Continuing in Malta

It's a nice weekend here in Malta, with some odd weather: rainy day yesterday, somewhat sunny and violently windy day today. It's actually quite beautiful.

This is just a brief progress report to note that our work in Malta is still going well. My student Kevin arrived a week ago and has been running subjects with me. We have finished one of four experiments and are almost done with the second. We've run 120 subjects so far and have many more slots to fill. Even if we don't quite finish, it's still some incredible progress. And our subjects are doing great - from little checks of the data, it appears that their accuracy rates tend to be between 85-96%, which is fantastic (and shows that the task is pretty doable).

In other news, it turns out that I may be interviewed on television here next week by a colleague and friend who's the president of the National Council of the Maltese language. I've been assured that the interview can be done in English, which is a relief given how little Maltese I actually know. Additionally, another project involving a Maltese dictionary is in progress and going great.

So overall I feel quite fortunate. I'm also lucky to have met a number of really fun Maltese friends - life here has been very engaging, from working intensely every day to having a really wonderful social life in the evenings. Two good friends from Tucson visited last week, and we had a great time together, and another student arrives this evening t spend a week here for the LREC conference taking place in Valletta next week (which reminds me, I have a talk to work on!). Andy and his parents should arrive at the end of next weekend for my final few days here, and I'm of course excited about that.