Volunteers

This past week has been another crazy one. It has been really good though. We have had several volunteer teams out and I have been doing a lot with them. One of the groups has six college students and we have been showing them around and taking them out to villages with us. I’m a fan of having groups come out. I know a lot of people argue that money could be better spent by just sending it to people who are living in other countries instead of paying for travel, but I disagree. I think it is great for people to go on short-term trips because it helps them to catch a vision for what all goes on; plus a lot of people who end up overseas do it because of an experience they had while on a short-term trip. And from this end of things, it is really nice to have a break from the day-to-day routine. I know that everyone thinks it is exciting and different over here, and to some extent it is, but just like everywhere else there becomes a daily routine. So it has been a nice break to get to get to know new people and play tour guide. We have traveled out to some villages and done a lot of walking through areas. The group has also been great in that every time we go out to eat or do something they pay. I mean, I’ve been eating very well this week and have gotten two massages, so I can’t complain.

Other than that it has been a pretty typical week out here. I have been studying language quite a bit and am finally getting to where I can understand a little bit of what people are saying. Being able to speak is a little bit trickier though. I’ve basically gotten to where I can get the point of what people are saying then give out short one word answers that can usually get my point across. It is better than nothing though.

The Earthquake

So this past week has been pretty crazy. It has been good because I've gotten a lot of things done, but there hasn't really been a lot of down time. Most of this week has been spent trying to get some things together for school and my visa and also doing some things with people who have come out to visit. It has been very busy but a lot of fun.

On Friday I went over to a friend's house for his 2 year old son's birthday party. While I was there they told me that there was an earthquake to our south that had destroyed about ten thousand homes. Some people said they could feel it here but I was out playing basketball so I didn't notice it. So while I was there he got a phone call asking if we could bring some food, water, and medical supplies down and possibly help with disaster relief. So my nice slow weekend was pretty much gone with that phone call. I left from the party, threw some things in a bag and then thirty minutes later we were picking up supplies from around town. We got about 900 pounds of rice, twenty boxes of bottle water, a large box filled with medical supplies, 100 pounds of fruit and several boxes of dried noodles to take out there. I was a little worried that our truck wasn't going to make it on some of the mountain roads but it held up just fine. It was about a six hour drive down to the city where everything happened. The trip went by pretty fast and there is amazing scenery all along the drive. One thing that stood out was that there was hardly any damage along the drive down. Even once we got to the city we spent the night in there didn't seem to be very much damage. There were a few concrete walls that had fallen down but a lot of that could have just been from weathering and being old.

The next morning we got up early and took off to meet a gov't contact that was going to take us around to the area that was hardest hit. The area that we were in is very closed off. Anytime a westerner goes out there he must be accompanied by a gov't guide and they basically are there to 'make sure you do what you say you are going to do and nothing else.' Some of the guys we met up with knew this guy so he offered to take us out. I think our guy that we met up with is in charge of all of the schools in that region and so he told us that he would take us to some schools that were in the areas that were hardest hit and we could give them some supplies. He took us around to about three different schools and in all of the towns there were some homes that were cracked and damaged but there was nothing like the '10,000 homes destroyed' that was advertised. Most all of the homes out in this area are made of mud brick and straw and it is no surprise that some of them would have fallen down. Most every place that we went our gov't guide basically would say, "Look at this area. Look how poor these people are. They survived the earthquake but they still need food and we can make sure and distribute it better than you can." So most of the places we went we would have to leave food because we didn't want the man to lose face and not help us anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about giving poor kids food for the winter and things like that but not when there are people who have nothing because of an earthquake that happened just down the road. We gave most of our food away to the schools, which was fine, but we saved a lot of the water, medical supplies and the things like noodles that could be eaten right away.

So for most of the afternoon we wondered if either: 1. We were getting the governmental runaround and not getting to see the area that was hardest hit (which was very likely), or 2. The media out here had blown things way out of proportion (which was also very likely). So at about 3:30 we took the guy back to his office and we made a call to go out without him and see if we could find some things on our own. We took off to the area that we thought the epicenter was at and we soon saw where all of the damage was. We started getting closer to another village and almost all of the homes had walls that had collapsed and were totally destroyed. I don't know if there were 10,000 houses that were destroyed but almost all of them in this small village were gone. The military had established a camp out there where they were organizing relief work and we went in and met with all of the officials there. They were very welcoming of us and I'm sure they did a good job distributing all of the supplies that we brought. We wanted to go out to some of the more remote villages that were hit because we had three trucks with us, but they wouldn't let us go out there; however they did allow us to take a tour of the village that we were in. We had a chance to walk around and talk to a few people and it was heartbreaking to see people who had lost everything. We had an opportunity to go and talk to a few people and they wanted us to take pictures and they all told us about what they had lost. We also had an opportunity to meet with some of the high up gov't officials in that area and make some new contacts out there. Hopefully this area will open up more in the future. People are still trying to figure out a game plan for helping the people who are living in this area.

So after all of that we took off and headed back home. I think we got home at around 2:30am and then were up and running again the next morning. It made for a long weekend but it was really good. This week there has been some visitors come from the states so I have been busy trying to get them set up and taking them around town. My roommate also got here on Monday night and we've been doing some things together. I was supposed to take him out to a village for his first week but we are putting that off until the beginning of next week. I'm sure that will be an 'interesting' experience for him.

The 4th on the 6th

So the crazy month of July has officially begun. There has been a lot going on this past week. A lot of people have been out of town and traveling and I have spent a lot of time trying to get things together for my roommate. He was supposed to arrive here on Saturday but there was some confusion with his ticket and he had to remain in the states until they got everything rebooked.

So the big event of the week has been our 4th of July party. I'm pretty sure that it was the most amazing 4th of July party that has ever been thrown outside of the states. We had about twenty people meet up at a friends house and then we had a cookout, games and some fireworks. One of the guys out here was in a big city over the weekend and he snagged us some American hotdogs and they were amazing. They have hotdogs over here but they are gross. I don't know how it is possible to make hotdogs any sketchier than they are back home but it is. So the American hotdogs were pretty great. One of the guys also brought a lot of marinated pork chops (there isn't a lot of beef out here) and those were pretty amazing. We had all the traditional sides and all of that. It is amazing how big of an effect food has on your life out here. There are very few things that can pick you up (or put you down) as quickly as food. Having a good meal can totally make the week. The college guys that are out here living in the village have had a little bit of a tough time. I think they've had pig heart at least once this past week. So they are totally understanding the point about food. They are living out in the village for a month, so they still have two and a half weeks left. I'm sure they will be having some more strange meals.

After dinner we played a bunch of games. All of the neighbors had fun watching all of the white people run around. I'm not even kidding, they brought out their cameras. The guy I partnered up with and I won most of the events. We had a wheelbarrow race, a three legged race, a watermelon eating contest and an egg toss. After all of the games we went out and had a fireworks show. I was in charge of getting all of the fireworks and, as you would expect, you can get a lot of them for cheap out here. So we had about a thirty minute firework show. It was a lot of fun. We even had the grand finale with some huge fireworks. There were definitely some dogs going crazy in the surrounding neighborhoods once we finished.

So it has been a good week out here. Lots of things are starting up this next week. I'm going to be pretty busy running around and trying to get everything ready. We have several different people coming out to visit and I'll stay pretty busy doing things with them.

Sorry this is a little late

Okay, so I know I’m a little late on posting. I’m actually post dating this one a few days late. For the record it’s not my fault. The internet has been acting up here. Well, not really the internet but the trick I use on the internet to write on my blog. There is no such thing as free speech here so things like blogs are blocked and, unless you know a trick or two, you can’t access them. So other than having internet issues, it has been a pretty good week out here. I’ve been working with my language tutor a lot over the past week. I have a new tutor and I think that we are making good progress on things. For the first eight weeks that I was out here I was doing a language sprint where I spent 4-5 hours a day working on language. Most of the language study was vocabulary based, so I was learning a lot of words but not really how to communicate. This past week I’ve switched to my language book that I will use at school and it is a lot more conversational based. It has helped out a lot. There have been a lot of ‘ah ha’ moments this past week with language, which is always encouraging. My tutor is a local taxi driver and he speaks a little bit of English. He is very good about pronouncing things and, after I tell him to slow down a few times, he says things slowly. The local language out here is just going to take time to learn. I mean, there are maybe only ten westerners who have ever learned this language and the only one that I know said it took her a year and a half before she became conversational. There are some big payoffs with learning the local language though. The big one is that everyone wants to talk to you. I’ve gotten into a lot of conversations because of language and, once I learn how to speak more and tell some stories, I think this will help out a lot. It is just getting to that point that is going to be hard.

Other than language this week has been about the same as always. It has been a busy week though. In less than a week I’m going to have a new roommate living with me and we will have a lot of people coming out to visit over the next month. I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to get things set up for him and getting things together for his time here. I’ve gotten to do a few fun things though. This last weekend I went out on a bike ride to a small village with a couple of local friends. The village is supposedly where the people here originated and it is right by the mountain. The village wasn’t anything to write home about. It was small and most everything was just a tourist trap. The view of the mountain was great though. It was fun just to get out in the mountains for a while.

One other thing this past week. On Friday I went out with 'A' to eat lunch. There is this restaurant in town that has amazing cheeseburgers. I don't know why it took me three months to finally eat there, but that burger was amazing. I think it would even be really good by American standards. So after lunch she had to go and try to set up some things for a group coming out in a couple of weeks, so I figured I'd go with her so she didn't have to go out to the village alone. The village is sort of in town but not really. It is still in the valley but it is about a fifteen to twenty minute drive out of town. The trip out there is great because there are green mountains all around. We got out to the village and basically found out what we were working on was a dead end, but we decided to go and talk to a lady she knows that runs a small restaurant. And by small restaurant, I mean a hut with an open fire pit and a bunch of tables. So we sat around in there for a little while talking to the lady who runs it and got to set up a few things with her. While we were there it started raining and so we were basically stuck there for another hour until the rain died down. When the rain finally stopped we walked back to the main road, about a mile away, and then tried to find a ride back to town. We stood around trying to get a taxi or hitch hike for about twenty minutes and finally decided to start walking back. After a little ways a cargo truck finally pulled over and let us ride back into town in the back. It was good because it was starting to rain again. So yeah, my free Friday ended up getting pretty full by spending my afternoon stranded out in a small village.

The other big thing this past week is that on Saturday a couple of college guys arrived in town. They are going to be spending the next six months out here. They will be living out in a village for their first month, so please be remembering them. They seem to fit in really well and seem like the kind of guys who are laid back and willing to do anything (after all they did eat pig heart the other night for dinner). It is good to have a couple of other guys around and just more people to hang out with in general. Okay, I’m going to keep this one kind of short because it is going to be a busy week and I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to write next time.

Harvest Time

Okay so first off, it is actually harvest time out here but I haven’t spent any time harvesting. The title is more of a metaphor for what has being going on out here (see below). Second, sorry that I didn’t get around to posting last week. Things have been a little crazy out here. I’ll try and catch everyone up on the happenings of the past few weeks. So a couple of weeks ago I went out with another worker out here and we went and had lunch with the potato man. We call him the potato man because he sells potatoes out at the back gate of my apartment complex. One of the girls who had been here for a couple of years and just went back to the states had been sharing with him for a while and she wanted us to do some follow up. So we went out to talk to him and asked if we could take him out to lunch so that we could talk and practice our language. So we went out to eat lunch and I went over some language stuff with him and then my friend started to share with him. The potato man listened to the entire story and then at the end of it said that he believed it. He actually said that he had been listening to stories that my friend had left him and that he had believed for a while. So we spent some time talking to him and explaining to him what all that meant and what to do next. Towards the end of our conversation his wife came over and things got a little awkward. She doesn’t approve of his decision and I think it is tough for him. So please be thinking of the potato man.

I also went out to eat lunch with my friend Gao. While we were out we started talking about things and it turns out that his best friend, the one that we went out to the lake with about a month ago, had sat down during the week and had shared with him. Gao said that he believed it and so we talked about what all that meant and we had a great day of just getting to talk about things and hang out. At the end of the day I gave him something to read and told him that we should get together and talk about what all he is reading. He seems very interested but he has also mentioned over the past week that he has been very busy and it has been hard to find time for him to read. So be thinking of him and hopefully he will start going deeper with some things.

So other than that the week has just been busy. I met with some friends for about four hours this past Monday and we talked about what all has been going on and what all is coming up. There was a group of people who came to visit from the states and did some great work out here over the past week. At our meeting we looked at pictures of people who have been shared with and believed and talked about each one of them. Over the past week there have been twenty-five people that have joined the family. There are some pretty crazy things going on out here. A lot of times it is hard to see any fruit when you are doing groundbreaking type work with people who have never been worked with before, but when you do see things happen it is great. So it has been a very encouraging week. I’m glad too, because I think we’re going to need it with the month that we have coming up.

July is going to be crazy out here. Basically we have people coming from the states to visit every four or five days throughout the entire month. This means a lot of work and showing people around and helping them get things done. I’m excited about it though. I’m going to have a roommate coming on July 4^th and I’m looking forward to having another guy around. He will be doing the same thing that I did and spending his first two weeks out in a village. So I think July is going to be pretty crazy but I’m looking forward to seeing what all will happen over the next month. There were two college students here last night that I got to spend some time with and it is great just getting to swap stories and talk to people in English. Things are going to be busy, but I also think that things are going to be good.

School Stuff

So I’m a little late on this week’s post. I have good reasons, mainly because I was out on my bike for about ten hours yesterday. So this past week has been a little different. I rolled my ankle landing on a guy’s foot on Monday and haven’t really been able to play basketball all week. It isn’t too bad but it is one of those things that I need to make sure and not play for a couple weeks. So hopefully I’ll be back out on the court sometime next week. Also, monsoon season is picking up even more this past week. It has rained pretty much every evening so a lot of people haven’t been out. So I’ve had a down week of just getting to finish up some language and have spent a few days out at my tutor’s house. I finished up my eight-week language sprint this past week and now I am just doing some review until I find another tutor. I have a few guys that I think can do it, but since it has been raining so much I haven’t been able to track them down. I’m thinking I’ll try and get the new language stuff started back up again around Monday of next week.

I spent my day yesterday getting everything ready to become registered at the school and get my student visa. It is a big process. I spent most of the morning up at the school getting things filled out and then in the afternoon I went to the police station to answer questions and get registered and then made the trip out to the health clinic to make sure I don’t have AIDS. The police station was a little bit of an experience. We went to three different stations until we finally found the right one. Every one we went to told us to go to another, then that one told us to go to another, and then finally we found the right place. That happens a lot here. I spent about an hour at the station; 10 minutes answer questions and 50 minutes waiting (apparently some things here work very similarly to back in the states). Then I rode my bike all the way across town to the health clinic. About out way out there it started to rain and my friend who went with me assured me that it wasn’t much further, and twenty minutes later we were still riding on our bikes. The health clinic was pretty sketchy. Not nearly as sketchy as the hospital but still was a little weird. I only had to have a couple blood tests so it was pretty painless for me. The lady opened up a clean needle and, except for the open vials of blood sitting on the table my arm was on and the fact that her gloves were reused who-knows-how-many-times, it was pretty sanitary.

Today has been another errand day and I also fit in a little language. Tonight I went over to a friend’s house for some homemade Mexican food. I decided to invite one of the guys who speaks English and so both of us, her and her roommate all made some tortillas, salsa, fajitas and then we had some brownies and ice cream for desert. Afterwards we all sat around and played a game of Risk. It was a fun night. I’ve got a pretty full rest of the week too. Tomorrow I’m going to turn in all of my forms for school and then go out with a friend to visit a few people and then on Thursday I’m taking a road trip with a few others to a village on the other side of town. Hopefully on Friday or Saturday another friend and I can make it back to visit the family I got to talk to last week. So there should be enough going on to keep me out of trouble for a while.

A New Family Member

This has been a crazy week out here. On top of language study and everything that goes with that I have been helping a friend move for most of this week. Between all of the moving and the crazy weather, it has been raining nonstop here for the last few days, it has left little time for getting to do fun things like play basketball. We do, however, get the NBA playoffs here on TV every morning. I have had some opportunities to have guys come over and watch games with me, and while I was working out in the gym on Friday I ran into my friend that I met last week on the bike ride. He invited another foreigner and myself to go watch basketball with his family on Saturday and since I didn't have anything else going on at 8am I figured it would be a good idea.

It turns out that the weather yesterday was awful. It was raining almost all day which made it a little rough meeting up on bikes. We made it over to his house though and spent the morning getting to know his father and watching a not so great basketball game. We ate a pretty good lunch and then after lunch just sat around and talked for a while. My friend's father is a local author who writes a lot of history about our area and we had a good time learning some things from him. I started asking him some questions about his beliefs and he said that he didn't have any. He started to ask us about some things and my friend who was with me started to share with him. Our local friend who is a believer also helped to clarify some things that we couldn't get straight with our limited language. My friend who was with me did really well though, for only being out here less than a year he spent about fifteen minutes explaining things to this man and he understood every word. Towards the end he said that he believed and we spent some more time talking to him about everything. His wife was also in the room for most of the conversation and I asked her about what she thought about everything and she said she wasn't sure and wanted a little more time to think about everything and for someone to walk through somethings with her. My plan is to go back later in the week with one of the girls and have them talk to he some more.

The trip to my friend's house took up most of my morning and afternoon on Saturday. The rest of my afternoon was spent trying to dry off. Saturday evening I met up with a couple of friends out here and we went and ate some Mexican food. You know you are in a good place when you can live about 8,000 miles from Mexico and still get some decent Mexican food. It isn't quite the same as back home, but I'm not going to complain. The lady who runs the place is from Mexico and spent some time in the Metroplex and some other places in Texas, so most of the food is pretty legit. There isn't much better than Mexican food on a cold rainy night out here. Other than that it has been a pretty down week. It has been busy. This next week I am planning on hitting the books pretty hard and finishing up my intensive language study. I only have four days left and then I will move on to working with a new tutor and doing more conversational types of things. The language here is a long and slow process, and I am ready to move on to the next stage.