Book Club #7

DISCUSS MEMORY, CHOICE, AND SAMENESS.

Why does the attempt to create a perfect society fail?

What key factors make perfection impossible?

Are their aspects of Jonas’s culture that you would like to add to our culture?

The interns both have blogs!

If you'd like to keep track of the interns impressions of Russia and the internship, you can follow them on their tumblr accounts.

Melissa's blog is posted at: http://russiablog.tumblr.com/

Schuyler's blog is posted at: http://tyumentravel.tumblr.com/

Interns!

They're here! They're here! The interns have arrived. They got here to Tyumen this morning at about 5:00am. We made it home and everyone had a nice little nap. We then began our orientation with both Schuyler and Melissa. We're really excited about this opportunity to help the interns take a look at the next step in their lives as concerns missions. Both of them are really looking forward to more cultural immersion and knowing more about Russia.

They have both been to camp (in 2008 and 2009) and are excited to get a more real look at Russia.

Here we go!

Melissa is here for 4 weeks and Schuyler for 6 weeks.

Book Club #6

CHAPTER 20

1. What are Jonas’ feelings after obtaining this new knowledge?

2. What are their insights about memory?

3. Which of the senses did the Giver have? What was special to him that he hadn’t yet shared?

4. What is their plan for creating change in the community? (whole chapter)

CHAPTER 21

1. Why did the plan change?

2. What rules did he break?

3. What was their travel ritual?

4. How did he know they were looking for him? How did he hide?

5. What happened to his memories?

CHAPTER 22

1. How was the landscape changing?

2. What are new dangers?

CHAPTER 23

1. What was the weather like?

2. What happened to the bicycle?

3. How does this book end? Discuss it.

Additional Questions

1. Why would Fiona, a trainee in the care of the old, probably accept the practice of releasing the old?
2. Why was The Giver now ready to make a plan for change?
3. Why would Jonas’s departure from the community lead to possible change?
4. Why did The Giver decide to stay behind to help the community?
5. Why did Jonas and The Giver choose the December Ceremony as the time to implement their plan?
6. How did Father’s sweet, sing-song voice affect Jonas on their last evening together?
7. What would have happened to Jonas and Gabe if the searchers found them?
8. In what way was Jonas handicapped by his early departure?
9. How was Jonas able to use memories to foil the search planes?
10. Name two other ways that memories helped Jonas during the journey?
11. What might have been the source of the music that Jonas thought he heard behind him?
12. Why do you think the author ended the story as Jonas was traveling toward his destination?
13. List two questions that the author left unanswered at the end of the book.
14. Did you approve of the ending?

Tammy and Interners and Connections, Oh My!

Well, we got up this morning at 4:45am. That's a big morning. And we proceeded to get pulled over by the traffic police on our way to the airport. I think at 4:50am, I might pull everyone over too. Just a document check, so we were literally stopped for less than 5 minutes.

The pall of a dark sky greeted the sunrise as we drove to the airport to pick up our friend and former colleague, Tammy. Some kind of fire. Scary very black smoke. Still don't know what that was.

Anyway, the traffic cops got a kick out of our blue passports.

Tammy arrived and only a few mosquito bites later were were home enjoying the start of our reunion. By 8am we were asleep again.

The day progressed in interesting ways. Amy & Tammy worked on our upcoming internship, I dropped off her registration paperwork and replaced a lock in our door so both Tammy and the interns will be able to access our apartment (our old lock had a key that is currently NOT copyable). I felt like such an amazing handyman, that I also (finally) repaired our filter so that the hose doesn't suddenly pop off and spray the entire kitchen (and any hapless user).

Having accomplished many awesome husbandly duties, I set off to meet with Sasha from camp 2001. It was really cool to get a chance to meet with him and reconnect. He's 24 now. Served in the army for 2 years (can't tell me what he did, which means it was something totally cool).

Amy met with the women's group from church (until after 10pm!) and after I returned home, I entertained the kids who'd come with moms. We watched the Disney/Pixar film Cars.

We ended the day properly with a walk and collapsed into our dreams.

Did anyone think to ask us about this?

Pretty funny story today... (this story written with humor and a little bit of surprise sarcasm)

Tuesday morning (yesterday), I was awakened with a phone call from a mysterious woman named Olga. She said that she had my schedule for teaching at school prepared and wanted to know some more details.

As I was hazy, I said I'd take her number and call her back later.

Well, today was later. She was calling from a local school about their summer camp program. She has a friend who knows someone who knew someone at the University where Amy and I teach during the school year. They had said that I wasn't teaching there for the summer and was therefore free to teach English at their school camping program for the summer!

She already knew my hourly wage and was prepared to offer me the same salary for working with their kids for the summer. She gave me the dates and asked me what TIME would be good to work with them each day...

... I thought. Did anyone think to ask us if we were available?

We would love to help out, to visit and talk with the kids, but to take time away from our ministry to teach only English at summer camp while we have our internship and our own English camp would be a little bit of a tight squeeze. I know I like organizing, scheduling, and my task list, but that would have been a real feat! ;)

So - keep us in your prayers as our internship starts next Saturday and our English camp (hopefully will work out!) and will be the second and third weeks of August!

Book Club #5

Group 5

Chapters 16 – 19

CHAPTER 16

1. What are some good memories?

2. What is the Giver’s favorite memory? Explain.

3. How does Jonas feel about this memory? What are some advantages and disadvantages of this?

4. What happens when Jonas discusses this feeling with his parents?

5. What is Jonas’ relationship to Gabriel now?

6. How does Jonas break the rules at the end of this chapter? What implications will this have?

CHAPTER 17

1. How is Jonas changing?

2. What is his reaction to his friends’ game of “war”?

3. What are his feelings?

4. What is Lily’s talent?

CHAPTER 18

1. Explain what happened to Rosemary and its impact on the community.

2. Page 145, what do they contemplate?

CHAPTER 19

1. What is release?

Additional Questions

1. Why did The Giver apologize to Jonas after sharing the memory of war?
   2. Why were Jonas and his father worried about Gabriel’s fretfulness at night?
   3. How did Jonas try to solve this problem?
   4. List one advantage and one disadvantage of the family unit in Jonas’s community as compared to the family as we know it in our society.
   5. How did Jonas’s range of emotions differ from those of his family and friends?
   6. How did Jonas react to the children’s war game?
   7. Why did Jonas feel powerless and alone when Fiona and Asher rode off on their bicycles?
   8. Why did the community refer to the former Receiver-in-training as a failure? How did this failure affect the rules that applied to Jonas?
   9. What shocked Jonas when he viewed his father “releasing” one of the newborn twins?
   10. What did Jonas learn about the community’s rule about lying?
   11. What feelings do you think Jonas had about his father and the rules under which the community lived after watching the Ceremony of Release of the newborn twin?

Literary Device: Euphemisms

a)What was the euphemism for death in Jonas’s community?
b) Name two euphemisms for death in our society.