Return Home

Well, obviously I'm not too concerned about keeping up with blogging since I haven't written in months! But, I've finally come home from being deployed. Now I'm back home getting settled in to being back home. Our three-year-old, Wesley, is taking gymnastics class. He's hilarious! One of the best in his class he makes me so proud!

It's funny, seeing my son play and have fun at gymnastics makes me want to go back to CrossFit. Might seem odd, the correlation there, but anyone who knows CrossFit knows there's lots of cool gymnastics workouts included in CrossFit. Anyways, I need to find a gym!

Language Learning

I once read the book "How to Learn Any Language; Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own" by Barry Farber. Then last night I watched the movie "Limitless," and it got me thinking about learning languages again. I have always loved learning foreign languages! But for some reason I've never really gotten around to putting Mr. Farber's advice on language learning into practice. Now, I think since I'm deployed and I can use my free time however I want, maybe I should start back up learning another language.

Modern technology is amazing! I have at my fingertips, all kinds of great language learning tools. Now, the question is how to use them and what language to start studying.

Japanese
Pros: I'm going to be living there next year so it'll be useful, it's closely related to Korean (grammatically) so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Cons: it really is actually difficult; multiple alphabets, no direct teacher to help me sort through the complexities.

French
Pros: beautiful language, useful throughout Europe, friend here that speaks it natively and can help, I've studied it once before so I have a head start.

Cons: no direct usefulness, no definite need/future usefulness (i.e. I doubt I'll be visiting a French speaking country any time soon).

Any other language
Pros: joy of learning a language

Cons: no plans and probably no teachers, unknown future usefulness.

Still haven't made a decision I'll post more when I decide.

Apple products

I have a couple computer savvy friends that made fun of me for getting this iPad. Even so, this is nothing short of a shameless plug for all Apple products. I am nothing less than very impressed with the iPad, iPod Touch, and classic iPod I have.

I know they're not for everyone, but I think I may never go back to IBM compatible products again! They have been quite user-friendly and the battery life on all the products I have is simply amazing. While I'm deployed battery life and convenience are the most important features in any electronics. I don't have high speed Internet and, more importantly I don't have time to mess with something to make it work.

None of my Apple products crash, and if they do, it's quite easy and quick to recover from and doesn't take any time to restart. They have an amazing array of apps that can do even more than my standard laptop. I regularly call and text my family back home via the Internet for free! If all Apple products are this user-friendly I might just have to stick with them from now on. Sure they're more expensive, but I'm willing to pay for the convenience.