Wednesday, November 30, 2005

We survived the storm...

Yes... I am still alive... it's just that when I have a day and a half off due to a winter storm... my work continues to pile up like the the freshly fallen snow... Not a good deal. Love days off... hate coming back to work. Can anybody relate?

ANYWAY, I thought I would let you all know that Christmas has "officially" arrived at our house! The Halls are Decked with Bows of Holly and the Tree is up and sparkling in all of its magnificent glory... with an angel on top...

AND to top it all off... I got a call from Micker Mackers. She was full of excitement as she told me that "She lost her first tooth!"

To be a kid again. ;)

Work calls.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Sucks to be a Texan on a day like today...

You have to love waking up in the morning to the message on the website:

Due to the winter storm, the campus is closed today. All classes are cancelled and all non-essential employees do not need to report to work. That's me... just a non-essential employee. Gotta love the term "non-essential employee."

So, while all you "warm climate people" are working like dogs... I am getting paid to sit at home and blog. Too bad you will never have the feeling of freedom that one feels when days like this come along.

I think I'll pass on moving to Texas. Do YOU ever get a day off for a snow storm?

I think not. At the risk of pushing your face in the snow... I will just say this:

HA!

Monday, November 28, 2005

Winter Storm Warning...

It is 8 pm on Monday, November 28th and the power is out. Currently, we are in a blizzard and our weather is:

mostly cloudy
Temp: 18 °F
Feels Like: -5 °F
Wind: NW 43, Gusting at 51 mph

Jake, Micker Mackers and Bug Bug are on the floor in Bug Bug's room snuggled together under a pile of blankets. I called the power company and they have no estimation on how long it is going to take to get the power back on. I have a portable propane heater that we can fire up if it starts to get really cold in here. I turned all the water to the house off and I drained all the water lines so that the pipes don't freeze and burst. So, here we go... life in the country in the Middle of winter in Minnnesota...

And just as I finished typing this... the power came back on... I just cranked the furnace to 80 so if the power goes out again, it will stay warmer longer.

But keeping everything in perspective... my final thoughts are: At least I can Blog even when the power goes out. :)

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

A final post on my trip...

The next day, Suresh, D.S. and Heerendra met me at the Hotel at 8 am. We went to what locals call the “Monkey Temple” which is a place where people go to worship. I don’t quite get these eastern religions and Idol worship. One word: worthless. Spinning drums to gain the energy and touching idols and bowing before them results in only helping people to be continually lost. It was ironic that Queen’s song “Another One Bites the Dust” was playing in the background. It summed up my thoughts as well. But, from my experience, it was not the time or place to tell them that I thought what they were doing was wrong. I will continue to build relationships with my friends and hopefully someday, I will be able to share with them Christ’s love.

From there, we went to Suresh’s home and ate breakfast. Their breakfast is about 4 courses and is pretty much what we would consider lunch. Except, lunch for them is at about 2 pm. After breakfast, we went to the ancient city of Patan and saw the old palaces and temples. They have a national museum that I went thorough which was very interesting. After seeing Patan, we went to Heerendra’s house for lunch and ate another 7 courses. Unbeknownst to me, Suresh, D.S. and Heerendra purchased all sorts of gifts for Jacob, MacKenzie, Leah and Sydney throughout the morning and presented them to me after lunch. Their hospitality is unmatched. After meeting Heerendra’s family, we went to the Ancient city of Baktapur. Durbar square is part of this ancient city and we walked through some of the local markets. As we were walking, Suresh ran into one of his old friends and he invited us to his house for tea. So, of course, we accepted. Throughout the day, we also went through some back alleys and I was able to see some silver smiths practicing their trade. VERY interesting. That night, we stopped by D.S. Jewelry store and I purchased a ring for Sydney and Myself. Sydney’s ring is 22 carat gold with red rubies in the shape of a flower and mine was a 24 carat gold ring with an “N” on it. The “N” stood for Nepal. I am using past tense with my ring because some “uncircumcised Philistine” rummaged through my suitcase and stole it on my way home. Thankfully, he missed Sydney’s ring.

Anyway, it is good to be home. Finally semi caught up with my work. Just in time for Thanksgiving. One thing is for sure... a trip halfway around the world makes you keenly aware of how thankful you are for your family and those you love. I am definately thankful for my wife and kids.

Happy Turkey Day all!



Thursday, November 17, 2005

Moving on to Nepal

On my way to Nepal, I left Bombay and had to make a connecting flight in Delhi. I had a lay over of about an hour and a half which would have been plenty of time to make my connecting flight; however, we didn’t get off the runway until one hour and seven minutes after the flight was supposed to take off. So, needless to say, I was late for my connecting flight. When I arrived in Delhi at the local airport, I had to collect my bags, grab a taxi, travel 20 minutes to the international airport, go through customs and board the plane. I paid the taxi driver 100 rupees to drive me there as fast as he could. He did exactly that… and although I made it to the airport in one piece, I think my life was shortened by about ten years. Millimeters separated our car from the semi on the left and the cement barrier on the right. Unfortunately the airline staff said, “I was too late” and that I would have to catch another flight a few hours later. That was the case until another lady and her family who were in the same predicament begged and pleaded because her father was ill and she had to get to Kathmandu as soon as possible. As a result, they decided to let us on the plane.

Nepal, on the other hand, was everything I hoped it would be. The moment I got there, I had 2 messages waiting for me at the desk and I was greeted at the hotel by staff taking my luggage, people opening doors for me and a glass of juice as I checked in. The room was great and moments after I reached my room, I had a phone call from friends that had visited me in the States. Suresh and D.S. Hadn’t seen them in about a year and they were anticipating my arrival. We went to have coffee and they asked if there was really something I just had to see… of course I had no idea what Nepal had to offer… but I did pull out a business card of a local restaurant. One of our student’s Aunt, Uncle, Grandpa and Grandma had visited our university about 7 month’s ago and his Uncle handed me a business card of the family business and said that if I ever got to Nepal, I needed to stop by. So I showed Suresh the card and he said, “The guy that owns this Restaurant is my friend! We went to engineering school together. I’ll call him.” So he called him and Heerendra, our student’s father, immediately dropped everything and came to meet me. We walked to his restaurant and I ate more food than I previously thought was humanly possible. I finally had to say, “No more food. Please. I hurt.” But, it was a great night. He owns a 5 story restaurant with a private terrace on top. We had a perfect view of the entire city. While they were all wearing jackets I had on a short sleeve shirt and it was the temperature of a cool summer evening. Besides I was from Minnesota… I have grilled hamburgers in a t-shirt in 20 below temperatures. Okay, that’s a stretch… but the point is, we didn’t need jackets. Anyway, that was the start to a great trip.


Heerendra,
Suresh,
and Myself
the
first
night
I
was
there





The next morning began with a Mountain Flight to see Mt. Everest. In short, it was Majestic. Perfect case in point of how awesome our God really is. The Himalayas were fantastic and Everest in all its grandeur was perfect. I have a few spectacular pictures and some video of the flight as well. (I decided to add a few more pictures of my Mt. Everest flight because they turned out so well.)




After the flight, I went back to the hotel and got ready for the Seminar. This of course also went really well. I presented to over 200 people and I spoke with them individually afterwards for a few hours. That night I went to a traditional Nepali restaurant. Ate pretty much everything in front of me and watched some extravagant traditional dancers in between courses. Pretty good ending to a not so mediocre day.




To be continued...

As promised, more Everest/mountain pictures:













Enjoy!

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

A little more of India...


Pictures
of
the
Hotel
in
India




A
Different
Angle...





Looking
Towards
The
Arabian
Sea

Anyone
Care
For
A
Dip
In
The
Pool
By
The
Oceanside?


Life was rough... and although the Hotel was nice, I must say that India was an eye opener. In all reality, my stay in India was too long. I got tired of people begging me for money. On day 4, I walked on the beach and collected some shells for Micker Mackers. While I was doing this, I had a beggar come up to me and ask for money. I gave him about 100 rupees which was a little over $2.00. To me it was nothing… but for him it was a couple of weeks worth of food. Sad really. Everywhere I went, I had people asking me for money. Little kids knocking on my car windows… “Rupees please sir….” Making eating gestures… then putting their hands together. As I was leaving a coffee shop after a meeting, I had a little kid hanging on my arm begging me for money. He had to be Jake’s age… can’t believe the poverty. You feel helpless because there are so many starving people and you can’t help them all. So that wore on me a bit. THEN, after having too much down time, the day came to give a presentation for the university. The program was supposed to be all set up… well, as it turned out, my program ended up landing on Id. (Pronounced “eed”) This of course is the Muslim’s biggest holiday. We knew that we were going to be around this time, but we scheduled the program on November 5th because Id was projected to be on the 4th. However, prognosticators and soothsayers were wrong. I found out that Id doesn’t occur until both the crescent moon and the star line up exactly right. This did not happen until the 5th which was the day of my program. As a result, all the public transportation shut down and I had a total of a “WHOPPING” 2 people at my program. Little frustrating. Although I had nothing to do with the planning… I didn’t travel all that way to talk with 2 people. Now the main reason why I was there was also to meet with agencies to establish a relationship with them so we could start to recruit more students from India. SO, at least that was accomplished. But to try and recover somewhat of a disastrous start, an ad was placed in the newspaper so I could continue to speak with people while I was there. So, after this, I was kind of turned off by India…

I did go to the markets and “dicker” for some shoes and clothes for Sydney. Women, you would be proud. NOT only did I get some really good deals, Sydney liked all my choices for her as well. Of course she looks beautiful. I’ll take some pictures at a later date of my gorgeous wife in authentic traditional Indian garb.

As I was at the market… I had a guy named “Vicky” follow me with his shoe shine bag saying, “Sir, your shoes look really bad. You need a shoe shine. Sir, I make you look like movie star.” How could I not laugh and give the guy an opportunity to shine my shoes. He was right, my shoes were bad. I purposely wore them because I knew the streets were going to be bad in India. So, I let him shine my shoes and although he requested that I buy him a shoe shine box to help his business, I gave him a good tip.

I did ride a rickshaw, however, it was a motorized one… they didn’t have regular rickshaws where I was at… mostly because if you were to let someone pull you around in a wagon, you would get “squashed like grape.” Traffic is pretty bad over there… but surprisingly, I did not see one accident while I was there. Traffic ebbed and flowed taking a path of least resistance and some how, mass chaos works.

The Rats in India are the size of small canines. Well, okay, they aren’t quite as big as dogs… but they are as big as rabbits. The night I left, I was waiting in the car for my friend as he was printing something off at a local cyber café and BIG rats with really long tails (seriously about the size of small rabbits) were crawling in the gutters and sidewalks. N-A-S-T-Y. Yuck.

Anyway, stay tuned. The trip gets better as I head to Nepal.

Rumble... Rumble...

That's a sound of an avalanche people... and not an avalanche coming from the Himalayan Mountains but from that of my desk. I promise that I will have a sizable post coming by this weekend... but I MUST catch up with all the work I am behind with at work... Once this is done, I will start posting. In the meantime, I have turned on my avalanche beeper. If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, send a search and rescue team.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Miss you guys!

Almost home... and boy do I miss my family. I miss all of you too.

Now, don't get me wrong... Both India and Nepal were Great places to visit and I love the fact that I came. I have so many stories... but while I have enjoyed my visit immensly, there is no place in the world than where your heart is... and Sydney (and my kids) have my heart. Home in 3 days. Trip has gone fast. Will have blog material for at least a week or two.

Jump on a plane tomorrow and then on Thursday. Keep me in your prayers!

Catch you in a few days!

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

India:

My Trip is in Journal Format... Enjoy!
October 30th
Day 1-

Traveled from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. Flight was supposed to take off at 3:40 Sunday afternoon... but was delayed until 4:30.

Scared out of my mind... I was full of anxiety and I can't even remember if I told Sydney that I love her. I was too sad and she was crying... this is the first time we have been appart this long in 8 years. crazy.

Sat next to two guys from India on the plane; Raj and Bibek. Super Guys, very friendly. There was a Canadian rock band on the other side of me. I was in seat 32E which was dead smack in the middle of the plane. Horrible place to sit.

Flight food was a chicken roll rice and some other stuff.

Watched a movie - Herbie Fully Loaded. Not bad.

Calmed down; realization I am on my way.

Couldn't sleep; Prayed for Jake, Mack, Bug Bug and Benji and of course prayed for Sydney Especially. Also prayed for Katie, Eddie, Jes and Roger, Jcol and Steve as well as a few other friends.

Arrived in Holland at 7:05 am currently october 31st; waiting at gate E5.

October 31st
Day 2

Flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai was another 8 hours.

Very tiring... although I had a better seat; I love isles.

Sat by a woman named Prajati; very nice.

Watched 2 movies: Monster in Law and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. 2nd movie was the best.

Arrived in Mumbai at 11:15 pm; Whirl Wind. Don't think I went through the final checkpoint right.

Found my friend right after leaving the airport. Welcome Site.

Traffic to the Hotel was CRAZY. Sydney thinks I honk the horn.

Will exchange money tomorrow.

November 1st.
Day 3-

Festive Spirit by all... Dawali The Festival of Lights is their countries major holiday.

Slept until 11:30 am

Will walk on the beach.

Later

Had lunch on my own and then took a nap.

5pm, Met Satya's parents and family.

Went to a Hari Karishna Temple. I don't get these poly theistic religions... There's a god for everything. It's sad that it is such a lost culture... rich with color... but lost none the less.

Went to the beach with Satya's Family. Had a Coke... wasn't as sweet as our Coke.

Boy with a monkey came up and made him "Dance like Michael Jackson." Makes me laugh just thinking about it.




    After that, I haggled on a Key Chain for my Dad.

    Satya and I went and ate some Chinese Food. Top. Notch. Best Chinese I have EVER had.



November 2nd:
Day 3-

Went to bed about 10:30. Woke up at 3am. Couldn't sleep the rest of the night.

Miss Sydney and the Kids. Wish we could contact each other... also wish she was here.

Day of Tourism Today... Will post pictures another day.