I'm an Indian Outlaw...

I've spent the past month in Oklahoma with 10 other students studying the Cherokee language. It's been quite a time, but bar none the best part was meeting a laundromat owner who moonlighted as a stunt double in the Last of the Mohicans (how do you forget your camera at a time like that?!) However, here's a pictorial tour of what I did catch on film.

Ok, not exactly a "Welcome" sign to Cherokeeland. I wasn't sure what sort of an education I would be receiving for the next 6 weeks. It was only a while later when I found out there was also a "Whitekiller, OK" that I got really nervous.

My breath-taking campus on which I studied and slept. What could possibly make this 5-star resort more attractive?....

... being situated in a cemetery! (location, location, location)...

... gourmet dining...

...and beautiful sleeping facilities. Here is a hole in the wall right by my head, where one morning I awoke to a bright-eyed squirrel staring at me, two inches from my noggin- I hadn't wet the bed in years too... that's why I got this guard-eagle: to save me from future attacks.

It wasn't all bad though. This is my partner and I (no, not THAT kind of partner) with our language helpers. (They make great fry bread, and had Direct TV!)

This is where we'd sit for two hours every morning, picking our language helper's brain, attempting to gather language to analyze. It was a crazy language. "Łɑ yidodɑstiŁʌ·Nni̜" is how you'd say "you will not sleep", but only if you were talking to two people. If you were talking to three people you'd say "Łɑ yidodɑǰiŁʌ·Nni̜"- obviously. This is helpful, because I'm often telling people not to sleep, in Cherokee. My favorite expression though, was ǰiskɑyʌ, which means "I am the man!"

After our morning sessions with the language helper we'd come back home and spend the rest of the day analyzing the data we got. It was nice to be able to work as a team, although as you can see, I'd often hang back and let the rest of them do the hard stuff.

I don't know which is more disturbing- the problem on the white board or the object in your face in front of it.

Eventually the language would burn your brain until spinning around in circles at Mach 3 was the only way to maintain sanity.

Well, that's all for now. "dodʌdɑɡohʌ̜i"!! (see you later) from me and the dɑloniɡe̜ uskolʌ̜ ɡɑliǰo·hɩdʌ̜ ɑskɑyʌ̜ (orange fat man). I will be in Oklahoma through the 17th of November, then it's back up to school in Missouri until Christmas, when I'll finally be done with school! Then it's up to Indiana where I'll spend some time with my family. I hope to be back in Alaska in February, and we'll see where it goes from there!

iǰedo̜lɑhi̜ (come back)!!

Getting Started

Welcome to the blog. Did you know "blog" is actually taken from the phrase weB LOG? I just heard that. These are the kinds of life-altering factoids you will imbibe from this web log. So thank you for logging onto this portion of the web.

I have spent the summer in Alaska with friends and family, which was a difficult decision to make considering my parents have moved to Indiana. However, it has been confirmed increasingly on a daily basis that this was indeed the right choice, as friends come along side to encourage and help out in so many ways. I have already had at least three families share vehicles and homes with me since I got here in May. I could not make it without the support of these people in my life, and "thank you" just doesn't seem to quite suffice.

I will be returning to Missouri in the fall for one more semester of school. I will be studying linguistics, learning how to take a language in oral form, analyze it, make an alphabet for it and turn it into something the people of that language can read and write- something they could not previously do. We will be going to Oklahoma for six weeks to study the Cherokee language in order to put the techniques we are learning into practice. It's going to be tough, but I'm looking forward to it.

So that's what lies ahead on the yellow brick road. Thank you to all for your continued support and for thinking of me.

Here are some visual highlights of the summer so far....

The joys of babysitting... props to the 8 year-old, and his accomplice, the 9 iron.
















Public Boardgaming Society (P.B.S.)
(click for the official myspace page)
"Quaint...yet revolutionary"

Got friends? Got the boardgaming itch? Why not go public?

Here we are, 11 of us playing Cranium in the grocery store coffee lounge area. The fever is spreading, the idea is simple.

Take your boardgaming public- you have no idea how amazing this can be. You'll make a passerby smile, you'll get strangers involved, you'll make memories that last a life time... join the society!



Aaah, space camp! Nothing better than hanging out with 34 astronauts -to-be... and what an age range, 10-15 (see left for visual explanation) Victor and Ruslan, meet Carson! For the past 3 summers I have been a counselor at the local science center's summer space camp-it's as great as it sounds!

















Our area was hit pretty hard by a forest fire in the Caribou Hills, where over 60,000 square miles was destroyed including summer cabins and other property. This is the sky about an hour up the road from the fire. Pretty apocalyptic.





Three studs posing in the next Pac Sun ad. This is what happens on high school retreats... (where are all the high schoolers???)