Commercials that I enjoy hearing are not from today. In my effort to avoid the commercials today in podcasts and radio I came up with my own daily listening podcast. It has devotionals and old-time radio episodes that help distract me and educate me and lead me to thinking about things that I want to think about.
It's funny listening to old-time radio. In the episodes from the 1930s, 40s, 1950s I hear commercials about cigarettes, tires that move water away like windshield wipers, and soaps that clean the floors to a shine without any rubbing. It's amazing!
But I enjoy the commercials from 70 or 80 years ago because they're so different from yet so much like today.
Use this and you will be better! Use this and you won't have any bitter aftertaste! Get a shine without having to expend any effort. It's amazing!
Marketing hasn't changed a whole lot in 100 years. I'm hoping that virtual reality will exert some influence of hope and change, but I don't know that it will.
We'll see...
Sunday, February 27, 2022
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Thought we were paid ~
We have had two foreign exchange students come and stay in our home. One was from Spain. One was from China. The one from Spain was a girl. The one from China was a boy.
Both were interesting experiences that lead to very interesting outcomes in our family. We ended up going and visiting the girl student's family in Spain and spent almost 2 weeks staying with them and touring around Spain. It was amazing!
The parents of the exchange student from China actually came to our house a couple of times toward the end of the school year. He was having challenges concentrating on school and they came to help him focus as well as came to celebrate his graduation from high school.
The exchange student from China was the more challenging experience. He would actually try to hide from me and act like I didn't exist. The funniest part about it was he would walk by my desk upstairs on his way to go and see one of my sons and he would actually hide behind the corner of all and then while I was looking at something that the screen or keyboard he would try to sneak by without me seeing him. It was very funny I finally actually asked him why he hid from me and avoided me and why he did not even talk to me in the mornings when he was preparing for school and eating breakfast and when I came home where he came home and he couldn't avoid seeing. He mumbled a couple of answers four times and while he was doing that he made excuses and would not even look to me. I had explained to him that he was a guest in our home and that the student exchange program was an exchange and not just somebody living in our house.
At that point I felt a little bit froggy so I asked them if he realized that we were not getting any payment for him to stay with us. The look of shock on his face as he shook his head was disappointing. He explained that he thought that we were being paid and that he had no responsibility to talk or deal with us.
I explained to him that he was not renting a room, that he was a guest in our home, and that as a guest in our home he was being disrespectful when he avoided me and hid from me. I told him that we had invited him to be a part of our family in an effort to help them, and that everything else we were doing, from asking him to watch movies with us to taking him places to talking to him was an effort to help him learn and understand English and our culture a little bit better.
I don't know that he ever understood that. When his mother came mid-school year she was very focused on helping their only child pass high school. Which was much less rigorous than Chinese high school.
When both the mother and father came to celebrate his graduation from high school there is still this distance from him but the parents were very open and very appreciative of everything that we had tried to teach him.
I don't know if it's the difference between boys and girls, but he was not very receptive to being part of us and our family. Our exchange student from Spain was very receptive and handled us as best as she could. We're a different kind of family, and there's a lot of different energy running around in our house. She adapted well to it and actually seem to do pretty good.
If you ever have occasion to have an exchange student make sure that they understand if you're being paid to host them or not. That seemed to make a huge difference in our experiences with our exchange students. God bless America for encouraging exchanges like this!
Both were interesting experiences that lead to very interesting outcomes in our family. We ended up going and visiting the girl student's family in Spain and spent almost 2 weeks staying with them and touring around Spain. It was amazing!
The parents of the exchange student from China actually came to our house a couple of times toward the end of the school year. He was having challenges concentrating on school and they came to help him focus as well as came to celebrate his graduation from high school.
The exchange student from China was the more challenging experience. He would actually try to hide from me and act like I didn't exist. The funniest part about it was he would walk by my desk upstairs on his way to go and see one of my sons and he would actually hide behind the corner of all and then while I was looking at something that the screen or keyboard he would try to sneak by without me seeing him. It was very funny I finally actually asked him why he hid from me and avoided me and why he did not even talk to me in the mornings when he was preparing for school and eating breakfast and when I came home where he came home and he couldn't avoid seeing. He mumbled a couple of answers four times and while he was doing that he made excuses and would not even look to me. I had explained to him that he was a guest in our home and that the student exchange program was an exchange and not just somebody living in our house.
At that point I felt a little bit froggy so I asked them if he realized that we were not getting any payment for him to stay with us. The look of shock on his face as he shook his head was disappointing. He explained that he thought that we were being paid and that he had no responsibility to talk or deal with us.
I explained to him that he was not renting a room, that he was a guest in our home, and that as a guest in our home he was being disrespectful when he avoided me and hid from me. I told him that we had invited him to be a part of our family in an effort to help them, and that everything else we were doing, from asking him to watch movies with us to taking him places to talking to him was an effort to help him learn and understand English and our culture a little bit better.
I don't know that he ever understood that. When his mother came mid-school year she was very focused on helping their only child pass high school. Which was much less rigorous than Chinese high school.
When both the mother and father came to celebrate his graduation from high school there is still this distance from him but the parents were very open and very appreciative of everything that we had tried to teach him.
I don't know if it's the difference between boys and girls, but he was not very receptive to being part of us and our family. Our exchange student from Spain was very receptive and handled us as best as she could. We're a different kind of family, and there's a lot of different energy running around in our house. She adapted well to it and actually seem to do pretty good.
If you ever have occasion to have an exchange student make sure that they understand if you're being paid to host them or not. That seemed to make a huge difference in our experiences with our exchange students. God bless America for encouraging exchanges like this!
Thursday, February 3, 2022
YouVersion Bible app ~
So in an effort to grow closer to my wife and grow closer to God I have been doing devotionals in the EU version Bible have for about a year.
The devotionals are quick little blurbs about a lesson about the Bible and then some Bible verses. They're written by YouVersion staff people or by other big Christian names like TD Jakes, Craig Groschel, and others. And you can do them in a social fashion with other people. I haven't really involved too many people, the only person I've involved is my wife. She has different devotionals going on with friends and family all over the place like women do.
But my goal is to do something with her that we could do at different times without being tied down to a specific time and day every day of the week but also have something in common to talk about in relation to God and the Bible. In that respect it's been a huge success!
We don't talk about the devotionals a lot, but when we do we know what we've been reading and we can relate to each other in respect to what the devotional said. It's also fun to pose different things and encourage different thought as we go through each devotional.
I've enjoyed it. Please give it a try! You can find the YouVersion Bible app at this address:
https://youversion.com/products/
Enjoy!
The devotionals are quick little blurbs about a lesson about the Bible and then some Bible verses. They're written by YouVersion staff people or by other big Christian names like TD Jakes, Craig Groschel, and others. And you can do them in a social fashion with other people. I haven't really involved too many people, the only person I've involved is my wife. She has different devotionals going on with friends and family all over the place like women do.
But my goal is to do something with her that we could do at different times without being tied down to a specific time and day every day of the week but also have something in common to talk about in relation to God and the Bible. In that respect it's been a huge success!
We don't talk about the devotionals a lot, but when we do we know what we've been reading and we can relate to each other in respect to what the devotional said. It's also fun to pose different things and encourage different thought as we go through each devotional.
I've enjoyed it. Please give it a try! You can find the YouVersion Bible app at this address:
https://youversion.com/products/
Enjoy!
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