August 2003 I'm married now to Sara. It sounds like a very simple sentence, but if one properly understands the relationship between signifer and signified, one understands that 'Sara' is a signifier with a great many wonderful significations to it. So when I say Sara, I mean a young human female who is very beautiful and intelligent and wise, artistic... well I am still continuing to know her. Here is a picture of us, and then another of me in our room after we married, waiting to travel to Ecuador. Actually, I'm writing this in retrospect, but at any rate, Ecuador is a very interesting country. Some things are far less expensive than in the states, but some things are far more expensive and rare. The interesting and yet sometimes terribly smelly vegetable and meat markets, the various street vendors, the friendly neighbourhood muggers who stroll up and down the beach, the sewing lady who comes to your house and sews pants and ponchos and buttons from plain materials and eats rice for lunch, I met various interesting people. I would rather have done without the mugger, but that is probably part of the experience of traveling to a new country, and besides I had never been mugged before, so it was probably about my time. But then, I had (as of before this summer) never been married before, but then the very nature of marriage is such that one marries only one and remains married (and to someone of the opposite gender: I find it disturbingly amusing when homosexual 'rights' activists claim that banning gay marriage would would unfairly restrict the rights of homosexuals; I say that they should have the same right as everyone else: to marry someone of the opposite gender; that's hardly restrictive or unfair! (though positively moral and hence to the distate of many) At any rate, I didn't like being mugged, but I quite enjoy being married. At any rate, I now teach French in a Christian high school, which is also a learning 'experience.' (perhaps 'experience' is the new popular word: people are tired of material objects as commodities, so now they seek 'experiences') I think that the phrase 'learning experience' is becoming a cliche, perhaps. French is nice to teach, as I enjoy explaining pronunciation and etymology and why languages are as they are, and I especially enjoy teaching French literature, which I do for my 'elite' class. Thoughts and Events