Rebel With A Cause

Today the Regional Director came to the project in Banda Aceh to see how the we have been progressing. I showed him around and had a great time and as a parting gift he gave me an autographed copy of Rebel With A Cause which is Franklin Graham's autobiography. I've wanted to read it ever since I went to LeTourneau but haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm very excited to be able to read it and very much appreciate the gift.

Another indonesian oddity

I got back from running this afternoon and was cooling off in the house before I took a shower because if I take it too soon I'll still be sweating when I get out. Oh, and by shower I mean dumping buckets of cold water on myself. Anyways, I was informed by my cook that it isn't good to let sweat dry on your body. I asked why and she just said you have to wipe it off with a towel or it isn't good. Taking a shower afterwards isn't good enough. I'm not sure where this one came from. Probably the same line of thought that makes them think that air gets into the body through the skin (this is bad and where colds come from).

Musim Barat

The musim barat has definitely started now. Litterally translated it means the west season. Banda Aceh is on the east end of the Indian Ocean so the west season means really strong winds, big waves and no fish. The day will start out normal and around 1 or 2 in the afternoon a huge gust of wind will come with rain about 5 minutes later. The wind has to be 50-60mph. Yesterday it blew the roof off our motorcycle shack and today it nocked out the power. Its still off and we are running off of UPS. The wind also makes it difficult to play ultimate frisbee.

First Sermon

I preached my first sermon today. It was on the topic of faith which is something that I am very passionate about which helps. Whenever I try and give a speach about something I don't care about, it never comes out well but when I really care, it turns out really well. Overall it wasn't a whole lot different than teaching in front of a classroom except there is less audience participation. I got a decent amount though. Asked lots of questions and got people talking. No one was nodding off which was also good.

The funny thing is that I don't think I was actually scheduled to preach this week but next week instead. I had also signed up to be an alternate if someone backed out. I was preparing for this weekend when I got a call yesterday asking if I could preach because the person who was going to preach had left the country. I was a little confused because I thought I was already supposed to be. The upside is that I was ready. The downside is that I get to preach again next week. I think I'll do love...

Klieng Cot Aron Inauguration

Yesterday was the inauguration for our building project of 230 houses in Klieng Cot Aron. That is why I haven't posted much for the last week. I've been busy preparing for the ceremony. Good to have it over though.

To start with, we butchered two goats the night before to feed the people working on setting everything up. Nothing like watching 2 goats get slaughtered. The sound is indescribable. If you ever want me to demonstrate it, ask me when you see me. Goat sure tastes good when done right though. This is a picture of cooking the goat meat during the night. When they butcher an animal here, they just chop everything into small pieces. I mean everything. They go right through the bones and cut up the stomach and intestines. I don't much like the stomach. It tastes a lot like vomit. It is interesting that the men did all the cooking all night and through the morning. I asked them why and they said that the women only new how to cook small amounts of food. When cooking for large groups, the men always did it. I didn't argue.

Next up at 4AM, they slaughtered a cow. This is the unlucky beast. Sorry for the blurry picture. It was at night with no light so I couldn't get the camera to focus. I was planning on showing up and watching them slaughter it but when I woke at 3AM it was raining so I couldn't ride my motorcycle there. Too bad I had to sleep in.

So they started cooking all morning till about 11AM. This is a picture of 1/3 of the meat that came from the cow. They made a soupy dish called gule (goolay) that is eaten with rice (of course).

Gule has some coconut and cut up jackfruit or banana as well as other spices that I'm not sure what they are. Sure tastes good though. This is the men cutting up the jackfruit.

Once they had everything cut up and ready to go, they cooked it in these huge cauldrons for hours. Rice was cooked in giant pots about 3 feet tall. This is four of the six puts of meat cooking. In all we fed around 700 people for lunch at the celebration. We went a little, um, over budget but it was a lot of fun.

This is what all the fuss was about. 230 type 36 houses for the community. Everyone was very happy to be celebrating receiving all these new houses. One of the things that I am very proud of is that the house we are building is one that I would be willing to live in. If not, I wouldn't be so happy to be giving them out to people.

The ceremony started with the usual song and dance routine. I thought it was a little weird at the first ceremony I went to but I've grown to like it a little. This one was unique because the music was played live by local villagers as well. Usually it is the same recorded song. There was also religious prayers and lots of speeches. Mine was in Indonesian and I'm still not entirely sure what I said but I think it was good.

This is me and the new Bupati (District Leader). Being rather young still it is often difficult to get respect in Asia from government officials who don't believe I really am managing the project. They often want to talk to my "boss." That is how it started out yesterday but after a little while they realized that I really was in charge and things livened up a little.

The lieutenant governor and I unveiled a plaque to commemorate the occasion. We also handed out the certificates to the beneficiaries and cut a ribbon on the example house.

After the ceremony, we toured the village. On the left is the Camat (Sub-District) representative, Pak Kecik (Village Leader), lieutenant governor and me.

Overall it was a lot of fun and I'm glad its over. Now to get back to construction...

First Part of June Itinerary

I've purchased the first part of my ticket home in June. I'll be leaving on the 3rd and arrive in the US at 9:45 AM on the 4th of June. I'll be leaving the US at 6:35PM on te 16th of June.

Airline Flight From Time To Time
JAPAN AIRLINES 5839 KUL KualaLumpur 06/03/2006 10:50 PM NRT 06/04/2006 06:55 AM
AMERICAN AIR 176 NRT Tokyo 06/04/2006 12:25 PM DFW 06/04/2006 09:45 AM

AMERICAN AIR 2465 DFW Dallas/FW 06/16/2006 06:25 PM LAX 06/16/2006 07:31 PM
CATHAY PACIFIC 6121 LAX Los Angeles 06/16/2006 11:55 PM HK 06/18/2006 05:35 AM
CATHAY PACIFIC 6099 HK Hong Kong 06/18/2006 08:50 AM KUL 06/18/2006 12:30 PM

I still have to purchase the tickets to get me from Banda Aceh to Kuala Lumpur but that is easier (and hopefully cheaper) than the rest of the flight. I'll post an updated itinerary when I have it.

Trip to Berastagi

I was in Medan this weekend because we had Friday and Monday off for Easter. I was just going to hang around the team house the whole time but Adrian came in on Saturday late morning. We started to go out to get something to eat when we started talking about wanting to go to Berastagi. Both of us were already thinking about going but didn't have anyone to go with. So we immediately went back to the team house, got our bags and hopped on the next bus up to Berastagi.

Berastagi is a city about 2 hours outside of Medan that back in the day was a huge backpackers hangout. My shelter coordinator and many of my staff are from there. So Adrian and I headed up there without a clue what we were going to find. The bus was only 75cents for the two hour trip up the mountain and it included a guy falling alseep on my sholder every couple of minutes, a breakdown, switching busses since the bus wouldn't start back up, and getting pulled over by the police. Quite a bargain!

Anyways, so we got dumped in the middle of a town which neither of us had ever been to or had any maps or information about. A couple of our friends were in town but their cell phone wasn't working. I wanted to look them up but couldn't remember the name of the hotel. So we stopped in a travel agent and asked if they had a list of hotels. They said they were a guesthouse and we could stay there. I told them that we were looking for friends and they told us to check the main hotel, which we did.

They weren't there and my shelter coordinator called his brother in law to pick us up and find a good place for us to stay. Where did he bring us? Back to the travel agent we wandered into. So we stayed there which was good except that there was only one bed and Adrian likes to cuddle.

So Sunday morning we went with the brother in law to the main church to see the Easter service. However, it wasn't in Indonesian but in Karo, the local dialect so I understood exactly none of the service. Was still neat to see. The sermon was given from a huge half of a boat suspended about 20 feet above the stage. Apparently the church was built by the dutch and in the dutch style. Very different.

Afterwards we climbed up the local volcano, Mount Sibayak. It took us two and a half hours to get to the top. We had a good lunch and headed back down the easy way since the tendonitus in my leg was acting up something aweful. So we went down to the hot springs and relaxed in the really hot water.

Berastagi is famous for its Babi Panggang which is roast pig. Boy is it good! Comes with a blood sauce, spinach like leaf and pork broth soup. Sounds weird but is really good.

So then we headed back on the same bus but without the adventure. I felt a little ripped off but happy to be back. We told them we wanted to get dropped off at the stop nearest the airport. We were wondering if we were nearing the spot when we hear a Lion Air 737-300 roar over our heads. Needless to say we got off.

The Big Trip

I’m finally writing about a trip that has been in the planning for the last 6 months or so. We finally have things in a form that should be somewhat close to what will happen so I’m ready to share it with you.

The trip began as a harebrained idea to drive motorcycles From Indonesia to London. Amazingly this can technically be done with only one short ferry crossing from Sumatra to Malaysia and using the Chunnel between England and France. The rest is all land. However, as we started to plan, the length of time and difficulty of driving motorcycles, not to mention the cost, made us decide to backpack the trip instead. We also wanted to shorten the trip a bit and so cut out lots of country. We originally were hoping to go to Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and much of Europe but decided not to.

So, the plan is to backpack from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Moscow, Russia in about 3 months, exploring China and Central Asia in the process. A friend named Stephen and I will be doing the trip together and will hopefully set out on the 9th of September. We’ll be taking trains, busses, taxis and whatever else is willing to carry us in order to get there. Some of the countries are pretty far off the beaten track for tourists but none are having wars or uprisings right now so it should be pretty safe.

We can really use your help. If you know of anyone along our route who would be willing to host us for a couple of nights or to show us around, we would really appreciate their contact information, especially e-mail addresses. We’ll be bringing camping gear in case we get stuck out in the wilderness and hope not to use too many hotels along the way.

Here is the basic itinerary of the trip:
Please note that these dates are approximates and we plan on traveling to smaller destinations along the way as well that may not be on the map so if you know of anyone close to these places, let us know as well.

Medan, Indonesia Sept 9 - Sept 10
Penang, Malaysia Sept 10 - Sept 11
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Sept 11 - Sept 13
Krabi, Thailand Sept 13 - Sept 16
Bangkok, Thailand Sept 17 - Sept 20
Chiang Rai, Thailand Sept 21 - Sept 23
Vientianne, Laos Sept 24 - Sept 26
LouangPhrabang, Laos Sept 26 - Sept 27
Kunming, China Sept 29 - Oct 2
Chengdu, China Oct 3 - Oct 6
Lhasa, China Oct 8 - Oct 11
Golmud, China Oct 12 - Oct 13
Urumqi, China Oct 15 - Oct 16
Kashgar, China Oct 17 - Oct 19
Jalalabad (Osh), Kyrgyz Oct 21 - Oct 23
Tashkent, Uzbekistan Oct 24 - Oct 28
Dushanbe, Tajikistan Oct 29 - Nov 2
Khorog, Tajikistan Nov 3 - Nov 3
Jalalabad (Osh), Kyrgyz Nov 7 - Nov 8
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Nov 9 - Nov 13
Almaty, Kazakhstan Nov 13 - Nov 15
Moscow, Russia Nov 19 - Nov 24
St. Petersburg, Russia Nov 25 - Nov 28
Return to US Early December

A baby goat

Yesterday I discovered a little goat that had just been born in the unfinished house next to ours. It was bleating and the mother was cleaning it. I watched it try to stand for about 10 minutes before it finally almost made it. Here is a picture of the very young goat.



On a side note, I'm getting two goats and a cow for the inauguration coming up in a couple weeks.

Apologies #2

I would like to apologize for the misspelling of the title of the last post and for all the misspellings in general on my website. I promise that it will happen again, which I apologize for in advance. Thank you.

Appologies

Sorry I haven't been posting lately. I've had a visit from a very special friend for the last week and I am very sad to see her go. If you would like more information, feel free to e-mail me. It's a good story.

Lots of stuff coming up. The inaugeration for Cot Aron will be on the 22nd and I've still got lots of big news about traveling to announce that I'm not going to promise when since I keep breaking the promises. Stay tuned for lots of interesting stuff though.