India 2008 - Recap

I've been meaning to post something like this since I got home from India but just haven't had the time. What follows is basically an email to a friend, but it does a good job of summing up the trip and it's going to be a while before I get the time to write anything more or different, so this will have to do at least for now. You can find some pictures here. Theoretically I'll post more of my own in the near future.

So, yeah, the trip. I'm still processing a lot of it. It was good and hard and challenging in a lot of different ways. The biggest thing for me seemed to be that there was just so much that was different. Or, maybe it was that a lot of things were kinda familiar but just different enough to make the difference. When we were in Bangalore, many people spoke English and almost all of the advertisements on the street were in English, but there was just so much that was so different and that made things a little disorienting. Another way to look at it was the food, especially the bananas. We ate a lot of bananas (they're one food that, as long as the skin is intact are safe for weak stomached Americans to eat). We ate a lot of different varieties of bananas. They all tasted kinda like the bananas that we get at Kroger down the street, but they were a little big different. The bread, the peanut butter, the cookies, cereal; pretty much anything prepackaged and most of the fruit tasted mostly like what we expected but a little different. And after a handful of days like that, the longing for something familiar, which I guess could be called succumbing to culture shock or something like that, becomes pretty strong. This is where time with the team just hanging out, the granola bars and Peter Pan peanut butter and books that we brought with us became really, really important. I think every member of the team went through this at one point or another. I hit it pretty early due to getting sick almost immediately upon landing in Bangalore (I must have picked up something on one of the flights over). But I got some antibiotics that Gail had brought with her and after about a day I was feeling better and was able to eat reasonably well after another day. And, really, if I was going to get sick, that was probably the best time. No one felt good that first day just due to the jet lag, sleep deprivation and travel shock. And it wasn't enough to keep me from doing anything other than eating dinner that first night (I opted for an early shower and bedtime).

But the people we met and the things that we got to do were amazing. The street children's drop-in center, Grace house, is an island of hope in a pretty barren landscape for the street kids of downtown Bangalore. Just the fact that these kids who have nothing and, really, are nothing in the society, can go and get food and clothing, be loved, have a chance to be kids, learn and play and experience a taste of what life really should be is amazing and offers such an amazing picture of the gospel. But it was also heartbreaking. Milton, who runs Grace House along with his wife Jebba, talked about how one of the boys had come a long way, how he had worked on his life, rejecting the drugs and the pressures of the street and the friends he has out there. Having to avoid the police at the train station because not only will they run the kids off but they will do so with brutality, beating them with clubs and sticks. We saw some of these security officers and the sticks that they carry are for real. This is a kid who can be no older than about 12. He's been coming to the center for a couple of years. Kids that age shouldn't have to be "working on their life". They should be running around and climbing trees and having their worst worry be a spelling test or whether Suzy likes him or something. The realities that these kids deal with was hard to confront. To hear the kids pray for their friends who weren't coming to Grace House was also difficult. But, again, it reminded me that we're all a lot like these kids in God's eyes. We've got nothing but a messed up life and then God calls us to himself, adopts us into his family on no merit of our own. It seems to good to be true and yet it is.

Throughout the trip, although more so when we were on the coast, the realities of Hinduism were very apparent. People worship gods which are not gods. They spend time praying to idols, things made by human hands. They offer food and drink to statues and sometimes animals they revere as holy. And it all just seems to silly and worthless and yet it's what these people put their trust in. They hope that if they're good enough they will be reborn at a higher level, eventually coming back as a cow which apparently is one step away from becoming on with The Supreme Being. This worldview does make people very friendly and open, but it's also really sad to see how lost they are. And, really, some of it is just kinda silly, at least from my way of thinking. The idea that cows are revered as as close to a deity as you can get on this earth is almost laughable to me. My dad's family is all dairy farmers and I grew up spending time on my uncle's farm in the summers. The idea that those cows are holy beings seems just silly. We got to go through a Hindu snake temple in Nagercoil one morning when it was raining and we couldn't work. That was kinda anticlimactic. The temple was obviously organized to accommodate a lot of worshippers coming through to do whatever it is that they do at the main shrine area. Basically, it's set-up like a line area of a ride at a Disney theme park complete with some line switchbacks and metal railings with chains. It reminded me a lot of the line area for the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland only the real temple wasn't near as cool. At the main shrine area you looked down a little tunnel/short hallway and there was a small area with lots of gold, lit by candle/torch light. There was at least one person back there doing something, possibly chanting, seemingly offering something to something. It was hard to tell and we didn't linger long. We didn't see any snakes. We think they may have been in a temple annex area but it was hard to tell. And we had to leave our shoes outside when we went in. It's odd enough walking around a place like that but doing it in bare feet makes it all the more different. Although we had spent an afternoon without shoes and socks that Sunday when we visited an historic palace not far from where we were staying. That was another interesting experience that definitely would never have happened in the US.

We also got a bit of information about the Catholic church in the area and how they have adopted some of the Hindu customs, trying to make the faith more approachable to people (mostly people practicing some superstitions that are common among Hindus). That wasn't as difficult for me to stomach as it was for some others of the team. Yeah, it's not a good idea, but if you go back to the roots some practices of most Christians (Christmas trees, eggs and bunnies at Easter) have their roots in pagan practices as well. Not great, but it happens. And, in some senses, helped me identify with these people who seem so different from me as well as challenged me to question some of the things that I do (not that I'm going to stop eating chocolate bunnies or anything, but you get the idea). We also visited an ancient church which tradition says (according to the Indian Orthodox church) was built by the apostle Thomas. Our guide, a young man studying to be an Orthodox priest, told us several theories about the church. One being that it was built by Thomas and his followers (that's what he believed) another that it was built by Phoenician Christians who had heard the gospel from Thomas and had moved into the area (there's questions about whether Thomas actually made it to India or not). The church was, again according to tradition, built in 67AD. The priest talked about how the site was very holy and how many miracles had been witnessed there, some attributed to a small cross carved in relief on one wall (possibly by Thomas' own hands according to tradition. There was lots of talk of things that were "according to tradition" which I think is akin to saying "legend says".). The cross was also apparently very important in confirming that the building really was a church rather than a Hindu temple. At one point the building had fallen into disrepair and there was a dispute about whether it was a Hindu temple or a Christian church. The church shares many architectural features with Hindu temples, but the cross on the wall confirmed the buildings origins as a church. And, of course, we had to take our shoes off to enter the building. I don't know if we were in a place where the apostle Thomas actually worshipped God or whether we were just in a really old church. But, in any event, it was pretty neat to see and to remember how God has been working around the world of thousands and thousands of years.

As for the actual work, hanging out with the kids at Grace House was fun. There were two boys there when we were there, Manju and Ramish. They're both fun kids, full of energy and a bit timid at first but they opened up fairly quickly. The team split in half with half going to Grace House one day while the other half toured around Bangalore, visiting the train and bus station where the street children tend to congregate, eating at McDonalds (so nice to have a familiar meal, even if it was just a little bit different than at home) and dealing with collecting the luggage that didn't make it to Bangalore quite when we did. Then, the next day, the teams swapped. At Grace House we read through and then acted out a story from the Bible (Jesus heals the leper and Jesus calms the storm), prayed with and for and spent a lot of time playing with the kids. That was a really neat time and we all wished we could have spent more time doing that.

Down on the coast, our work involved helping to build small, brick and and concrete houses. The houses are 200 square feet along the foundation, smaller once you get the walls built. They're smaller than my master bedroom inside and about 50% larger than the cubicle I sit in (a standard two man cube that houses four peons or two people with the full set of furniture). To think that a family of three or four, maybe more if multiple generations are living together, live in that amount of space is sometimes difficult to contemplate. But, the weather is fairly mild and much of life is lived on the streets or in the common areas of the village. And, it's basic shelter and no smaller than what the people are currently living in. The houses we were building replaced woven reed shacks that the villagers were living in, sometimes right next to the site of their new house. These are the same type of houses that were completely swept away by the Tsunami in December 2004. It's hard to imagine that in the span of just a few minutes these people lost everything. The villagers were almost without exception fishermen (or wives and families of fishermen). Which meant that each evening the men went out into the sea, through the very choppy surf, dodging many big rocks along the coast, in these little boats, some no bigger than a large canoe. They spent the night fishing and then brought their catch in to be auctioned each morning. They cleaned and repaired their nets (just like in the disciples in the Bible), spent the afternoon relaxing or playing cards, slept and went out to do it again. While we were building the homes, the home owners were sometimes nearby, keeping track of what was going on, offering "suggestions" (as far as we could tell. They spoke Tamil, the local dialect. And that's nothing close to English. Occasionally some on our team would default to Spanish when English didn't work. That didn't make anything any better but I found it humorous.). Apparently fishermen view themselves above brick layers and house builders so they won't help with the building process. But they will definitely point out when things aren't to their liking or express their desire for a larger house or a different style "window" or whatever...at least we think that's what they were talking about. Again, it was often hard to tell unless someone translated.)

We spent a lot of time moving bricks around (small red bricks like are used here only less dense, more likely to crack and very, very dry. We all brought home a lot of brick dust.). It seems that the bricks were never where we needed them and that each wall of the house required more bricks than we knew actually existed in India. We helped lay foundations, build walls, pour roofs and everything in between. Most of the crews who were working building the houses were very open to letting us help, very patient when we screwed up (who knew bricks had a top and a bottom?), were complimentary when we finally got things right (some bits are harder than they look) and overall were a great pleasure to work with. We learned that sometimes you have to pump water because that water that comes from the "city" isn't on all the time. And we also learned that not everyone had a full understanding of fluid dynamics (sometimes it doesn't help to pump faster. Water's incompressible anyway you pump it so there's a limit to how fast the water is going to come out of the pump. It might look like it's coming out faster if it has greater pressure, but those molecules are only going to move so fast through that pipe. We also learned that when you can only speak a few sentences in each other's language, communicating the basics of fluid dynamics is very complicated.) We learned that shovels don't look the same the world over. The ones we used were more like hoes with the blade bent over. Works really well for mixing concrete or breaking up dirt, less so for shoveling anything. Using one of these shovels was an acquired skill and required different muscles. We drank coconut milk straight out of coconuts, became the local tourist attraction (at least Emma and Lauren, a 19 year old from Pennsylvania who joined our team for the trip, did, especially to the college age boys who found us during our final day of work. Emma nicknamed them "creepy lurkers"), got to play with the kids of the village and talk and pray with some of the women. We put on a program for children one evening where we acted out more Bible stories and sang lots of songs (Sherry's experience with Good News Club came in very handy here). Some of the people of the village and a few of the workers attended that as well, which was neat to see and good to know that they heard at least a simple presentation of the gospel in their own language. I also remembered that as much as I enjoy a few days of manual labor, I live in a point and click world at home and, for the most part, I enjoy that. I don't mind the physical activity. In fact, I like that for the most part. But the monotony of building houses like that would get to me after a while. I like the mental challenge that my work brings better than the physical challenge of building houses.

There's much more to tell. We saw a couple of the main courses for our meals alive just a few hours before eating them. We all got our full of curry at different times during the trip and then ate a lot of peanut butter. We had issues just about every time we went to the airport. We experienced traffic that can only be described as chaotic and an exercise in strengthening our prayer life. We smelled things we wished we hadn't and saw things we wished we could have looked at for longer. We learned that smiles and waves transcend language barriers. We got a better understanding of cricket (although the nuances are still far beyond our grasp). We got to know each other better and came to care about people who are so different and yet so like ourselves. And, yeah, so much more.

It was a good trip in so many different ways. I'm glad to be home but also hope to go back sometime in the future.

India 2008 - All systems go!

Tomorrow right after church the India 2008 mission trip begin.  We won't actually be "feet on the ground" until 5:30 am Tuesday morning (local time, that's 7pm Monday evening for those of you in the US Central Time Zone.  It still takes a while to get halfway around the world.) and, by that time we will have been on four different flights and, hopefully, had a chance to buy some Belgian chocolate (we connect through Brussels and Newark and Bombay/Mumbai.  But it's the Brussels connection that I'm most excited about.)  We'll also probably all be pretty beat.  But that's the price of modern air travel and we're planning on putting in a full day (prayers for good rest on the flights, endurance and quick a quick recovery from jet lag for all members of the team would be greatly appreciated).  Theoretically keeping busy on Tuesday should help to get us adjusted to the time.  That's worked for me in the past when I've had to completely upend my schedule.  We'll see how it works this time.  I'm confident that it won't hurt any.

In recent days, people have asked me if I'm ready to go.  My response has almost always been "not yet".  And, that was true.  It wasn't until tonight that I was fully packed (okay, I'm not completely packed yet.  I still need to let a few podcasts finish downloading, put the finishing touches on some playlists and then resync my iPod before adding that to my pack.).  And I definitely didn't have my life ready for me to be gone from it for two weeks until this evening.  Living alone means that you have to take care of your own bills, make sure that the cats are set-up for someone to come in and care for them, do some minor picking up around the house, mow the lawn, make sure the chores are pretty much done, etc all before you can leave.  Otherwise, you come home to a mess that you're in no shape to deal with.  Fortunately, I've had a lot of practice doing all of this and the house is still in pretty good shape from my pre-RYM cleanup.  So no worries in the physical preparations front.

The bigger thing is whether I'm mentally ready for India 2008.  I'm not certain.  It still hasn't really "hit me" that I'm going to India tomorrow.  Part of it probably is that I've been talking about and thinking about this trip for almost a year now (some people may know that, most of the time, the mission trips for each year are preliminarily decided on by Steve and I at an after dinner conversation late in the week during the current year.  For the rest of you, if you've got opinions about where we should go, get your ideas in early!).  I've been planning for the trip for the past six or so months.  And I've done so much travel that packing up and going somewhere isn't as big a deal for me as it is for many other people.  India is a bit farther than I usually go and I know the culture is going to be much different than most of my regular trips (Texas sometimes feels like a whole different country than the rest of the planet, but it's pretty similar to most other places in a lot of ways), but, really, in a lot of ways, it's another short term mission trip (number 17 for me), another plane ride, another time to spend some concentrated time serving God with a group of His people.  I say that I'm excited about this trip.  And in some ways I am.  But, in others, I've got a bit of a blasé attitude.  It's not quite "been there, done that", but it's kinda close.  And that doesn't mean that I'm not looking forward to it.  I'm just not feeling that it's going to "The BESTEST BEST THING EVER that will TOTALLY CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER!!!".  Maybe it will.  God can do that and that would rock.  But, more likely, that won't happen.  And I'm good with that.  I'm ready to be flexible and try to be patient and be open to whatever God has to teach me and show me in the upcoming two weeks.  And hopefully my team and I will come back in one piece (well, 9 pieces, but you get the idea), having suffered no ill effects (food or water borne diseases, physical accidents, being chewed on by sacred cows, running out of M&Ms with four days left to go on the trip, etc).  But, if we don't, we'll deal.  God's still in control, no matter what happens.

Semper Gumby!*

I'll post more when I get home.

*Semper Gumby = Always Flexible.  It's a motto we brought back from a mission trip to Fairmont, West Virginia a number of years ago.  One of the team coordinators there is a former Marine.  It's very fitting and it has served us well.

 

For Lauren

Couple of issues left over from RYM.

1. You can't get sunburned while riding in a (non-convertible) car with the windows rolled up.  This is because the car windows block the UVB rays - the ones that cause sunburn (B for burning).  However, they don't block the UVA rays, which cause aging (A for aging) and can cause skin cancer.

2. Brendan Fraser was definitely not in Dead Poets Society.

RYM Recovery - India Prep - Day 1

Some people take a "gap year" between high school graduation and college to take a break from school, reflect on who they are and where they want to go with their lives and, well, for whatever reason.  Me, I'm taking a "gap week" between my two summer vacation adventures this year.  And today was the first day of that week.

Last Sunday, right after worship, I drove one of two 12 passenger vans out of the church parking lot, headed north west and, about 14 hours later arrived in Boulder, Colorado*.  We were graciously hosted by Lauren's family (our former youth intern who is now an RUF intern at Ole Miss).  Monday we spent the morning sleeping in to recover from the late arrival, learned that the Bates boys had been born, hung around in Boulder and then drove up to the YMCA of the Rockies camp outside of Estes Park.  This camp has become one of my favorite places on earth.  The camp is surrounded on a couple of sides by Rocky Mountain National Park (the camp has been there longer than the park).  It's an amazing facility with everything you'd need for a camp (comfy dorms, good food served in a well organized dining hall, an auditorium for large group worship, fields to play in, sports courts and free equipment loan, putt-putt, stables for horseback riding, a herd of mule deer that regularly wander through) and from camp you can walk into the national park.  I know that spending a week with 270 high school kids and their ATPs**, but for me, it's always one of the best weeks of my year.  And this year was no exception.  We had 14 kids and 4 ATPs this trip.  Throughout the week at camp we attended seminars taught by amazing men (and one woman), enjoyed large group worship each evening, won a volleyball tournament, did a lot of hiking, some people went mountain biking and/or rock climbing, killed various video game animals, enjoyed early morning runs/walks, met new friends, caught up with old friends and just generally enjoyed playing in the Big Green Room*** enjoying God's creation.  

It was a challenging week in a lot of ways.  It was a different group of kids this year and that presented some different situations.  I took the seminar for those involved in youth ministry, which was a lot of about ministry philosophy and other great things.  But I did miss the teaching from the other seminars.  My physical conditioning was very good, but I shouldn't have slacked off on the intervals as part of my cardio training.  I really dislike intervals (who doesn't), so I let myself slack off.  And, while I wasn't limited from doing anything, I did feel it during the uphill portions of all of the hikes (or even just walking to the dining hall the first few days).  But, we had very few altitude issues.  I managed to stay well hydrated the whole week.  We had no van issues or any major injuries.  And, as I've said more than once, it was an amazing week.

Friday I had a "Best Day Ever" as Mike would say.

I got up for my usual early morning walk (which provides exercise as well as some alone time during which I can talk with God and get myself ready for the day as well as experience the quiet beauty of the camp), enjoyed breakfast with many of our crew and attended the last session of the seminar for youth ministry that I had been going to all week.  After picking up my lunch, I headed over to where our group that was going rock climbing was going to be leaving from.  I had signed up to climb earlier in the week but due to cold weather and snow (yes, in the second week of June), the trip was cancelled.  I had hoped to go up with our kids and hang out, take pictures and just enjoy the time.  Due to some kids deciding not to go and those who did not being very comfortable belaying (taking someone else's life in their own hands quite literally), I ended up belaying while the kids climbed and rappelled.   I would have enjoyed the chance to get up close and personal with the rock, but I had no problem working the ropes.  Some college rappelling experience made me an "expert belayer" in the eyes of our guides and the kids seemed to feel very secure with me helping them out from the ground.  It was really neat to be able to encourage the kids and to help Mary (who was also one of my roommates for the week) be the only person to make it to the top of the rock all week.  Go Mary!  I also enjoyed talking with the guides, chatting with the kids, especially on the hike down the mountain and the view from the climbing site.

After returning from climbing, a few of the girls and I hiked up to Bible Point.  It was about a mile hike (and about another 3/4th of a mile from our cabin to the trail head) to the top of a hill (it would be a mountain in Texas) that overlooked the camp on one side and a beautiful valley on the other.  It was a bit more intense than we originally though it would be and, especially those who had been climbing earlier in the day were winded by the time we made it to the top, but it was so very much worth the effort.  The view was amazing and we still made it back to camp in time to shower before our dinner BBQ cookout.  Dinner was wonderful pork and chicken BBQ with most of the fixings (although ice cream instead of cobbler, which was almost as good) and, as per our tradition, the ATPs gave up walking places at camp at this point in the trip.  We ran into town to get gas for the vans and came back from large group worship which included a fun slideshow with pictures from the week, our senior pastor doing his "laugh routine" (which is hilarious.  Plus, it's amazing for the kids to see the guy who preaches the word every Sunday morning being silly and goofy and demonstrating various types of laughs.  Apparently he also used mostly Far Side cartoons for his illustrations while teaching the world and life view seminar.), a great message from our main speaker that wrapped up the teaching on the incarnation and encouraged us to go out and enjoy God's beautiful creation and wonderful singing.  Small group was a good time of sharing for our girls and everyone was all packed up before turning in for the night.  That last part was especially important as we pulled out just after 5am the next morning to start what would turn into a 15.5 hour van ride home.  The drive is always a bit brutal, but it is so very much worth the effort.  And, once again, it was one of the best weeks of my year.

Now I'm home and trying to get caught up on life and chores while also trying to take the time to process everything from the week.  It's so easy for me to slip into the routines and stuff of daily life back home and to not take the time to really meditate on the things that I've learned on trips like these.  That's going to be especially hard to do this year as one week from today I leave for my two week mission trip to India.  I've designated today as "recovery day".  While I won't get a nap in, I've got my bags unpacked, laundry done, mail dealt with, many chores finished up and I shouldn't have any problems being ready for the week.  About the only thing I won't get done today is wade through all of my backlogged emails (on my personal account, I don't want to think about dealing with my work emails.  That's what tomorrow morning is for.).  Tomorrow I'll start my final preparations for India as well as resume my normal work week schedule (and this is a long week, no off-Friday to look forward to.  That helps in terms of needing to use less vacation time, but doesn't make for fun work weeks.).  

Here's some pictures.

Some of the kids playing in the snow in Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday during our drive along Trail Ridge Road.

The yearly ATP picture at the highest spot above the visitor's center on Trail Ridge Road.  Left to right is Lauren, me, Brian and Travis.
Cub Lake, an intermediate destination during our seven mile hike on Thursday.  Those who remember stories from previous RYMs will be proud to hear that we finally found the official Cub Lake Trailhead this time.
Me on the hike Thursday, just above Cub Lake.
The girls who hiked to Bible Point with me.  Left to right is Mary, Lauren, Hulda and Whitney.  All but Lauren were my roommates for the week.  We had a lot of fun rooming together and I was most impressed with their efforts to keep the room clean and mostly organized during the week.

*Which we learned is correctly pronounced with a short "a", like in "rad".

**ATPs are Adult Type People.  We're old enough and responsible enough for parents to trust us with the care of their kids for week, but we're not so mature as to be above starting a marshmallow fight, incessantly teasing someone about an embarrassing mountain biking incident, getting overly excited about winning "the alphabet game" on an excessively long car ride or, well, a lot of other things that "real adults" just don't do.

***You know, the one with the sky blue colored ceiling that, in Colorado, has less air in the air.

In which I ramble about things that I've been meaning to blog about

So, it's been like 37/58ths of forever since I've updated this blog (actually, based on the fact that I just watched episode 4 of this season of BSG, or ep 7 if you count Razor as the first two episodes, and the last time I blogged was right after I watched the season opener, or episode 3 depending on which numbering system you're using, it's been about a month), I thought I would post something.  I should really be in bed right now, and I'm not entirely certain why I'm typing and not sleeping, but oh well.  If this rambles, you've been warned.

Right now, I'm about a quarter of an inch away from collapse.  It's been a long day at the end of a long week at the end of a busy couple of weeks.  Today was mission trip fundraiser garage sale day.  I was up at church from about 6:45am* until about 5.  After that, aside from doing laundry, showering and eating, I mowed the lawn and ran a couple of errands.  So, yeah, I'm beat.  But the sale went well, despite the chilly weather in the morning.  Don't know full numbers, but over $3500.  And, based on the stuff that we had and what sold and when and at what percentage of the price at which it was marked, is a pretty good number.  It's more than I was expecting.  I think we'll be down a bit from last year, but we made a good bit of money and it will significantly help a lot of us with our fundraising for the mission trips.  I worked 20 hours over the course of this week.  I don't know what that will translate into in terms of dollars, but it will be significant.  Going into the sale, about 40% of the cost of my trip had been raised.  After today, that number will be higher.  Whoo-hoo!  And I managed to spend only $12 and came home with significantly less stuff than I took, which is always the goal.

Other interesting stuff this week:  I went to see The Music Man up at Temple Christian school last night.  Ian, one of my kids, is in it playing a character who's name I can't remember right now but might be Marcellas (I think that's at least close.  He's the ex-con man who lives in River City before Prof. Hill shows up).  It was a good show and I always enjoy the chance to see my kids in stuff like that.

I got to have dinner with Mike, Bobby and Naomi and the Zinks; friends from school and church on Thursday evening.  The affiliations overlap in some weird ways, but it all works out and, as always, it was a very enjoyable evening.  Plus, it's hard to go wrong at Mellow Mushroom pizza.

Wednesday morning I got to fly a real airplane with wings and a propeller and everything.  This was a part of a class that I was taking at work.  The course if taught by the US Navy Test Pilot School out of Pax River, Maryland.  They've brought the instructors down to Fort Worth a number of times which has allowed more Lockheed engineers to go through it.  It's an introduction to aircraft handling qualities with an emphasis on how the different aircraft modes of motion (you know, things like the Dutch Roll and Phugoid modes**) are tested and evaluated during flight test.  The first week of the course was academics and a bit of time in the simulator.  The second week allowed each student to plan a flight, go through a brief, fly the flight with the instructor pilot, write a daily report and have that report critiqued.  The flight, of course, was the highlight of the whole experience.  It was about 90 minutes long and took place in a Bonanza 33C aircraft which is a four seat, propeller driven aircraft that is acrobatic rated.  We didn't fly any acrobatic maneuvers.  That just provided an extra margin of safety in case any of the students got a little aggressive on the controls.  With the exception of take-off and landing, each student flew the plan for a majority of the flight.  This was my first time to ever have the controls of an aircraft and I will say that it was pretty cool.  I still have no desire to obtain a private pilot's license (which makes my mom happy), but I can easily see why others do.  I also reinforced the fact that I just don't pull g's well.  Women are supposed to be able to, on average, pull more g's than men.  I don't quite understand why, probably due to having stronger lower body muscles overall.  But, that doesn't hold true for me.  We hit 2.25g on a pull-up and I decided I had enough.  I wanted to make sure my breakfast stayed where it was and that I was able to enjoy the rest of the flight.  I also had a bit of trouble with the landing.  It was a very windy day and between the natural tendencies of the aircraft, the extra movement due to the winds and the fact that it was pretty warm, I was very, very happy when we got on the ground.  I managed not to revisit my oatmeal, but it was touchy for a bit there.  And, overall, it was a very cool experience.

And, if I have any hope of staying awake through church tomorrow, let alone waking up from my Sunday afternoon nap in time for small group, I really need to go to bed.  'Night.

*An hour when very few people should even be awake on a weekend.

**No, I didn't make those up.  Look them up on Wikipedia.

Picking my chin up out of my lap

I just got done watching the Battlestar Galactica season 4 opener on Hulu and, yeah, wow!  I won't spoil it for anyone, cause I'm still not sure what I would say other than, yeah, wow!  I didn't realize how much I had missed this show.  And the fact that I can watch it less than 24 hours after it airs and for free makes me even more happy.*  About the only bad thing I can say** is that having to wait another week to see the next episode isn't going to be fun.  There is something to be said for waiting for the DVD release. 

*I watched the first about season and a half on DVD.  After that I got the episodes a few days after they aired thanks to a coworker with a DVR and a VCR.

**Okay, very minor spoiler alert, you've been warned.

The whole "no one believes Kara" thing and her continually complaining/whining about it is going to get old and fast.  I know it's realistic and all that.  But I get the point.  The amazing battle sequences and the acting from all of the principals more than made up for it.  Why does this show not have more awards and higher ratings?

Adventures in cooking for the masses - Postscript

My first shot at being in charge of cooking for a large group of people seemed to go well.  I'm neigh on exhausted, so no in-depth commentary this evening (What!?!  Rue's not going to write a thesis on her day/weekend/experience?  Who are you and what have you done with our Rue?).  I don't have a final count, but I think we had somewhere upwards of 200 people.  Thanks to both Steve and I padding the number a little bit as well as me just downright getting the amounts wrong in a couple of cases, we had more than enough food.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  The chicken was all adequately cooked.  A lot of people said they enjoyed it.  I had a great team helping me out on every front.  Couldn't have done it without them, especially the girls (and Jacob) who helped out with chopping more onions, peppers and olives than most of us had ever seen in one sitting before.  Now, I think, I'm going to go clean out my backpack, make sure that I'm ready for the morrow and collapse for about 8 hours before the work week starts anew.

This last week was Ff150*.   This upcoming week is church committee budget week.  Fortunately, it's an off-Friday.

*Which should probably be relabeled as Ff200ish.