June 2, 2008
If you haven't read my previous blog from May 25th, I recommend you read that one before reading today's blog. It is actually about something significant to my life here.
Today I am just sharing some random and silly pictures I have gathered in the first 7 months of my time here. I have seen many strange things while living in this country. Most of the time I don't have my camera out and ready to capture them, but on a few occasions I have gotten the shot. Please enjoy my silly observations!

People feel comfortable sleeping in many public places in my city. After lunch all the people here have a rest and take a nap for a couple of hours. If they work out in the city, they just crash wherever they are. I caught a few of them in the act.
   

    

I have seen chickens in the most surprising places!
       

Here's some random guy's spike backpack that looked really weird.

One day I was downtown and all these girls who work at an overpriced version of Claire's came out onto the stairs in front of the store and began to do this choreographed dance routine. What made it funny to me was their utter lack of enthusiasm.
     

This picture can be found on the toilet seats in one of the nicest hotels in town. I guess they're just making sure that everyone is familiar with how to use a "western" toilet.

Here's an ad in front of a dentist's office. I just thought it was pretty gruesome for a cosmetic dentistry ad. But then again, people kinda do have some severe dental needs here.

One day while I was downtown, I walked by this man and noticed he was just chilling with a some kind of hawk on his arm. Not sure what that was all about.
      

I've used this picture before, but it still cracks me up every time I eat at this restaurant. The ceilings are just REALLY low. But when I go there, everyone else looks at me like I'M the weird. one, rather than the unusually low ceilings. On the right you'll see how most vehicles are set up out in the countryside. I guess when you just set the engine on the front of the car like this, it's much easier to get to when it breaks constantly..... or something......
        

This is a contraption you'll find inside beauty shops. I think it's how they give people a perm.
       

I was at someone's house in the countryside, and saw this beautiful display hanging on the wall. I guess it's some animal's tongue. Yuck!

Here are some fun signs that have been put up in English. There are always really funny misuses of the English language on t-shirts and on signs around town. I just happened to have my camera when I saw these, and I got a kick out of them.
     

You will often see amazing things being hauled around on the back of bicycles.
   

Okay, well that's all I have for you today. I'll see if I can come up with something else later this week. I just like to reward the people who check my blog regularly with something new.

Love you all!   J

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June 19, 2008
Last week I had the opportunity to travel north to a part of this country that has been hit by a major natural disaster. This event has been the focus of everyone's attention since it happened about a month ago. It meant a lot to me, and my local friends, that I was able to go and try to help out in any way I could. Some of my friends from America are currently living in the main city near this disaster, so I was able to stay with them during the week. I think this past week was probably one of the best I have spent in this country. The time working with the victims was so meaningful to me. It was a week full of adventure, heartbreak, and purpose.

The first three days of my week were spent traveling around the disaster areas, out into the countryside and up into the mountains, looking for people who are not currently receiving help from the government because of their remote location or the smaller size of their town / village. I went out with three other Americans in a "bread truck" and we took the back roads to find people we might be able to bring aid to in the following weeks and months. Once we left the huge city and got into the disaster areas, I started understanding the kind of damage that this kind of disaster can cause. It was overwhelming because it was everywhere we looked. And the people had no where to go, so they were just living under tarps and makeshift tents in front of their former homes.
   

   

As we would come across groups of people, many would be walking around in the rubble without much direction or purpose. It seemed that they were quite overwhelmed with the loss, and didn't know what to do with all the rubble - even if they could move it somewhere. They all were happy to talk to us, and so we would ask them where they were when the disaster hit, and if their family and friends made it through. I asked them to show me their homes, and told them that we want to help them but we don't know how. They would tell me what kind of specific things they need, whether it was clothes, building materials, food, tents, electricity, clean water, or people to come and help clear away the rubble.

They would often tear up as they showed us their homes or talked about their loss. Many of them have lost everything, and have no idea how to proceed. The best that my friends and I could offer them was a hope that our friends would return in the coming weeks with the supplies and other kinds of help that they need. The people were so grateful that we were there, just trying to help them. They thanked us over and over again. It was a great opportunity to let them know that, although people all over the world care about them and want to help them, there is ONE who loves them the most of all, and He knows all their needs and wants to take care of them! We would often lift up their needs right then and there, so they could understand that the ONE can hear them, even at that moment.
      

We traveled around the base of the mountains, where landslides have taken so many lives. One thing that kept coming back to me was that this area of the country is so beautiful! Everywhere I looked I could see a conflict of beauty and destruction. Everything made by the Creator was beautiful. Everything made by man was in ruins and rubble. I felt like there was such a significant lesson in that imagery. A lesson in the futility of man's efforts to control this wild world he lives in, and a lesson in the ultimate power and glory of the Creator.
   

   

(below left) This used to be a car. (below right) A beautiful woman who lives on top of a mountain where they grow kiwi's. She and I are standing on even ground with each other.
   

We hiked up a hill to check out this village's water supply. One of the many things my group of people are bringing into this area is new water filters that can provide clean water for an entire town. The people don't have many earthly possessions left, and I don't think they had many before the disaster hit, but their hospitality and joy in meeting foreigners was consistent with all the others I have met in this country.
   

We came across some strange things while we traveled around each day. We found a family of deer which seemed to be trapped in the courtyard of this home. The buck had a NICE rack!    Also, I thought it was amusing to see a large TV satellite hooked up to this tent.
   

Mostly, though, we just saw a lot of destruction and a lot of people who were hurting, without any hope for their futures.
   

   

   

In the huge city where I was staying with my friends, the buildings weren't damaged much from the disaster, but many local people were too afraid to sleep in them anymore. There have been many after-effects of the disaster, which keep them in anticipation of another "big one" which will finally bring down their building. So they sleep in tents on the ground.
 

In addition to my time scouting out areas that haven't received help and passing that information along to the people who are organizing relief efforts, I also did some work in the tent cities, where many people are living after their towns were completely wiped out. One day I went to a few tent cities with some people from this country who had come to help out. They were also family, and could speak English too. We had a great time working together. One of them is a popular college basketball star in this country. He stands at 6'8" tall. He and his teammates and pooled their money together to buy lots of games and sports equipment (basketballs, badminton sets, jump ropes) to pass out to the children in tent cities. It was a lot of fun to be able to give the kids something fun to play with. One of the biggest struggles they are facing right now is boredom. There is no work for the adults to do, no schools for the kids to attend. They just hang around in the heat and dust, and get more and more discouraged. So it was fun to bring something interesting into their days. The army is controlling these tent cities, so they pass out food and keep supplies coming in for the people.
   

        

   

   

   

   
All the pictures above were taken at one small sized tent city. The people really wanted to take pictures with me, and told me over and over again that they would be relocated in 10 days, so they really hoped I could come back to see them again before they were moved. And they really wanted me to bring the pictures I had taken. I was so glad that I was able to return two days later, and hunt down all the people from these pictures to give them a copy to keep. It was easy to find them because almost all of them were wearing the exact same clothes. I think most people only have two sets of clothes right now.

I took a break on Thursday morning and went with some of my friends to go see the panda bears. This big city is where the famous pandas of this country live. We went really early and got to see them all out, doing really cute things. In addition to the pandas, there were peacocks walking freely all around the park, and many other beautiful birds in the flower gardens and ponds. We also saw some red pandas, which look surprisingly dissimilar to the regular pandas. The park was great, and after spending three days doing disaster relief, it was another reminder of the stark contrast between the beautiful things made by the Creator, and the things of man that were wrecked so quickly and easily in this part of the country.
    

   

   

   

    

   

  

   

    

This little guy put on a hilarious show for us. He came out into his part of the park and went over to this children's plastic rocking horse. He nosed around it for a while, which was so cute, and we started chuckling at the idea that he might climb onto it and start rocking. And then he DID! It was so funny and unexpected and strange to see this baby bear rocking back and forth on the rocking horse. He climbed onto it just like a child. I stopped taking pictures and took a movie while he did it.
   

   

After a morning off, I got back to work as more and more volunteers started showing up to help with the relief work. Because I had been traveling around for several days, I was able to help direct the new people around as we went back to various locations and tent cities. We did some more scouting and found some hidden tent cities within larger towns in the disaster areas. It was so good to meet with these people, to provide for some of their physical needs and also offer answers to some of their deeper needs.
    

I hope to return in August to do some more work with the relief efforts. It was immensely rewarding work, and although it was so hard to come face-to-face with the emotional loss that these families have faced, it was so wonderful to offer them news about a gift that they may never have heard about if not for this natural disaster.

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June 25, 2008
What a crazy day it has been. Not the kind of day where I felt compelled to whip out my camera and capture all these moments on film… but a crazy day none the less.
This morning I had my first motorcycle accident. Don’t worry; it was small. As I was arriving at school at 7:30am for my time of meeting with the students and talking with DAD before classes, I got hit by a scooter! I was going into the school and he was driving on my right side. Then he suddenly decided to turn left by cutting right into me! I slammed on the brakes and then abandoned ship as my motorcycle slid into his scooter. As I jumped off the motorcycle I got scraped up just a little on my right leg, but other than that I was fine. But I was pretty irritated that the man had hit me with his scooter, and then he gave me a dirty look and drove off.

So that set my day onto a kinda frustrated path. During my class time my teachers and I had class in various locations around the school, trying to find a place where the mosquitoes would stop eating us alive. Ironically, we finally ended up back in my classroom, as the best place we could find to go.

I went downtown after class to study at a coffee shop that I really like. I stayed there about 4 hours and then around 4:30pm I decided I had better head home because I could see it was about to start raining hard. Unfortunately I didn’t beat the rain home. As I was driving along the riverfront road I got caught in a downpour and my motorcycle didn’t seem to like the idea of driving in the rain, so the engine died and refused to start back up. I thought I might be out of gas, but that wasn’t it. I tried to restart the engine and eventually the battery started to die. I was in a heavy downpour this entire time and was soon soaked to the skin under my protective motorcycle jacket, gloves, and helmet. I ended up PUSHING the motorcycle to the end of the riverfront road, because it was starting to flood. We’ve had a lot of flooding in my city lately, and during this downpour the river started coming onto the sidewalk so I knew I had better get off that road fast.

I pushed the motorcycle all the way down to my turn-off and then up to a gas station. They informed me that they weren’t giving anyone gas while there was so much thunder and lightning because it was unsafe. So I waited around for a while to see if my motorcycle would start back up after it had been under the gas station shelter for a while. It didn’t. Eventually I had no choice to push it under a nearby liquor store awning and abandon it there. I pulled all my stuff out of my storage box on the back of my motorcycle and spent the next half hour trying to convince cab drivers to give me a ride home. No one wanted to take me because they had heard that my apartment complex was flooded, so they didn’t want to drive me there.

Eventually I arrived home, an hour and a half after I had left the coffee shop downtown. I took off my dripping clothes and put them in the dryer, set out my motorcycle gear to air dry, and reflected on my day. I may never get my motorcycle back because I left it in a place where it is likely to be stolen or “towed” away. Who knows what’s wrong with it, or what it will cost to fix it. I’ll find out whenever it stops raining here….

What a crazy day!

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June 26, 2008
Just want to give you a quick update. I went back downtown today after school and my sweet little motorcycle was sitting right where I had left it. I was very happy to see it still there, although I had already begun to dream of a newer, better motorcycle I would buy if someone had stolen it....

So, I pushed it to a repair shop around the corner and after draining a TON of water from the engine, and replacing the engine lubricant oil, and some other stuff I didn't really understand, they got it working for me again. So all's well that ends well in this story!