Nora McNamara

One of the things I get to do as a graduate student and as a missionary is travel. I’m going to a conference tomorrow, and I didn’t have my usual amount of time to think through what I needed and make detailed lists. So, here’s what I did!

Chances are you’re planning some vacation or holiday trips in the next few months. Whether you’re going on a three-day business trip or preparing for a two-week vacation, here are some guidelines for maximizing suitcase space and minimizing your load.

First, I figured out what I was going to wear each day. No waffling or indecision-I committed to three outfits. This is different from me bringing all the things that I think I might want to wear and ending up with a huge suitcase. Nope. I decided, and brought a sweater to wear if I get chilly.

Next, I just ran around my room and bathroom, listing off what I use from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed at night. As I thought of each thing, I grabbed it and put it in my suitcase.

After that, I asked my housemate what I might be forgetting. Housemates know how we tend to space out! She reminded me of my charging cord for my phone.

Finally, I organized my stuff into a little toiletry bag and some mesh zipper bags of different sizes that I got in the Philippines, they have them on Amazon too. Don’t skip this step! Having little things loose in the suitcase is a great way to not be able to find them when they get stuck in your socks.

My hope is that these tips help you out as you pack for your next journey!

Question: are you traveling anywhere this upcoming season? I’d love to hear where you’re going and what you do to keep travel manageable. Leave a comment or send me an email, I’d love to hear from you!

Bon voyage!

My friends who have done a PhD told me that they stopped reading for pleasure while they were studying. That freaked me out a little bit. Reading for pleasure is what I do to relax. I’m super thankful to say that even during this PhD program I’m still reading for pleasure. Maybe you’ll like these books too!

So, these are my 3 favorite non academic books lately!

The first one isn’t really a book, it’s actually a gratitude journal. The tagline for this is “Start your day with gratitude, end your way with joy.” It really works! God created our brains to not be able to be grateful and be worried at the same time. I can’t recommend this highly enough! Here’s the link to buy one for yourself

Joy & Gratitude Journal

The second book is The Sparrow, which might be my all time favorite fiction book. It’s not a happy book, you have to read the sequel to get to the good ending, but I just love the portrayal of crossing cultures and doing initial language learning. One beautiful quote is “His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life.”

The third book that has really blessed me this year Is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. Can you imagine how a 21st grader like me would be feeling some burnout? One quote that has helped me is “The moral of the story is: We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from.”

So, what are you reading these days?

What do you think of when you think of learning a new language? What words come to mind? Probably not shame, huh? But, in serving language learners for the past 25 years, I’m starting to think that shame is a key emotion when it comes to language learning. Shame for giving up. Shame for not trying. Shame for failing. Shame for not being as good as someone else.

Shame.

And, it’s not a kind of shame that propels us to do better, either. Rather, it’s shame that freezes us in place, makes us feel like language learning is hopeless, compels us to hide our lack of language, even leads us to discourage those who are still trying.

We hide behind busyness, hide behind the missionary community, hide behind English language ministry when that’s not what we came to do, hide behind other languages that we do speak well. That we can be adults in. Be respected in.

So, today, let’s stop hiding. Let’s name our struggles with language, get help, and move forward.

Because when we shine the light on shame, it loses its power over us and can be turned into something beautiful.

I’ll start. I didn’t learn Mbelime, even though I tried pretty hard. I got off on the wrong track, and didn’t have anyone to help me. That failure, though, turned me into a coach. I get to give people now what I needed then. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s beautiful, actually.

If you would like to tell me your story, I would be honored to listen. Click here to connect.

In the middle of applying for graduate school on top of my normal workload, I got a message from an Iraqi man who was willing to help me with my Arabic.

I didn’t have time.

I’ve also waited for a few years to find someone to help me with Arabic.

So, I said yes.

We’re doing something I’d never thought of-sending voice messages back and forth on Facebook Messenger. So, he sends me a minute or so in English, I send it back, saying what he said in a more natural way.

I don’t have enough Arabic to understand that yet (I tried!), so I sent him a photo of a page in a picture book, and then recorded myself trying to talk about it. He responded saying what I’d said in much better Arabic, and adding some more. I could understand, because I was looking at the picture he was talking about.

This has been great for my Arabic, and fits into my schedule. If I have a few minutes, I do a little Arabic.

And, I’m slowly making a new friend!

Is it the perfect situation? Nope! But, progress, not perfection, right?

What creative ways have you used technology to build relationships in your new language?

Ideally, we would all have several hours a week to spend with a host person in their country. That’s perfect, right?

But, I run into too many people who say that if they can’t learn language in the perfect situation, they can’t learn at all.

Thankfully, that’s a bunch of hooey.

I’m fluent in Spanish. I got that way never ever having been in a Spanish speaking country. (I have now, and it helps my Spanish, but I got there without the perfect situation.)

To the people that say that they can’t learn unless they’re there in a country doing it full time and perfectly, I say…

Progress, not perfection.

Next week you’ll hear how I’m making progress imperfectly in Iraqi Arabic.

This is hands down the thing that has helped me most in learning a new language.

Drum roll, please…

mylanguageexchange.com.

Yep, a website. But what a website! It doesn’t magically generate flash cards or drill me in grammar, oh no.

It connects me with people. As they say right at the top of their site: “Become fluent in any language while making friends with native speakers.”

That’s priceless.

Check them out!