90 Day Language Learning Challenge: Mandarin Chinese - Day 4

This was a rough one today.  Pimsleur changed it up on me and added quite a bit of voacbulary, some of which I knew, but some that I didn't or was of a different dialect than what I had learned.  Not a huge deal, but I always disliked Northern dialects, specifically because of the "-er" at the end of some words.  It just sounds weird to me.

On top of that, Memrise was hard today as well.  Oh well, it should only get easier...right?

Help me RescueTime, you're my only hope...

Tim Challies recently posted some helpful apps and tools he uses from time to time in helping stay organized and on task.  One of the tools he mentioned is called RescueTime.  Basically, it keeps track of what websites you go to and what software you use during the day.  The kicker is that it tracks how long you are doing those things and at the end of the week, sends you an email telling you how bad good that you did.  You can also look at the dashboard on the RescueTime site to see how things are progressing.

It will be good to have accountability in this area since I now work from home.  The free version only tracks what you do on your computer, but the premium version allows you to track other things as well.  I'm sticking with free for now, but here's hoping I see some improvement in not being as easily distracted.

90 Day Language Learning Challenge: Mandarin Chinese - Day 3

I have reached day 3 and things are progressing well.  My current plan is to do one unit of Pimlseur, followed by two units of Memrise each day.  Why two units of Memrise?  In the vocab list that I am using they do twenty-five words at a time, but it is broken up into two sections: Character to English and then Character to Pinyin.  It is a lot of work doing two in one sitting, but I think it's the best way to move forward right now.  I have an app on my iPhone called ChineseSkill which is a Duolingo rip off, but it's free and works great.  I also have an app by Mindsnacks called Learn Chinese which I have used before, but even though the games are fun, I seem to go through it very slowly.  We'll see what happens as the days continue.

I am really looking forward to tracking my progress here.  Hopefully I get better and better.

90 Day Language Learning Challenge: Mandarin Chinese - Day 2

Day 2 is complete.  Mostly refresher stuff.  Nothing new so far, but it's still really helpful.

90 Day Language Learning Challenge: Mandarin Chinese - Day 1

I really want to become better at speaking, reading, and writing Mandarin Chinese. Time to challenge myself and get my act together!  Video explains the plan.

Return of the Blog

I am going to keep this short and sweet. The old blog is out, behold the new has come!

Confused by Eschatology?

I know I am. This is one of those areas of theology that just about always leaves me cross eyed and confused. For those of you who don't know what eschatology is, well you are in the right place. Eschatology comes from the Greek word eskhatos which basically means "last", and another Greek word logia which means "sayings, utterances, oracles". An easier definition is "the study of last things" and we'll just leave it at that.

For most of us, the only eschatology we know is what we were exposed to in the 90's through the Left Behind series. There is quite a bit of scripture that talks about the "last things" but it can be hard to make heads or tails of most of it unless you are willing to spend some time studying it. Left Behind basically told most of us what to believe and we agreed with it 100% because it is all we had ever read on the subject. Sooner or later as we grow in our understanding of God, some big words will start to thrust themselves upon us and we look at them like deer caught in the headlights, either running away from them or getting hit so hard by them that we are left on the side of the road beaten and battered. These words are:

Amillenialism, Premillennialism, Post Millenialism, & Dispensationalism.

Now, if you are anything like me, you will probably look at those words and say, "Who cares?! Jesus doesn't care if I know this stuff." Well, truth be told, it's pretty important. Not "this hinges on eternal salvation" important, but choosing one of theses will define how you view history as well as the future. Rather than try to explain all of these to you, I stumbled on these 4 videos from David Murray at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. They are short and have cartoon pictures. Couldn't be easier. Enjoy!

Amillennial Timeline

Amillennial Timeline from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.

Postmillennial Timeline

Postmillennial Timeline from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.

Premillennial Timeline

Premillennial Timeline from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.

Dispensational Premillennial Timeline

Dispensational Premillennial Timeline from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.