Good stuff

Just a quick word--

Check out the pics links Tim has reorganized on the right. We're posting less pictures as time goes on, but the ones we are posting are pretty neat! We got to go to Pilanesberg on Sunday with Anne and Palma, and we saw giraffe, zebra, kudu, and a rhino cross the road!

Also, I saw something written about Peace Corps yesterday that I actually liked! Check out The Doorknob by Peter Hessler. Do we know how to say "doorknob" in Setswana? No, but then again door "knobs," as opposed to "handles," are not too common here--or in much of the developing world, I assume (and check out the fourth comment down from a native Chinese speaker who doesn't know how to say "doorknob" in his language). So why Kristof wants us to know how to say "doorknob" in the developing world, I'm not quite sure. Probably he didn't think that one through.

But don't ask me about "handle," either. :P

Neither term would be on my list for tolerable/getting-by fluency, however. I remember being able to carry on quite in-depth conversations in Mexico in Spanish, and I can't say I ever knew either term in Spanish. So I think Kristof has really conflated language knowledge with cultural and "country" knowledge, here...Or else, imposed a monolinguistic view, as if many people in multilingual settings know the word in more than one language. But these are the least of my issues with Kristof's view here, I agree with Hessler on all the issues raised generally.