A special week with Kate and Marc from Iceland

What a special week to have Dr Kate Crowe and her colleague Marc Volhardt (https://english.hi.is/staff/mds) visiting Bathurst from Iceland. While they were here, Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2022/07/there-and-back-again-linguists-tale.html

Kate has not been to Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the last time I saw her was at the ASHA convention in Florida in 2019. We have a number of projects we are working on together, a student we are co-supervising, and two book chapters that are due soon. We had time for work and play - and lots of catching up.

I was very happy to receive gifts of children's books in a range of languages, including Icelandic and Polish, to add to my bookshelf of children's books from around the world.

It was great to spend time together. Thanks for visiting.

Kate and Marc presented a lecture on the Bathurst campus

We enjoyed the Bathurst Winter Festival

COVID-19 rapid antigen tests are now part of visiting!

Catching up with our colleague Dr Audrey Wang

Working on the Vietnamese Speech Assessment in wintery Bathurst

This week Lê Thị Thanh Xuân (Xuân) returned to Bathurst to keep working with Phạm Thị Bền (Bền) and myself on the Vietnamese Speech Assessment. We finalised the word list, selected prototypes for the pictures, created a list of prompts and cues, discussed parent questionnaires, and began developing the protocol for testing. Ben and Xuan also pilot tested the Vietnamese Speech Assessment on 5 adults and a child who spoke different Vietnamese dialects. 
Last time Xuân visited was in autumn (see blog post here). This time it has been winter. In fact one night this week it was -4oC! On one evening we all went iceskating in the outdoor rink set up to celebrate Bathurst's 200th birthday. A fun winter past time - and quite different from what happens in Vietnam. (Bền was saying that children in Ha Noi do not have to attend school if it is going to be below 10oC.)

Sharynne, Xuan and Ben working on the Vietnamese Speech Assessment

Sharynne, Xuan, Grear, Jess, Minh and Ben iceskating in Bathurst