But, Minnesota to Papua New Guinea is a long flight. 25 hours, in fact, without layovers (and crossing the International Dateline doesn’t help either). It’s a good thing I like flying.
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Here we are, on our backs, in a shell of the space shuttle... |
But, little did I know then that aviation could even impact my life through linguistics :)
Whenever I find myself standing in front a desk, giving my name to a receptionist, I automatically begin spelling… “R, I, V as in Victor, A, R, D.” When I was little, I thought this was how everyone gave their last name—didn’t everyone say as in Victor if they had the letter “v”? After all, if I don’t, inevitably there is spelling confusion.
When I was six or seven, I vividly remember the shock of hearing my paternal grandmother give her last name at a video store. “R, I, V as in Valentine, A, R, D.”
Valentine! Where did that come from? On that subject, where did Victor come from?

Even pilots need linguistics!
As I now look ahead to a life lived in airports and traveling on tiny planes (the main means of transportation in PNG), I smile, seeing patterns the Lord established early in my life that could only be His design.
Because, after all, I will always spell it as R, I, V as in Victor, A, R, D.