2021 Blog

Jan to present (click here for 2020a or 2020b)
Thanks for visiting wp.krigline.com. If you are an old friend or former student, maybe we can get “caught up” during IFM’s weekly Friday night Zoom gathering. Everything is always free, everyone is welcome, and with rare exceptions I’m participating (and often teaching). From 7:30-8pm, guests talk one-on-one 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.
Mar 16, 2021
After lunch with friends, I got my first COVID-19 vaccine today (Vivian has already had both shots). I’ll try to write more later, but here are some recent photos.
Feb 26, 2021
Although we don’t have many photos to show for all our work, you can enjoy some of the “fruit” of our labor on our “English as a Foreign Language” website: EFLsuccess.com. I’ve added study guides for some good films, like Family Man, Far and Away, and It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve also added lessons about Valentine’s Day. Look at the “Recent Posts or Updates” box toward the top.
Today is the Lantern Festival in China, marking the end of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holidays. I’ve long enjoyed this holiday, being fond of the beautiful lanterns on display at this time. This year, being in the US, we helped our grandchildren make paper lanterns to decorate their home.
Feb 10, 2021
Vivian uses her collection of toy bears to add color to our apartment month to month. “Grandma and Grandpa bear” always stay under the TV (yes, Grandpa has control of the remote), but Valentine’s Day bears now keep them company. Across the room, a Groundhog Day bear enjoys the blossoms of our “Christmas cacti” (which normally don’t bloom until around Chinese New Year–which is this Friday). Today is the birthday of one of my nieces, so I created a graphic for her, and I was so happy with the result that I’m posting it here too! For our foreign friends (who might not understand the white text), if there’s a shadow on Groundhog Day (Feb 2), then winter will be shorter; the cacti in the photo bloom only once a year (often in Feb); and Valentine’s Day (for lovers) is in the middle of this month. Oh, and “love bears all things” is a quote from “the Love chapter” in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13, which I’ll paste below.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
“The Love Chapter” ~ 1 Corinthians 13 (by St Paul, the Bible, ESV)
Jan 29, 2021
I can’t believe that January is almost over!
Most of our Christmas decorations have been put away, but this Christmas Tree candle remains, surrounded by two Christmas cactuses. The cactus is so-named because it blooms once a year, normally around Christmas or in January. Vivian loves to see these annual flowers, which prove that even dry, prickly, leafless things can produce something beautiful! That’s a life-lesson for us all!
We haven’t done much (except work) in January, but here are a few photos. One of the special things we did was to scan old photos from our pre-digital photography days. I’ll post a few here, but you can see “early digital” photos of the era (and three gorges) on our old website.
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