We’ve been looking for property in Puerto Rico again. It is kind of difficult for a few reasons. One reason being it is 3,000 miles away. The other is that the listings available are few and sometimes it is near impossible to get a hold of the realtor listing the property or if we do get a hold of someone they don’t follow up with more pictures.
Anyhow we are looking again and will make another trip once we see something of interest.
For the last two Saturdays I have been given acupuncture treatments here in Greeley. I’ve never done acupuncture before, but it’s kind of cool. I haven’t really felt too differently from it, but she says it might take a couple of treatments. Britton and I have been thinking of starting a family and we thought acupuncture could help, even though I’d never done it before. Plus sometimes my neck and shoulders ache if I sleep on them wrong, so I thought maybe it could help for that as well.
Some of the acupuncture needles on my legs
For those of you who have never done acupuncture, here’s how it works: First you fill out some paperwork just as you would at a doctor’s office, asking about your various health issues. Then they talk to you about your diet. For me, she said I am running “cold” and so I needed to add more hot foods which include red meat (which I usually avoid!), red vegetables, hot foods like soups and hot teas and spicy foods.
Next she took my pulse (which has always been really low -like in the 50s or 60s, another “cold” sign) and then she looked at my tongue. Finally, she inserted the needles. They are really pretty small -about the thickness of a hair- and most of them you can’t even feel when they are inserted, but a few I could. The one in the webbing of my hand between my thumb and index finger felt strong, but she said that was normal.
Then she leaves me alone on the table with the needles in me for about 15 or 20 minutes to work the Qi (chi -life energy) around my body. It’s nice and peaceful with the heat lamp and the ocean waves CD going on in the background.
She said she might be giving me Chinese herbs next week and possibly doing moxibustion. Moxibustion is where they put hot, smoking herbs over the acupuncture points to increase its effectiveness.
Altogether this is called Traditional Chinese Medicine. I’ve actually been pretty impressed by the overall holistic approach to health. It seems like in conventional medicine it is about certain body parts separate from the rest of the body, emotional state and other factors that influence health.
Last night we hopped over to Fort Collins to check out a local band Trichome. We’ve seen them a few times at different venues. They held a free show in support of their CD release party. We went with our friends Matt and Jamie and Isaac came down from Lafayette CO.
Before the show started.
RockBand, the game did a pretty good job of describing the progression of a band. You start off doing small shows then bigger and bigger and gain more and more fans. Trichome has done a pretty good job and now they are releasing their CD. We have noticed a change in their style too. What we first appreciated about them was their ability to play reggae. They’ve taken on a more funk/disco persona from what we’ve seen in the past.
Cool Stage Lights
I think for us the change in music style isn’t exactly what we like because we’ve followed them as a reggae band. But I wish them well and have seen a remarkable improvement in their performances. They are getting more and more professional and it seems that they have a pretty big following!
Short Video Of their Entrance (video sound really sucks)
…Hace falta el que vendrá.
I love Spanish expressions and phrases. Just as with English, sayings are an important part of any language.
This particular expression: “El que se fue, no hace falta. Hace falta el que vendrá” means loosely: “You do not need what has already left (gone away). What you need has yet to (or will) come.”
I was trying to think of an expression that is similar in English. Maybe: “You can’t change the past, but you can know that the best is yet to come.”
Many expressions have a very similar meaning in another language, but the setting, characters, etc of the expression change. For instance:
“Cada muerte de un obispo” literally means: “When a bishop dies”, but figuratively, the expression is trying to say that the described occurance happens very rarely.
In English, the equivalent expression would be:
“Once in a blue moon.”
While I never remember the exact science behind what a blue moon is, and eventhough it is a very different phenomenon than a bishop dying, this phrase means the same thing: a very rare occurance.
So in translation or interpreting, sometimes you have to use the more common phrase in the language you are translating to, or else the meaning is, well, lost in translation.
Like in this other fairly common expression:
“De tal palo, tal astilla” means literally: “Like the stick, so is the splinter’. That sounds very strange and foreign, but what English expression do you think this is actually trying to convey?
How about:
“Like father like son.” Or perhaps…”The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Others are a lot closer both in meaning and in the figurative description such as:
“Andar por las ramas” which literally mean “going around/walking around the branches”.
In English, this is “beating around the bush” which is to say, talking too much and not getting at the point, or reason for the discussion. And which is completely different from “beating the bushes”, which means to look for something, drum up business, etc.
I think idiomatic expressions are a really fun part of any language. They tell a lot about a culture and how it explains its values. There are so many expressions out there and I think it can teach a lot about language and also culture -including from your mother tongue! I will share more with you in the future. Any fun ones you can think of? The best has yet to come, so please share.