Boondoggles.

We have had many people stay overnight in our apt since moving in late August, but not until recently did we have our first official visitors from the States. Lauren and Joy joined us for about 10 days and we toured most of the country with them (picture album from these days are posted in “our pictures”). Just a couple days after dropping them off at the airport, we were back picking up our next set of visitors…The Swan family! We are currently busy again touring around much of the country with them. Many of the things I write about and the pictures we take may seem to have little to do with our academic coursework. Is life over here just a series of “Boondoggles?”

Boon*dog*gle: work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.

Well for those of you who might be silently wondering (or verbally…Mark) yes we do academic coursework as well. In fact, just recently Stacie and I FINALLY finished our huge Historical Geography Seminar paper. Basic premise of this project was to design a two-week study tour – studying the various geographical regions of the land, (climate, geology, routes, etc.) as well as the specific history, archeology, and stories found in the Biblical Text of each site to be visited on this hypothetical study tour (hopefully to be used someday).


Stacie and I have each completed our own projects and combined total was roughly 380 pages! We spent many many hours of study and research and even chopped down a couple olive trees in order to turn it in, but they are done and we feel thankful to have that one off our plate. Now on our current boondoggle (leading the Swan family around the country) we are already putting these projects to some use.