Someone asked me this at a supporting church this morning, and I thought it was a pretty good question! I have several favorite hobbies and past-times, so I'll just list them here. Some of them I've had to adapt a bit for my situation in Africa, of course. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite leisure activities, in no particular order:
- Computer games. I especially enjoy puzzle games, word games, board and card games, and a few of what are called time-management games. However, when I'm in a translation checking workshop, I spend so much of the day on the computer that I sometimes find I need a break from it. Sometimes, a book of word puzzles is just as good as a computer game!
- Reading books: I enjoy novels for light reading material, and sometimes devotional or doctrinal or language books for more academic reading. I have a pretty good collection of books at my home in Chad, both my own and many books that other missionaries left behind.
- Listening to audio books and sermons: I have quite a large collection of audio books from Librivox and Audible, mostly the same kinds of books I like reading as hard copies. I also have quite a lot of sermon recordings that I've collected over the past several years. This furlough, I've discovered the usefulness of podcasts to get profitable or informative listening material, but that probably won't be possible to do from Chad because of our limited internet access.
- Watching videos: My movie tastes are conservative, so I mostly watch family films and old classics and animal movies. I also enjoy documentaries, especially on animals, science, history, and true crime. This furlough, I've been enjoying video streaming over the internet, but that is impossible on our slow internet connection on the field. So in Chad, I have a slowly growing collection of favorite DVDs which I watch over and over.
- Digital photo scrapbooking: I discovered several years ago just how much fun this hobby can be! But I've steered away from scrapbooking sites that are web-based such as Shutterfly. Those are too cumbersome and frustrating to try to use on a slow internet connection. Instead, I use free software from a company called Blurb, because even if they don't have as many fancy trimmings, they do produce nicely bound books. And best of all, I can work on my books offline as much as I like, and upload them when I am finally in a country with high-speed internet.
- Jigsaw puzzles: I enjoy jigsaws but never get to do them as much as I'd like. In America, I am usually traveling too much to do them. In Chad, I am usually too busy to do them during the day, and the lighting at night is too bad to see the the pieces properly. But I enjoy them when I'm able to do them!
- Table games: I love table games, but rarely have anyone to play them with! Discovering people who enjoy them is a special treat for me.
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