Bored Druid ThreadFollow

Some of that booze then. Even better.

Finland makes some of the best Metal in the world.

Exhibit A Exhibit B

Happy birthday, Maz. It's still for a few minutes, right?

We had a birthday party for my roommate's girlfriend in place of a goodbye party for me today. I didn't drink. It was kind of lame. I spent half of it upstairs speaking to nice non-drunk people.

I am taking some good English ale to Germany for Andrew. Not for me, though. I'm thinking I'm not gonna spend my time at university drunk... how strange.

DUH! Of course!

Edited, Jul 20th 2011 10:40am by smunks

Aww, that was so cute! And hilarious at the same time.

Maybe it wasn't Finnished yet.[/pun]

You forgot to put on glasses and shout YEEEEAAAAH

So on the airplane today, I met a lovely family from Afghanistan and talked to the mother for most of the flight. She actually started talking to me, rather than I to her (although I sat down beside them on purpose). We talked about all sorts of random countries, translation work, and religion. It was pretty awesome.

Then at the airport, my stepfather couldn't locate me and called me and I couldn't take the call because I had no credit and there were roaming charges, so I asked this random guy if I could use this phone and his friend (an Arab) gave me his phone and then I talked to him while waiting and it's just... ugh.

I think it's interesting how Christianity and Islam have very similar values, but Christians seem to be much more willing to ignore them and be selfish and immoral.



And yeah, I'm in Germany now!



I was also wondering, if I were to procreate with someone who would bring a language that isn't one of 'mine' into the picture, how do people decide which languages to raise their children in? Logically, I'd go for the most widely spoken ones (including English) or ones very similar to linguae francae (e.g. Urdu -> Hindi). But I think it's important to give children a sense of identity and while I think national pride and all that is a bunch of rubbish, I think language is an important part of culture and children should be encouraged to understand their parents' culture. I know how awful it is when there's such a huge cultural shift between generations that communication becomes very difficult, and I really want to try avoiding that if and when I have kids...

I find it amazing that two sister religions can spend so much of the last 1,500 years killing each other.



Personally it was easy to choose English since both me and the Mrs speak it, and so does basically everyone else around here.

You'll find ways to keep the other side relevant in their life if you make it a priority. We celebrate things like Girls Day and Chinese New Year. If you know people in an expat community finding someone to teach a language shouldn't be too hard, and there are other ways as well. For example as I write this my daughter is watching Ni Hao Kai Lan and has managed to pick up a few words; which is great considering she's two. We also have immersion schools and other stuff in town that are options (if we can afford them...). Recipes are a great way to keep a culture alive too, a couple of torn cookbooks and a few family recipes are worth their weight in gold. Also there's spending time with relatives; a summer trip back when they're older and staying with cousins is something our friends have done. It works both ways of course; hosting the in-laws for a couple of months may be tough, but there's a lot of exposure there even if language is a barrier.

If nothing else if you wet the appetite, they'll find ways to explore the other culture on their own when they get older.

The last and current Pope's Anti-Condom Campaigns, Westboro Baptist Church and varus Gumbo Galahad. Might not be sole rights, but definitely majority stock.