my cracker was a shoe horn. Zhao got a silver yo-yo.

We were lucky to have these Christmas crackers from England. While their explosive force of was not enough frighten the cats, no one would want explosives on a plane or travelling through the mail these days, whatever the amount. Marie Cope said she'd seen them at Bath and Body Works, so apparently you can get them over here. They're lots of fun.

Deck the Halls!

Joe put up the tree a couple of weeks ago, but except for the lights, we left it untrimmed until Christmas Eve. By then, the Chinese members of the crew had assembled-- Leonard Li and Zhao from Troy University in Alabama; Yinguan, my graduate assistant and her friend Jing. They put the finishing touches on the tree.

It's always interesting to go through the ornaments we've accumulated over the years. They aren't just decorations-- they are artifacts of our life. Along with the generic glass balls of past years: embroidered cloth ornaments made by Joe's mother in the latter years of her life; beaded candy canes and clothespin reindeer made by our children in grade school. A silver ornament inscribed with the name of Jan Lenz, my daughters first grade teacher. On it is a date: 1986/

Go Greyhound!

This Christmas, our home will be full of international students. Some from Johnson City, some from further away Our kids don't arrive here until December 26 as they're going to Cincinnati first.

I sent an air ticket to Leonard Li, a former student from Weihai who is now studying at Troy University in Alabama. Leonard helped me in countless ways when I taught in Weihai last year. He wanted to bring his girlfriend Zhao, but she decided to come by Greyhound. I wondered what kind of experience she would have. Turned out Zhao's trip was much better than Leonard's. She left Troy at 3:00 PM Sunday and was in Johnson City by 9:15 the next morning. Leonard arrived at the Montgomery airport at 4:00 PM Sunday. His flight was delayed, and he slept on the airport floor. He finally got here today (Monday) just before Noon. I haven't taken Greyhound in years, but it apparently does better sometimes.

Above: Zhao and Leonard

Below: Butter, principal feline and master of the of the feast

The year of the 3 inch binder

It's been a full three months since I posted. This has been the most draining semester of my ETSU life. I was carrying an overload, and I went to Poland early in the semester. I supervised five student teachers and did a course online for the first time. I wrote a grant for an Ipod and began learning how to do Podcast instruction. The university assigned me to some international education committees. This was only fair, since they released me to go to Weihai last year. And to top it all off, I "went up for" tenure, which means I jammed my evaluations, credentials, grants, certificates, fan letters, and articles between the covers of a three inch ring binder and filled out dozens of forms for the reading enjoyment of my colleagues and superiors. For assistant professsors, tenure is like the holy grail. If you get it, your position in the university is more or less secure. If you don't, you're out of a job. I'll know the outcome in July.

When you apply for tenure, you also apply to become an associate professor. Tenure documents are printed out on blue paper. Promotion papers, on the other hand, are rendered in salmon. It's important to do this paperwork precisely. Otherwise, you do it over. Doing the paperwork was much harder than writing my dissertation, though it took somewhat less time. I think it helps to be organized and very neat, and I am neither. I finally hired a graduate student to assemble the three inch binder. It looked great. I should have asked her to organize the binder of blue and salmon forms, but I thought I could handle this on my own. I was wrong. I had to redo all the forms, because the holes weren't lining up right. The electric hole punch is the instrument of choice for this task, I learned. Note this for times when you're punching holes.

Make a wish!

No doubt you've heard of the Make a Wish Foundation, the organization that grants desperately ill and needy children's wishes to meet their favorite ball player or visit Disney World. I am neither desperately ill, nor needy, nor a small child; but last week one of my greatest (and nerdiest) dreams was realized. I got to present at the Poznan Linguistic meeting in Gneizno, Poland. Much of the time was spent at the conference center, but we did go into town one beautiful fall day to view the cathedral (above).

Some of the world's pre-eminent linguists were in attendance and available for conversation at meals and social events. The noted sociolinguist, Peter Trudgill (1st below), whose work I had long admired, was at my presentation on linguistic accommodation. This experience was both exhilarating and intimidating. I was so uptight that I wore my one pair of dressy shoes-- the ones I bought to wear to my dissertation defense; these are still practically new.

Among the many lingusitic "treats" were Prof. John Ohala's talk on historical
linguistics (2nd below) and Prof. Helen Dry's plenary address on linguistics and technology.

On the Road

The classroom part of our program has ended. Now, with just a week to go, we are taking our visitors on a tour of Philadelphia and Washington. On the way to our first destination-- Philadelphia-- we stopped at Gettysburg.