Posts tagged with "Stellenbosch"

Two new to me blogs you should follow

I’ve come upon two new blogs this week, one from two friends I made this year at SBL, Jimmy and Jessica Parks, and one from Kris Lyle, who I knew of from my dissertation supervisor and my friend Josh Westbury, but didn’t know that he blogged.  Kris attended the same university where I did my PhD and where Josh is working on his.

Jessica and Jimmy (I’m going to alternate their names so as not to appear sexist) have what appears to be a new blog called “This does what now?”  And, from their coursework this semester it looks like they are going to have a lot of upcoming posts that I’ll be excited to read.  To whet you appetite, you can check out their post entitled: Ancient Hebrew Lexicons.  I’ve recently done a fast read of Cruse, as well as in the past read the introduction to cognitive linguistics he co-wrote, and have been working with BDB and HALOT day in and day out for a year.  I’ll be interested to see if they blend some of that coursework and talk a little bit about the lexicons in light of what they read in Cruse on lexical semantics.

Kris’s blog is called Old School Script.  It’s hard not to love a blog when you click over to it and see the first post on the page entitled “Do words have meanings?”  Check it out that post for a quick primer on lexical semantics.

Days 10 & 11 – The Sea

On days 10 and 11, we went to visit Christo (my supervisor) and his wife Marli at Hermanus. We visited the local beach for a short time and tasted wine at La Vierge. La Vierge may have been our favorite wine tasting in South Africa. Erica even liked one of the red wines there, which is quite and achievement. A little later we went on a hike through a beautiful valley and were able to see a small waterfall. And, we came back and had a braai.

On the following day, we visited a small local craft market and visited the beach for a little while longer. After saying our goodbyes, we headed back to Stellenbosch and were fortunate to catch one last wine tasting at Waterford. This was another of our favorites because they had a wine and chocolate tasting experience, though we liked the wine at La Vierge better.

Days 12 and 13 (well, actually 13 and 14 – I didn’t start exactly with the very first day of our trip because it consisted all of travel) were our days of traveling home. I won’t include any pictures from there either. So, that brings me to the end of the South Africa pictures. I hope you’ve enjoyed them. In the next post, I’ll tell you a little about what else has been going on since we got back from South Africa …

Day 9 – Table Mountain

On day 9 we visited Table Mountain. It is now considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The view was gorgeous after we rode the cable car to the top. Then it got pretty cloudy, but it was pretty neat to walk in the clouds.

Days 7 & 8 – Franschoek and … You Guessed It, Stellenbosch Vineyards

Okay. So, I realize I never finished posting picture from our trip to South Africa. That’s because I’ve either been busy or lazy or some combination of the two. At any rate, on day 7 we went to another smaller area called Franschoek, known for its French influence. It was beautiful, with plenty of vineyards and a central part of the town with nice shops. We had the best meal of our trip here at a restaurant called La Petite Ferme. Other highlights were the cellar tour at La Cabriere and the wine tasting at La Motte … and the best cheesecake we’ve ever tasted at Hillcrest Berry Farm on the way back.

On day 8, the weather was looking a little questionable, so we decided to stick around Stellenbosch for … you guessed it, more wine tasting. I’m only including two pictures from this day because the weather was not the best outside for picture taking. But, we did get a chance to walk through one of the vineyards we visited.

Day 6 – The Waterfront and Kirstenbosch Garden

On day 6, we went to Cape Town to the V&A Waterfront and Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. The waterfront was interesting, but a bit commercial. There was a nice craft market though with some good souveneir shops. We also went to a restaurant where I tried a number of different kinds of meat common to South Africa: crocodile, warthog, ostrich, springbok, and kudu.

Kirstenbosch was one of the major highlights of the trip. The views there were incredible. And, we got to sea several families of pheasants wandering around freely.

Day 5 – Penguins, the Cape of Good Hope … and More Wine

On day 5, we decided to drive the coast because we had heard that many of the businesses in Stellenbosch are not open on Sundays. Then, we decided to just keep driving to the Cape of Good Hope. The views were absolutely incredible. Along the way, we also decided to stop and see the penguins at the Boulders. We finished off the day with wine tasting at the Asara estate. The Ivory was our favorite, and we went back to get a bottle later in the week.

Day 4b – City Centre

On the evening of day 4, we spent some time in the central part of Stellenbosch, getting around in our little green rental car. Cafe au lait is different – coffee and milk are served separately and you have to pour the coffee into the milk. We also did a wine tasting (partly for free since one of the vineyards was at one of the restaurants in the city).

Rental Car

Rental Car

Cafe au lait

Cafe au lait

Jeremy Wine Tasting

Jeremy Wine Tasting

Erica Wine Tasting

Erica Wine Tasting

Day 3 – Graduation

You may notice that there are no pictures from day 2. That’s because we were exhausted from the trip … and our luggage got lost!!! So, we spent our first afternoon in Stellenbosch trying to get our clothes straight for graduation. Christo (my PhD supervisor) and his wife Marli were so hospitable; they provided us with everything we needed (both on this day and every day afterwards). Then, Christo braai-“ed” for us. His cooking (and choices of wine) has been incredible.

The pictures below are from day 3, my graduation day. Erica (my wife) also took a video of me going across the stage. I’ll get that up later, but the pictures will do for now. We attended the graduation ceremony (after I got to spend some time with the other PhD graduates in the Coetzenburg Rugby Club) and attended a luncheon put on by the university afterwards. I got to hear speeches by some inspirational people, like Pius Langa and Ruda Landman.

We came home and took a break, then we went to our first wine tasting. Christo gave us a good start and showed us a glimpse of what is available in terms of Stellenbosch wine tasting.


 

 

My Dissertation on Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Learning

Thanks to Daniel and Tonya again for mentioning my vocabulary research as well as Rod.  I was going to post this when it hit SUNScholar, but I’m not sure how long that process takes.   So, for those interested in reading my dissertation, you can find it HERE.

Daniel also mentioned that I’m now using a program called ANKI. It’s open source and free … and I LOVE it.

This is part of the self critique that I would offer on my dissertation, which I addressed in my oral defense (in addition to the fact that the testing was necessarily partial).  My computer skills limited the development of new vocabulary learning materials to a significant degree, especially a good number of years back when I started the development phase.  There were no programs available at the time that allowed me to include everything that I felt like I needed to in a flashcard program.  ANKI now allows me to do that.  Much of the development from Chapter 4 has become streamlined in ANKI.  Only I’ve not been able to include listening and association exercises like those I developed for a web-based version.

If you download ANKI and would like to see the flashcards I’ve done, let me know.  I’ll send you a dropbox link.  The ANKI flashcards may not fit your course due to textbook differences, but you can use them as a template for including a variety of vocabulary learning strategies on your own cards.

If you read my dissertation, I’d be glad to dialogue with you concerning anything in the comments here or by email, etc.