Europe Trip

In the last month of my sabbatical, I went to Europe for two weeks.

I spent a few days in Brussels recovering from jet lag. It's a small city, with some beautiful old buildings and parks. This was my favorite park, dedicated to the various guilds that made Brussels such a thriving city.

Then I went to the Universite catholique de Louvain for the Learner Corpus Summer School. It was a very exciting week in which I learned a lot, and I met many linguist/language teachers from around the world. Now I have many ideas about what I will do next with the learner corpus I am creating at Waseda.


After that, I went to Brighton in the south of England to meet with Lynne Murphy, a professor at the University of Sussex, to discuss a project involving antonyms in Japanese. This photo was taken near her house.I knew that Brighton was by the sea, but I was surprised to find that it is quite hilly--and Lynne and her husband live up near the top of one.

ALMOST a student again!

I'm really enjoying the classes here at the Linguistics Institute. I am attending 4 classes: one on writing systems (of languages past and present), one on language change (historical and present, English and other languages), one on language variation (focusing on English, especially cases where two different words seem possible in a particular kind of sentence, and looking at differences in meaning/style/etc. which might distinguish them), and a class that is hard to describe in a blog that will probably be read by people who don't know much linguistics. (It focuses on ways we can characterize a speaker's knowledge of syntax--in this case English--using statistical models based on frequencies of words and constructions). I may also take one more class if I can find one I like. A lot of interesting classes are scheduled at the same time as those above, but in one of the free periods, I've tried two different classes. One was a bit beyond me, and so I tried joining another class recommended by another person here. That one was really a bit too "Intro" level to be interesting. But four is the normal number, and there are evening lectures and workshops on Wednesdays and weekends, so I don't really need more.

I am almost a student because I don't have to do any homework! There are assignments for anyone who wants to get college credit, but for the rest of us, it's enough if we just do the readings (as much as possible--there are too many to get to them all) and go to class.

I'm also enjoying the beautiful campus here. Today after dinner, I went to the Stanford Shopping Center (I'm not a fan of shopping or malls, but I have to admit it is a beautiful place) to buy a sweater (it's been cold the last few days, and I didn't bring enough warm clothes), and I decided to get a camera. I didn't bring my digital camera from Japan because it was a little too big and heavy, especially the battery charger (which I have to use often because the battery wears down so fast. ) I really like my old Sony CyberShot, now about 7 years old, but when I saw a Sony store in the mall, I decided to get a new one. It is much smaller and lighter, and works like the old one...except that all the menus are in ENGLISH! It really felt weird when I picked up the one in the store and saw English on the screen. I might actually try using more of the features with this one. Starting tomorrow, I am going to take pictures of the campus to post here, so check back.

Stanford!

I am finally here at Stanford University, for the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute. I arrived in California on Wednesday, and I stayed for three nights at a hotel in Menlo Park, the town just north of here, to try to recover from jet lag. But today I moved down to the university, to my new home-for-one-month, in the graduate student housing. I got my computer connected, bought the books I'll need for the courses which start tomorrow, and rented a bicycle!

In the past three days, I've done a lot of walking,various places in Menlo Park and from there down to the university and around downtown Palo Alto, maybe 5 or 6 miles each day. That was fun--I enjoyed looking at all the gorgeous flowers everywhere--but being on a bicycle is much better! On one of the days when we don't have classes (maybe July 4th?), I plan to ride down to the wetlands/nature preserve areas down by San Francisco Bay. I don't think I'll ride it to class--the distances between the buildings we'll be using are not really that far--but it will be very good for exercise and just general joy.

I know that things will get very busy soon, but I think that I'll try to keep up with this blog, after telling my friends and family about it. (I thought it was linked to my home page, but I realized just now that it is not. I'll have to try to change that. I'll have a lot to say, but because I foolishly decided not to bring my camera, I won't have many good pictures. I thought the camera would be heavy (especially since I'll be bringing back books) and a hassle at the airport, and that if I really wanted to take a picture, I could use the camera on my cell phone. HA! The picture above is the only decent one out of many, many attempts yesterday, a closeup of a cool cactus in the Arizona cactus garden on campus. But maybe if I keep trying, I'll get better at using that camera.

Well, check back for updates, and maybe for photos.

Sabbatical

For this semester, I am on sabbatical: a whole six months for research, during which I don't have to teach.

I had the option of asking for one year rather than six months, and I also had (and still have) the option of asking for an extension of six months or one year (which I might or might not get), but for a lot of reasons, I decided to just ask for six months.

One is that I kind of want to be around at SILS (the School of International Liberal Studies) during the final semester for our first graduating class. Another is that I had promised to work on an on-going fall semester project. But the biggest reason is that probably because I was worried that if I took one year or more, I might waste too much of my time. With only six months, I really have to get to work, don't I? And if I take six months instead of one year, I will theoretically be eligible for another sabbatical much sooner. (Of course, how soon I get to have another depends on who is on the committee to decide that when I apply next time...)

In the first few weeks, I have just been been trying to get my wrk schedule figured out. In the past, it has always been true that I can't get any work done in the mornings, and that still seems to be true. For the first few weeks, I was feeling bad about goofing around or sleeping in the morning, but now I have just decided to give in, and just plan to work in the afternoon and evenings. But that means that I need to eat less for dinner (I don't work well on a full stomach) and not drink alcohol with dinner... Or else just do the dinner preperations early and eat late, and work in between. That might be the best plan of all.

Why am I even making dinner at all? That is one of the joys of being on sabbatical, I think! WHen I am working, Masashi and I don't get to eat together enough, and we also eat out a lot. I really enjoy cooking when I have time.

During this sabbatical, I am working on two main projects, and a lot of little ones. But maybe I'll save that for another post.