children, rinse your reeds.

my throat hurts when i swallow. it feels kind of like i have a cut on the left side of my esophagus. (unfortunatly, this does not stop me from eating). i'm not sick, so my only explaination for this is that i picked up some nasty bacteria from my yucky-tasting-never-been-washed-sax reed. this is my only explaination.

in other less gross and infinatly more exciting news, i've been reading two REALLY COOL AND EXCITING articles. i am pretty convinced if it wasnt for God, i would not be reading these REALLY COOL AND EXCITING things right now. anyway they are papers about the history and state of the dong orthography. the dong are a minority group of China which we got the privledge to live with for a short time last summer. orthography is a word lillian taught me to pronounce two weeks ago. it is basically language written down using symbols. the curious way by which i have these papers in my greasy little hands is this: joshua-elijah - whom nearly always has the dong people on his mind, tongue and heart - met a man (in the happening place of saskatchewan) whose daughter and son in law are language M's in china. pretty cool, eh? after excitedly conversing through email (with the abundant use of exclaimation marks), they passed his email on to another couple who work mainly with the dong people, and thier language. hmm. yep, and they sent us those aforementioned papers on the development of that orthography. there's some more sock burning cool stuff about that, but in all honestly i'm wary of this ultra public internet-ness, so in the spirit of not wanting to get anybody in trouble, ask me about it and i'll be more than excited to share with you!