Jan to present (click here for 2021) ~ My YouTube channel is “Poiema K”

Thanks for visiting wp.krigline.com. When IFM’s Friday program meets “in person” (during the school year) I’m usually there, but in the summer old friends may be able to connect with me during IFM’s weekly Friday night Zoom gathering (see sidebar graphic). Even if I’m not online, please visit! Everything is always free, and everyone is welcome. From 7:30-8pm, guests talk casually with American volunteers who enjoy meeting our international friends. The meeting ID and passcode are always the same, or you can write to the address shown for more info.

I know this blog is months behind! Thanks for your patience.

May 25, 2022

While I’m still way behind in updating our friends (sorry), I hope to have some time to catch up now that the International Festival is over. We will take a trip to Ohio in late June, and then a short trip to Texas.

The Columbia International Festival was May 21-22 this year.

Vivian brought our grandchildren on Sunday. CJ was amazed, and said, “This is better than Universal!”

My phone’s “steps counter” hasn’t seen this many steps since the 2021 Festival!

When I wasn’t running around solving problems, I was probably with my colleagues here at the IFM booth.

Mar 23, 2022

The most life-changing development was when Vivian broke her ankle. It’s amazing how a moment of distraction can so alter one’s life, but Vivian can’t drive for a while, which complicates our lives and the lives of our grandchildren. Still, we’re grateful that we basically need patience and time for this to heal–not surgery or worse. As if life isn’t complicated enough, sometime in late March this website went “online.” I know little about the mechanical aspects of running a website, so (once I discovered the issue) it took days to fix the problems–and even now, the site/layout looks a little different. If you find a link or something that isn’t working properly, I’d love to hear about it.

On Mar 12, while we were visiting Georgia, Vivian tripped and fractured her ankle. She will be wearing a special “boot” for several weeks.

In order to replace IFM’s floor, Michael had to figure out what to do with all the stuff in the main room. Solution: on Mar 23 we had a storage POD delivered.

Jan 31, 2022

We’ll start with some photos and captions from January….

Even after Christmas decorations are put away, our snowmen remain watchful for rare SC snowfall.

Early in January we finally unpacked some of our artwork and started to fill our walls.

Left: We decorated the “spare room” with some of the lighthouses my Dad had collected. Right: A Chinese teacher painted “Jesus looking for a lost lamb” for me in the 1980s. It’s now in my new office (near my COVID-mask collection).

We call the front room our “Life Room”; there’s no TV, so it’s supposed to be a pleasant place to “make our own music,” read, or spend time in prayer. Much of this art was also created by or given by friends.

In the fall, students from Chi Alpha helped IFM vacate our main meeting room. In January, a company started repairing and painting the ceiling and walls.

As work progresses, we hope to be able to use this room again in the spring.

Perhaps our biggest change in January is that Michael started teaching English to refugees from Afghanistan. Here, Vivian joins us for a game night.

My students do not even know the English alphabet, so teaching them is a challenge. It’s very different from the students I had in China for so long.

On Jan 21, we got our first sight of snow in SC for two years.

In the morning, Vivian and our granddaughter enjoyed playing in the snow and taking photos.

After months of barren trees and a brown yard full of acorns, the white blanket was a welcome (though temporary) change.

(click here for 2021) 

©2022 Michael Krigline. For contact info, visit About Us. To make a contribution, see our Website Standards and Use Policy page (under “About Us”). Pre-2015 blogs can still be found on our old archive pages.