Eric Arendt's Blog

2010-11-04T21:14:00.007Z

I work for a company called DigitalScirocco now. We do dynamic in-page content for websites. For example, here's some nifty technology news:

Edit: Well, that doesn't work anymore. Goodbye DigitalScirocco!

Distance from Belgrade to Timsoara

2009-08-24T19:50:00.004+01:00

A lot of people search the web for the distance from Belgrade to Timisoara, and they end up getting a page on this blog that's quite different.

For reference, I took the train from Belgrade to Timisoara in October of 2008. The length of the trip was four hours according to travel guides and train schedules I found, but the train (as many in Eastern Europe do) ended up being late. The trip actually took six hours total, and seven hours by the clock (there's a time zone change on the way).

I don't know the actual distance from point to point, but it's probably not relevant information. Trip time has more to do with logistics (conditions, delays, border crossings, checkpoints) than mileage.

Current Events

2009-05-20T18:07:00.004+01:00

The blog sort of trailed off towards the end there. Ethiopia made internet access difficult, and the next three weeks I spent exploring Christianity in Israel and Italy were a little more rushed, absolutely amazing, and not something I ever got around to writing about. Whoops. I did spend Easter in Jerusalem and I did see the Pope at the Vatican, and perhaps I'll write a little bit about that later.

I arrived back in Seattle on the 20th of April, was picked up by a good friend, and whisked away to the secrecy of her and her husband's house, where they sheltered me from America for a couple of days. I spent the next week in Spokane, the week after that back in Seattle, a few days back in Spokane, a week in Lincoln, Nebraska, and am currently writing from Yellowstone National Park, of all places, where I've stopped for a couple of days as I return to Spokane. I'll be there for about a week, Seattle again for a few days to catch a Sounders game, back in Spokane for two weeks, and then it's off to the San Francisco Bay Area for the summer to work as an intern with Google. I've been...busy. But it's been great. I've put more than 3000 miles on my car since I got back, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

I'll come around to some (undoubtedly stirring) wrap up, but I don't foresee that happening in the next couple of weeks. I'm focusing my minds on other things in the hopes that it will form conclusive results of the last nine months while I'm not paying attention and then surprise me with a finished result. Preferably in .pdf format.

By way of proof, here's how I spent my morning, though I can't take credit for the photographs. They were captured by someone much more beautiful and talented than myself.

Lalibela and Environs: Incomplete Thoughts on Ethiopian Orthodoxy

2009-05-20T10:05:00.003+01:00

I'm reaching back a bit here, but I should probably expand a little on my northern Ethiopian experience before I start to forget the details and have to refer to my notes. In truth, the experience is not so much in danger of being forgotten, being still relatively fresh in my mind; rather, my attempts to organize it mentally and narrate it back to myself result in my brain throwing up its hands in confusion because it lacks a beginning, middle, and end. My engineering instincts tell me to linearize it, but there’s simply no straight path that will fit a circular issue and no circle that will consent to lie down flat. I’m no storyteller, so I’ll concede from the onset that I have it all wrong.

The story of Simon the Cannibal is lesser known among the stories of Ethiopian saints. I hear that some monks are embarrassed to tell it. Simon was a normal man, details unimportant, who one day entertained a guest from a distant country. As Simon prepared the evening meal, the guest asked for meat. Simon, being a good Ethiopian host and therefore bound to consent to his guest’s wishes, prepared to slaughter a goat when his guest made a further request: he wanted human meat. Furthermore, he would settle for nothing less than Simon’s son. Simon’s son being killed and prepared (Simon was a good Ethiopian host), the guest asked him to take a bite. Upon eating the first bite of his son, a spirit entered Simon and he developed a hunger for human flesh. His victims eventually numbered in the 80’s, and local people lived in fear of being murdered and devoured. One day, a beggar dying of thirst approached Simon and asked for a drink of water. “Don’t you know who I am?” Simon asked him. “Haven’t you heard the stories about me?”
“I know who you are,” the beggar replied, “but I’m dying of thirst. Please, give me one drop of water, for Mary’s sake.”
Simon gave the man a drink of water, and the act, in the name of Mary, was enough to wash away all of his previous wrongs.

“At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Prepare two stone tablets like the first ones, and make a sacred chest of wood to keep them in. Return to me on the mountain, and I will write on the tablets the same words that were on the ones you smashed. Then place the tablets in the sacred chest – the Ark of the Covenant.’
“So I made a chest of acacia wood and cut two stones tablets like the first two, and I took the tablets up the mountain. The Lord again wrote the terms of the covenant – the Ten Commandments – on them and gave them to me. They were the same words the Lord had spoken to you from the heart of the fire on the mountain as you were assembled below. Then I came down and placed the tablets in the Ark of the Covenant, which I had made, just as the Lord commanded me. And the tablets are still there in the Ark.” Deuteronomy 10:1-5 (NLT)

The Ark of the Covenant was the symbol of the covenant agreement between God’s chosen people and God Himself. It was the original sanctuary of the Ten Commandments, the symbol of God’s living presence, and was placed in the Holy of Holies within the temple that was only open to the high priest on specific days. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s claim to currently possess the Ark in the ancient city of Axum is pivotal in Ethiopia’s cultural development from antiquity to the present. For Ethiopians the existence of the Ark in Axum is fact, not claim; for the rest of us, there’s not a lot of compelling reasons to disbelieve it.

I wasn’t able to go to Axum, but I did spend three full days in Lalibela, one of Ethiopia's holy cities south of Axum. Lalibela is known for its huge stone churches, which were carved straight down into the rocky hills in the area. Most of the churches consist of one single rock, and a few are completely free from the surrounding cliffs. It makes for an interesting impression, since the roofs of the churches are at ground level, and the floors are ten to 15 meters below.

Most tourists tend to hire a guide to show them around the churches for the day, but I usually dislike guides. You can learn a lot, but they sometimes have their own agenda and can be pretty rigid about what they want to show you. It's also nearly impossible to engage with people around you if you have a guide in your ear. Not taking a guide actually opened up a few possibilities for me, which was nice. The churches in Lalibela are divided into three complexes. The two northern complexes have a number of churches, with the easternmost of the two containing the oldest, some of which pre-date King Lalibela. The third complex is south of the other two, and only contains one freestanding stone church called Bet Giyorgis, dedicated to St. George.

I met Sebhat in Bet Golgotha, an Ethiopian Orthodox priest who was sitting in a circle of about ten other priests chanting in Ge'ez. I don't know how we got to talking. I was just wondering around the church and I found myself chatting with him. He was very excited to have found a white person who spoke a little Amharic, and he quickly decided that we were brothers. We conscripted a nearby tourist to take a picture of us at his request, and then he brought me back to the circle of chanting priests, told me to sit down next to him, and handed me a priestly staff as if all of this was perfectly normal. I was definitely the odd man out in the group of priests as they read through ancient Ge'ez liturgies. We sat there for a few minutes (I'm not sure how long) until Sebhat told me to go and to come back the next day at 9:00. I don't think being invited to sit in that circle is something that happens very often.

I met Sebhat the next day, like he said, and he seemed very impressed by my punctuality. He kept saying over and over "I said to come at 9:00, and you came at 9:00! 9:00 sharp!". He took me up to his house, about a ten minute walk away, and he shared his breakfast with me. He wanted to take me to meet his father and drink tea, but his father wasn't there, so after hanging around a bit for the morning and informing him of my plans, I left to hike up to a nearby monastery. He told me to come back at 10:00 the next day.

The next day in Sebhat's house, he showed me a few manuscripts he had and we talked, as much as we could with my limited Amharic, about Christianity. He showed me the large icon of Mary on his wall, and we discussed America. He said we was OK with American Christians - we're all Christians, he said, and we can be like brothers. "You love God also?" He asked.
"Yes." I said. He nodded.
"And you love Mary...good..." He trailed off. I nodded.
"...and Jesus", I suggested.
"Hmm. Yes, and Jesus." He replied thoughtfully.

I left Lalibela at 4:00AM on a crowded bus. By now, bus rides were becoming increasingly hellish, and I still had a couple of days (full, 10-12 hour days) on them before I got back to Addis. I made it back to Bahir Dar and spent the night there, deciding to skip some of the monasteries on Lake Tana after hearing that they were mostly new, unimpressive, and something of a tourist trap. Instead, I met a German traveler who was interested in seeing Tisissat falls (which translates to something like firesmoke falls), where the Blue Nile plunges over a cliff into the rocky gorge below. It's been dammed, which leaves only about 25% of the original water going over the edge, but it was still spectacular. We dodged the extremely annoying official guides and picked up a local kid to guide us around in exchange for his bus fare back to Bahir Dar. It was a pretty good deal for both of us, and I enjoyed taking the morning easy and not having to think real hard.

That afternoon I caught a minibus down to a town about two hours to the south, where SIM missionaries my family knows have been living for several years. I somehow ran into calendar confusion, which actually let me stay with them for two days instead of one; this turned out to be a huge blessing. As residents of the area, despite their whiteness, they had a great inside view into rural Ethiopian Orthodoxy that I would never have been able to grasp without their ability to bridge the gap for me. Rural Orthodoxy in their area (I'm doing my best not to avoid inevitable generalization) is fascinatingly, depressingly syncretistic, like a traditional animism whitewashed with a mask of Orthodox practice.

The first story the missionaries told me was a year when they were invited to the Easter celebration. The Easter lamb was slaughtered and the family was preparing it for a feast to celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead. During their preparations, a piece of the lamb's intestines were cut out, flattened, and plastered to the wall of the house. When the missionaries asked what it was for, the family replied that it was the annual sacrifice to Kali for a good harvest. If you're looking for a definition of syncretism, I think giving part of the Easter lamb as a sacrifice to another god qualifies.

The second story I heard was of their visit to an Orthodox woman's house in Bahir Dar. They were new to the area, and having trouble easing the religious tension between themselves and their Orthodox neighbors. They were excited and nervous at the opportunity to visit with this woman and potentially break the ice. She put a question to them at the door: how many gods did they believe there were? The missionaries were relieved to find something they knew they had in common, and told her that they believe in one. "Wrong!" She said. "There are two. God and Mary." And she walked over to a large covered icon of Mary on her wall and kissed it.

More recently, in the area where the missionaries lived, there had been some discussion among the local priests and elders about constructing a new church building. When one burned down (the events surrounding this were suspicious) building a new church became necessary. When Orthodox churches are constructed, there is a consecration ritual that is performed to sort of inaugurate or dedicate the new church. Relics are brought into the church, and a priest seals these relics inside the altar. Theologically, it's a symbol of the foundation of the church and the tomb of Christ. When this particular burned church had the altar opened to temporarily move the relics, it was found that the relics weren't actually there. Apparently this is pretty common - local thieves will steal the relics and sell them on the black market, often to other churches, who will buy them to increase the power of the church. The church decided to launch an investigation to get their relic back. To facilitate this, they hired the local witch doctor to divine its location.

The practice of Orthodoxy in this area creates something of a dilemma. Officially, the Ethiopian Orthodox church is reconciled with the Greek Orthodox church, which means that the two should both, at least on paper, be practicing sound Orthodox theology. In practice, however, this theology simply isn't being disseminated to the regular churchgoers. Most view the Bible as a book that's too theologically and intellectually advanced for ordinary people to process, and they rely instead on what priests, monks, or elders tell them - a practice that, of course, is encouraged by many priests, monks, and elders. There seems to be a problem with secret knowledge; higher things that 'holier' men are allowed access to that the public is shielded from. One of the primary goals of the missionaries I've mentioned is simply to provide Amharic Bibles to ordinary people so that they can read for themselves.

I worry about drawing conclusions because I generally consider myself too ill-informed to draw distinct lines. I should really say that I worry about sharing my conclusions, because I always come up with some kind of summary in my mind. So I'll share that summary, with the disclaimer that I made all of this up in my head.

Northern Ethiopia is one of the ancient Christian centers of the world, undoubtedly. Ethiopians consider themselves God's chosen people, and believe that by taking the Ark of the Covenant that they have stolen God's eternal blessing. If you talk to the heads of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, you'll find sound Christian theology, a theology which fails to reach the common people. Orthodox Christians are mixing tribal witchcraft into their belief system with the blessing of the priests, and church leaders are withholding knowledge from laymen. In general practice, Jesus is set off to the side in favor of an extremely Mary-centric worship - far more Mary-centric than any other branch of Orthodoxy or Catholicism that I observed. The proud history of stealing the Ark has resulted in a culture that values deceit, thievery, and dishonesty. And for all the blessing the Ark supposedly brings, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest, most corrupt nations in the world. Humanitarian aid projects fail so spectacularly that they appear thwarted, as if people are actively, intelligently, systematically dismantling the country. Interestingly, this isn't inconsistent with the story of the Philistine's brief possession of the Ark. I left Ethiopia wondering whether or not Ethiopia actually had the Ark, and whether or not the country was actually cursed by God for it. The answer to that is something I don't have.

2009-04-28T07:39:00.001+01:00

Passporting

2009-04-14T17:59:00.004+01:00

I flew into Rome today from Tel Aviv. My flight was supposed to leave at 6:00AM, but a schedule change made it 7:20AM. That didn't really matter much either way, as transport to the airport required me to leave Jerusalem this morning at 1:45. Not a lot of sleep.

Entering Israel overland from Jordan, which I did on the 3rd of this month, took about four hours total. There was about 45 minutes of general standing around wondering what was going on on the Jordanian side, a short bus trip, and then about two and a half hours of standing around knowing exactly what was going on (nothing) on the Israeli side. After standing in line for what seemed like forever, not because of there being so many people, but rather because the Israeli agents kept leaving their booths, ignoring people to chat amongst themselves, going on break, or changing personnel (our line processed about 10 people in those 2.5 hours) we finally got up to the agent.

Here I was barraged with questions: what was I doing in Israel? Why was I there? Why was I in Jordan? What did I do there? Had I ever been to Syria? Lebanon? Morocco? Egypt? Yemen? Where was I going in Israel? Just Jerusalem? Why? Was I going to the West Bank? Why didn't I want them to stamp my passport? Etc. Etc. After all of this, my photograph was taken, and they took a fingerprint from both hands - the only time in my life I've been fingerprinted. When crossing the border into a rogue Russian-supported internationally unrecognized breakaway communist state is EASIER for me than getting into Israel, I think that's a problem.

Leaving the country this morning was no easier. I lined up for security, which happens before you check in for boarding in Tel Aviv. While in line my bag was electronically sniffed for explosives and I was asked if I had any sharp things. Then someone checked my passport, and asked me why I was in Israel, when I had arrived, why I was in Jordan before, where I had been in Israel, if I had any friends, what their names were, and then if I had any other form of ID. I gave them a student card. They asked for another, so I dug out my driver's license. Apparently I didn't look like my photos, probably because I don't usually take my driver's license and passport photos at 3:00 AM after eight months of traveling around the world. I was handed over to another agent, who asked me all the same questions again. She handed me over to a third (my line was getting visibly annoyed at the holdup) who asked me all the same questions again, as well as a few more regarding whether I was keeping in touch with anyone in Jordan and who I was traveling with. Then she flagged my luggage.

I ran my luggage through the X-ray, and then because I had been marked I moved over to another counter, where all of my luggage was unpacked piece by piece in front of me and, again, electronically sniffed and x-rayed. After this process I was allowed to get my boarding pass.

That done, my passport and boarding pass were checked again, I went through a metal detector, and had my carry on luggage sniffed and x-rayed. THEN I went through passport control.

The entire process took about two and a half hours. I suppose I should be thankful for the super early airport arrival.

For your convenience, I have created a table that illustrates the amount of time passport control has required for the two latest countries I've entered. Like a good engineer, I've compared apples to apples by keeping the units the same.

Israel: 10,800 seconds
Italy: 5 seconds

Hmm...

A few pictures from Ethiopia

2009-04-12T13:30:00.002+01:00

Here are a few general 'Ethiopia' pictures.

Bingham Academy, the school I went to for 4th and 7th grade.

Self explanatory, I think.

Typical load management in Addis Ababa.

The country south of Addis Ababa, west of Soddu on the way to Sawela.

Part of the road down to Makki from Jinka.

A Mursi girl at the missionary school.

Another. I liked her earplates - most are solid.

Another picture of Metser.

The road north, south of Arba Minch.

We passed a market.

Ethiopian Orthodox artwork on the wall of Birhanu Gebreselassie Church.

The priest there. He was a nice guy.

An orphan kid I met. He belonged to the church.

Tisisat Falls, which translates to something like "firesmoke". This is the Blue Nile.

Filler Episode

2009-04-01T00:08:00.003+01:00

There's too much to write down, as always. I figured that the couple days I had in London would be a chance to be super internet productive after something of a brownout for the last two months, but when I got here I realized that all I wanted to do was stare at the wall and do nothing. I succeeded in doing nothing, but I stared at a laptop screen instead.

I walked through Westminster Abbey this afternoon. The architecture is absolutely stunning, of course, and it was fascinating to see the graves of so many influential people. Wilberforce, Livingston, Darwin, Dickens. My engineering nerdiness made me stop for a moment when I saw James Watt, James Joule, and Isaac Newton.

The quiet of the place gave me a little time for thought, and I was at the point where I was dimly aware that I was, again, at that point of emotional/spiritual/physical exhaustion. When I got around to the Nave I saw a sign that mentioned that if you wanted to speak or pray with a chaplain you could request to do so. I realized that I hadn't really spoken to a pastor of any sort for a long time. I don't really have a home church at the moment, having been in transition when I left Seattle,
; and regular re-calibrating, if it can be called that, is something that I've missed for a very long time. So, figuring that a church is a church and that Westminster Abbey is as good as any, I asked for a chaplain and was led into a little room to the side of the beaten path (near the West exit) with an altar and a few chairs.

I talked with him for about 15 minutes or so. I told him a bit about what I was doing, that I was a long way from familiarity and tired of it, and that I had been more or less on autopilot for the past month. I mentioned that I was leaving for the Holy Land in a day or two and that even though I'll be there during Passover and Easter I just wasn't in the mood to care. He pointed out that I was sort of in a state of overload - quite true - and that he noticed that his congregation had a tendency to shift their minds into neutral on Sunday and not really engage, something that we do all the time. He noted that this opportunity to travel was a luxury, and would undoubtedly be a resource later, but advised me to give myself the luxury of reflection as well. I knelt at the altar and he prayed that I would find peace, joy, and purpose in God's presence. Those were all things I really needed to hear.

The burnout was largely northern-Ethiopia related. It was an intense couple of weeks for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was my method of travel: bus. Ethiopian buses have become synonymous in my mind with a sort of tuberculosis transmission vehicle; you get to spend about 12 hours crammed against some sick wreck of humanity (I think those types sat next to me because no one else would) with the windows closed and the curtains drawn on twisty, bumpy roads. The bus reservation system is as follows: show up before 5:00AM, commence fighting for a ticket at 5:00AM, load the bus immediately after getting a ticket, then sit while the bus idles in its own diesel fumes for about two hours until the driver shows up. It's just not pleasant. I spent a day (12 hours) on the bus from Addis to Bahir Dar, half a day (8 hours) from Bahir Dar to Gonder, another day from Gonder to Lalibela, another from Lalibela back to Bahir Dar, and another from Injibara back to Addis Ababa. That's a LOT of bus time. I'd like to say it built character, but I'm fairly certain that it was merely terrible.

I'll throw in some more detail on the northern Ethiopia excursion later, but I'll attribute the emotional/spiritual exhaustion to the cultural bombardment. My previous experiences in Ethiopia didn't make it any more comfortable or easy; rather, they gave me enough of an understanding to break through the surface tension of the typical top-skimming traveling experience and fall right into (what felt like) the thick of things. It was the most intense cultural interaction I've ever experienced, and I came out of it dazed and blinking. Ethiopia came together for me in a completely new way, and it was fascinating and disillusioning at the same time. Overload is the right word.

Naturally, I'm glad to have escaped to England (which I've taken to calling a 'proper country') because it's just comfortable. Diseases don't run out of the tap into the sink (the tap runs!), the toilets flush, people pick a side of the road and stick to it, the cars don't choke you with fumes, the stores have donuts, the pubs have beer that doesn't taste like seltzer water, the showers are hot, there are cool grey clouds and temperatures below 20C (70F), I don't have to squint under the equatorial sun, and all of the places have familiar-sounding names like Choreleywoodhamfordboroughgreenshirecombwell. It's quaint. Like a little island of happiness. It IS a little island of happiness.

So now you know where I'm at.

Ethiopian Sticks

2009-03-13T18:58:00.003Z

I don't want to write an update because it's going to take a long time and I'm lazy (getting lazier), but as pressure mounts it's becoming more clear that I'll never have any peace until I do. I don't think I'm trying to suppress any memories, but remembering how those things tasted might indicate that some memories really should be suppressed. Ick. There are some pictures in this update, but I must point out that the quality is dismal due to my attempts to make the file size as small as possible.

It's been about four weeks since I announced that I was headed off on a trip into the sticks. Well, there were TONS of sticks. Sticks here, sticks there, dry sticks, still growing sticks, people carrying sticks, houses made from sticks, baboons and monkeys shrieking from within the sticks - you name it. I have seen these sticks, and I have returned alive.

We were planning on heading out from Addis early in the morning. The hospital across the street from the guesthouse, however, was opening a new cardiac wing that morning (I would never trust my heart to that hospital) and the occasion merited a visit from some government VIPs. The government VIPs merited a large federal police presence, which merited a closure of the road into and out of the guest house. I noticed that something was up when I walked out of my room and was greeted by a guy in camo with an AK47. I sort of thought that using the guesthouse balconies to set up snipers was a little overkill, but they had the guns, not me. This surprise event resulted in a slightly later departure. They were nice enough, really, though the soldier who saluted me attests to the Ethiopian military's general sense of confusion.

The first day we drove to Sodo, about five hours out of Addis Ababa. We drove up to a part of the city where the gentleman I was traveling with (we'll call him Mr. F) knew some retired evangelists where living. Mr. F moved to Ethiopia some 35 years ago and was involved in supporting a lot of the pioneering evangelists in southern Ethiopia. Most of the people we met were evangelists he had worked with a long time ago, often trekking for days on end (flies carrying sleeping sickness make mules short-lived in some of the Ethiopian plain areas) into unreached tribes with a reputation for killing outsiders. They were pretty intense guys. We spent a couple hours that afternoon talking (I just listened, and drifted a bit when my Amharic couldn't keep up) and drank coffee with spiced rancid butter. There wasn't a ton of the butter in it, so it actually wasn't terrible if you're used to the butter taste. I tried to be polite (and I drank it all).

The next day we headed southwest to Sawela, a small town in the hills at the foot of a mountain range, where we spent the next night. One of Mr. F's first postings was at a station in the nearby mountains, but he used to have to fly into an airstrip at Sawela on a C47 (a US cargo aircraft used in WWII) and then spend hours going up the hill on mules, family in tow. We were able to drive up to the old mission station (an impressive development in itself) and poke around in the old houses. I took a photograph of a girl who was interested in what a couple of foreigners were doing there.

I also got a picture of the clouds that evening in Sawela. The mountains to the right are where the old mission station is, and the road we left Sawela on runs parallel to the mountains on the left, which continue south.

We were eventually going to go on to Jinka, the regional capital of Gama Gofa, and taking the road we were familiar with would have required us to backtrack to Sodo and then go over a section reputed to be in very poor repair, so we decided to a try a new road to Jinka that was under construction. Ha! You can already tell this is going to work out great.

Things started out well. The landscape dropped out of the low hills into a valley running south with high ridges hemming us in on either side. We crossed and re-crossed the new road, and everything was in good repair. In a town called Beyto we stopped again to visit another evangelist, then continued on. Our Ethiopian driver began asking locals for directions, wanting to know where the road to Jinka began. The unfortunate problem was this: there's an old road to Jinka that was in bad shape ten years ago and hasn't been worked on since, and there's the aforementioned new road that actually goes to Kako before going to Jinka. Locals confirmed that we were on the road to Jinka (they were quite correct) and individuals along the way reassured us that this was indeed the road (to Jinka) as we drove down something suspiciously resembling a cattle track. It soon became apparent that we were on the old road, but we pressed on. The valley we were traveling down at about 2500ft eventually opens out to the east; the new road goes through this opening and then circles around west to Jinka at about 4500 ft. The distance to Jinka as the crow flies from the southern end of the valley isn't especially far, but a narrow mountain range that peaks at about 7000ft blocks the way. Our road was more of the crow persuasion. Here's a picture of us going directly up the side of that high range, which I took out of the window of the car.

A good time was had by all, mostly because we didn't die. Had the road not been dry it would've been impassable.

We spent the night in Jinka at the Jinka Resort. The Jinka Resort is a new development. Jinka was the middle of nowhere ten years ago, and though that hasn't really changed, the place is now overrun by tourists who visit for a couple days to photograph local naked people. The "resort" would be a funny place if there was something funny about paying US-style prices for bad food and cold showers, but there isn't and so it's not. It's fascinating how even brand new facilities manage to be terrible. During dinner one of the staff approached us to sell us pictures of the Mursi tribe for the fantastic price of 50 USD per photo, and I employed my Amharic skills to inform him that this was ridiculous. Mr. F commenced to tell him a story (in his fluent Amharic) about how he used to trek through all of these hills for days on end, one of the first white people the Mursi ever saw, before the staff member was born. It's not always great to play the experience card, but the effect on the staff member was somehow satisfying. Among the town's other delights are younger males who have a habit of harassing foreigners (anything from yelling to throwing rocks), making for exciting walks down the local thoroughfares. Because of all of these things - dehumanizing tourists, bad accommodation, and unproductive youths - Jinka wins an award for sucking ten years ago and still going strong. I suppose there's something to be said for demonstrating consistency.

Gas was not to be found in Jinka while we were there, though some was available from black market shops like this:

I'm not trying to make a political statement here, but maybe the guy running a black market oil-based energy shack is. Institutions thusly named are to be found through the country.

The next day we drove a couple of hours from Jinka to Alduba, where SIM has had a station for quite some time. Alduba is in Bunna territory, and there has been various projects there including translation and literacy work, a clinic, and a veterinary service in partnership with Christian Veterinary Mission. The Bunna are nomadic herdsmen, so veterinary work for their sheep and cattle is very appreciated by locals. That was a place where my family spent a fair amount of time visiting and hanging out, and with the sun setting in the acacia trees and familiar sights and sounds a lot of good feelings came back. It was surprisingly refreshing; I didn't want to leave the south at that point.

The next day we drove about six hours. We passed through Jinka and then northwest; shortly after Jinka the road turns sharply down to a large plain at about 1000ft, which for Ethiopia is pretty low. Tourism has given rise to a couple of checkpoints along this route: first, a checkpoint where they charge you for entering Jinka (charging you to leave would be more appropriate), then another so that the federal government can charge incoming tourists a park entrance fee, then another so that the Mursi can charge a fee and force you to take along a Mursi 'scout'. I took to calling this guy Scout (I don't know his name) which he seemed to sort of enjoy. He hardly spoke Amharic - just Mursi - but he was a nice guy. We crossed the plain and went up a rise, then continued north past Mursi territory to Hanna, which is the largest settlement (and the most accessible) among the Bodi tribe. Few tourists go out so far - most just come out for the afternoon to photograph a few naked Mursi - and Scout was a little worried (though being a Mursi warrior he did his best not to let on). I can't blame him. We were planning on spending three nights in Hanna, and the Mursi and Bodi were at war not too long ago. Additionally, the Bodi culture's rite of passage for males is killing someone outside the tribe. Scout kept his AK47 close.

There were five evangelists living with their families in Hanna (there were originally ten), and all were from the Mali tribe in the neighboring highlands. There is already a strong Christian church among the Mali, and the Mali and Bodi are part of the same language subgroup though their features are quite different. For these Mali men to bring their families to Bodi land is a big deal, not only because of the general violence of the Bodi and the aforementioned rite of passage, but also because the land around Hanna is absolutely desolate; a blasted grassland marked by flash flood channels twisting through red volcanic rock. It's difficult to find water and nearly impossible to grow any kind of food in the thin soil and equatorial sun. The evangelists who had managed to stick it out so far were great guys (they would've left already if they weren't) but were becoming discouraged. The pressure of an environment like that - threats of violence and limited, expensive food - required the majority of their concentration, making it difficult to give time to the church.

It began to cloud up the first night we were there, and we saw storm clouds piling up in the high mountains to the west. A huge electrical storm passed away south of us as we watched the sunset. It was the end of dry season there, and people were trying to burn slash piles before the rain came. The fires turned the low, dark clouds red as evening came on. During the night the storm hit, driving rain through our uncovered window. It poured rain for several hours. I woke up the next morning and the world had taken on a general glow.

Unfortunately, the next day was just as hot as before. During the two full days we were there we made one trip about an hour to the west to see some other evangelists. Mr. F talked with them about their concerns and they prepared a meal for us. There was half-cooked corn mash, which tasted like an uncooked corn tortilla might taste and wasn't bad; a sort of mead made my leaving milk out to ferment a few days, which had cheesy chunks suspended in liquid you might find sitting on top of sour cream; and there was coffee leaf tea with salt, berberi (a hot red pepper) and ginger. I thought the tea (coffee?) might belong in the bloody mary family of beverages, though Mr. F was skeptical regarding its culinary merit. He liked the mead more than I did, or maybe I should say he didn't like it less. He's a pro.

The kids in Hanna were pretty fascinated with us. I don't think they had seen white people before, so when I had some down time (most of the time) I would go sit outside our place near the church, and they would crowd around me and touch my skin and my hair and sort of poke at me. They were funny, and they spoke to each other in Amharic, so I could hear their comments about how my skin was smooth, and how my hands were red, and how my eyes looked like a cat's. They seemed concerned about the scratches and bug bites that showed up far more clearly on my skin than on theirs, and they would trace the blue lines of my veins across my hands and arms with their fingers. I entertained them my pointing out similar bites and veins on their skin, and they were intrigued by the fact that we were more or less the same. They taught me some Amharic words I had forgotten like "sky" and "blue" and "cloud". The local Bodi people were really nice. Even though they didn't speak any Amharic, the women and kids would come by our room, invite themselves in, and sit down with us for a half hour or so. I wish people would do that in the States.

When we left Hanna, thanking the evangelists for profusely for their hospitality, we headed back down the road we had come in on (you can't go many other directions from Hanna) and took a spur of the road that runs about 20km east towards the mission station at Makki. We saw some dik-diks bounding across the road and some hartebeests in the distance as we drove. You may remember that my family lived in a place called Metser for two years while we were in Ethiopia; Metser is 30km north of Jinka, and the river that runs past the station at Makki has its source in the Metser valley to the northeast. Don't think that Makki is nice and cool because it has a pretty river - an average day was about 102F with 80% humidity. I took a photo of a dragonfly by the river, then left because tetse flies were ravaging my tender white legs. The result was an image of the Microsoft Windows Desktop Background persuasion. More on Windows later.

I had been hoping to return to Metser during the trip either by hiking in from Makki or by driving in from Jinka. The fuel shortage in Jinka had made us change our plans for driving in, so I had radioed the Makki station from Alduba to see if they would be interested in having me around for a while to hang out and maybe do some work. It was becoming clear that a trek from Makki to Metser would be logistically difficult, and equally clear that driving into Metser for a day was a low priority. Mr. F had decided to stay one night in Makki and then continue on to Addis, so I resigned myself to making up for missing Metser by hanging around at Makki for about a week.

The afternoon Mr. F was leaving I was talking with one of the missionaries (Mr. T) at Makki. The missing link in the transportation chain was between Jinka and Makki, where no transport at all runs; buses do run between Jinka and Metser, however, as there is plenty of market traffic between the fertile Metser highlands and the markets at Jinka and beyond. Mr. T mentioned that he would be driving to Jinka two mornings from then, and I suddenly realized that it would actually be possible for me to go back to Jinka that day with Mr. F, spend the night, catch a bus to and from Metser the next day, and then get a ride back to Makki with Mr. T. And despite the fact that going back to Metser was one of my biggest goals for this trip, I suddenly realized that a surprisingly large part of me just didn't feel like it. My sense of adventure had gone into some kind of deep hibernation - the biggest problem with comfort, like being a Hobbit - and I was genuinely apprehensive of testing my language skills and making my own arrangements without any backup. I took 15 minutes and a cup of coffee to realize that I was being ridiculous, and I ran to pack a bag motivated not by actually wanting to go but by the knowledge that I would absolutely hate myself later if I didn't. Thus I went, and 15 minutes down the road I realized I had just barely managed not to be stupid. I was more relieved than anything else.

I stayed the night in Jinka at the Norwegian mission (not the resort), had dinner with Mr. F and Co., then went to sleep so that I could wake up at 5:30 AM for the bus into Metser. I should note that taking a bus into Metser is a novelty. The road is only 30km (20 miles) long, but it used to take us anywhere from two to four hours by four wheel drive, sometimes with mud chains on the tires. Now, I'll have you know, for a mere 1 USD one can take a delightful early morning jaunt through the scenic town (read 'hellhole') of Gazer and arrive refreshed (read 'squished and smelling of humanity') in Metser an hour and a half later! I stepped off of the delightful contraption that served for a bus at the bottom of our old driveway at about 8:00 AM, and began walking back up towards our house on a hill. I made two friends on the bus.

My plan was to go unnoticed for as long as possible, because I wanted to walk around the area a bit and I knew it would be impossible once I stumbled into the quicksand of cultural interaction. It's not that I don't like interacting with Ethiopians - I do - it just has the tendency to change absolutely everything, and my memories of Metser were as a little kid running around doing whatever I wanted. Everything was immediately familiar, though oddly half as big as it used to be, and I made for the water hole in the river near our house. I don't know what made me think a white guy could walk around there without being noticed, and I had acquired a companion within about five minutes, but I went to the river anyway. See?

From there I went to our old house. It had been turned into a Bible school when we left, and I was happy to see that it was being well used. There was a regional church meeting going on that morning, where I met a gentleman I knew who was involved in the translation work there. I walked around the compound a bit and visited our old house, which is now more filled with dried corn than I remember it. Virtually nothing had changed, except for one disappointment; someone had had the ingenious idea to rip out the strawberry patch, raspberry bushes, passion fruit bushes, papaya trees, guava trees, and mango trees, and replace them with absolutely nothing. The sycamore-fig tree behind our house had also been cut down. Oh well. The house was still there, though it's dirtier than it used to be:

My whole family used to fit into that.

I stayed at Metser for the rest of the morning and a little into the afternoon, visiting a place or two and conversing with people we knew when we lived there. Everything except our mission station (not really ours anymore) was almost exactly the same. It was a great experience, though somehow not as wonderful as I had hoped. Sometimes there's more joy in the desire and memory of something than is inherent in the thing itself, though my opinion of Metser as the most beautiful place in Ethiopia remains unchanged. Fortunately the place isn't corrupted by tourists; apparently the Aari tribe is boring because they wear clothes. That's fine with me.

When I returned to Makki I got to work, which I figured was a fair way to earn my keep. My original ride back fell through, so I ended up staying for about a week and a half before returning to Addis. Living in Makki is a bit like living in National Geographic, honestly. The Mursi are pretty distinct culturally. Men are covered with artistic scars and shave patterns into their hair, and the women wear heavy brass jewelry along with clay lip plates and ear plates. They're also very nice, and would go out of their way to greet me and find out where I was from. I mostly did some odd jobs that needed to be done; I did a lot of screening and general improvement on Mr. T's house, and some other things that were closer to my area of experience. I overhauled one of the solar power systems, got the email system back in working order (it's super cool - it uses a 14K modem that transmits data over the shortwave radio), worked on a couple other computer problems here and there, and figured out how to hotwire a tractor before the starter seized and we gave up. There's failing technology everywhere, folks, and sadly, for most of the people I'm meeting, PCs are more of an affliction than anything else. I left the station right about when I was running out of easy work and facing the prospect of returning to repairing hot tin roofs in the blazing sun. The scratches on my arms are NOT from screening. They're from fighting off leopards with my bare hands.

I was impressed by the Mursi church. Mr. F had been one of the first missionaries to make contact with the Mursi tribe and a couple of the elders remembered him from way back. I sat in on a meeting of the church elders and tribal leaders as they discussed some of the problems they were having in the church. The elders were eager to do what the Bible said was right but they had no Bible translated into Mursi, and they wanted to ask Mr. F about some of their issues. One question was about whether a man with three wives who had become a Christian should divorce two of them, and another was about whether a man who had stolen a cow should be allowed to come into the church. The wife question is a common one, and Mr. F pointed out that one clear thing in the Bible is that God hates divorce. He advised that the man should keep all three of his wives, instead of throwing any of them out of his household. Of the Mursi and Bodi who have converted to Christianity, there are some very positive changes coming about in their lifestyles. Men with more than one wife will support all three of them and treat all of them well instead of favoring the youngest, and young men will only take one wife. Christians are more likely to send their daughters to school as well as their sons, and there were some eager attempts at reconciliation with other tribes. One of the Mursi pointed out that if Jesus were to come back, wouldn't he ask why they hadn't told the Bodi about Jesus? And wouldn't they be ashamed if they hadn't? He had found so much joy in his faith that he was excited to travel to hostile Bodi territory and share what he had found. Some people seem to believe that Christian missionaries are out to destroy local cultures and subjugate people, but this was a great example of Mursi who had found real joy in the gospel and were actively addressing destructive issues in their societies while remaining true to their culture and traditions.

I'm back in Addis now, and it's only took me three days to break the law and become a fugitive. It was simple, really. I spent some time at an SIM-affiliated office trying to help them set up their shiny new DSL connection (it's twice as fast as dial up, and surfing the web is akin to a slow, crappy wooden roller coaster that you don't quite trust) and in the process I poked around in the modem to check the settings. When I called Ethiopia Telecom to ask them what they were smoking, I learned that accessing the modem "is illegal in Ethiopia, sir". Oops? So instead of helping me on the phone they had to send a technician (When can I expect him? "I dunno") out here to flail around for half an hour trying to fix a 30-second problem. It wasn't frustrating. Not at all. It was sort of my fault for expecting things to work. The police showed up for a few minutes today, believe it or not, but I escaped their attention by sitting in a chair and staying perfectly still.

This brings me to my next topic, which is IT related in an attempt to balance out the lack of technology in the other environments I've described. I've been working in this office since the beginning of the week - mostly bumming around on the internet, reading, corresponding, and the like - and fixing various computer snags that have popped up. The office runs entirely on Apple hardware, and I haven't really worked on Macs before (how this qualifies me to fix problems I don't know, but I've managed) and let me tell you something: you should go out and get yourself a Mac. It'll make you happier because you won't need to call me to fix your computer, and it'll make me happier because...well, you won't be calling me to fix your computer. Macs are amazing because they actually work they way you want them to. I'll likely continue to punish myself with PCs for various hardware reasons, but for just about anything normal people do Macs are way more productive. Having experienced OS X Leopard firsthand, I will only reconsider when Microsoft discovers a method of turning their huge wads of cash into a decent operating system.

The fact that I've gone off on a tangential rant proves that I have nothing left to talk about. Thanks for reading!

Addis Ababa

2009-02-11T05:25:00.000Z

I made it to Ethiopia, which I've been looking forward to for the past six months of my trip. It doesn't feel like home, I guess, but the idea of what home feels like is something I'll need to redefine anyway, so that shouldn't be surprising. Instead, it just feels normal. I got off the plane and felt normal, I met my dad and sister and some other friends at the airport and felt normal, and we drove to familiar places and ate familiar food, and that felt normal too. It was amazing.

Being back in Ethiopia has been great so far. Normally, this is a very difficult country for people to travel in. It remains extremely un-Westernized, few people speak English, and it's a very atypical country in general, even by African standards, with a very distinct culture, language, and geography. I've found that the language has come back to me very quickly, and I can understand most basic conversations, though my ability to articulate lags a little behind. I'm able to read about 75% of the written language, too. I'm also fortunate to have a number of connections here, which has already been very helpful in accomplishing some of the things I was hoping to do.

There are two ATMs in the country, and I figured out which one actually works the other day, which was great. ATMs have sort of spawned like rabbits in the rest of the world, and I've never had trouble finding one until now. I'm glad they have some here... otherwise, I would've had to like...wire myself some money. That's right - wire. Does anyone even do that anymore? It's on par with sending someone a message by telegraph in my mental technology hierarchy. ARRIVED ETHIOPIA STOP SEND CHOCOLATE STOP

You would think some things might change in 10 years, but Ethiopia's internet connectivity really hasn't. For some reason it took me threedays of trying various connections (and listening to the modem sound... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeagaaaagghghhhhhhh deeeeedodeedodeeeeedooooooo blaghghghgaldkgkdgjk) before I could connect to my Gmail account and try to catch up a bit. This is what happens when public services are controlled entirely by the government. I guess DSL lines technically are available, but they cost about $350/month for a 128k connection, and you can only get one if the phone company feels like running a cable out to your house. The government has also seen fit to capriciously block various sites, which they probably started doing when they realized that they could and that it might be fun, which means I can post to my blog, but I can't actually go and read it.

Further complicating my life is the fact that all of these computers use Internet Explorer 6, which is the software equivalent of a tin can and string telephone. I'd download a different browser, but that would take about two days. Maybe I can get someone to mail me a new on a floppy disk. The end result is that all of the web pages I load look like what happens to a birthday cake when you leave its box on its side and then sit on it. It's a disappointing thing when you have to wait five minutes for that to load. It doesn't look like I'll be putting up new pictures anytime soon. I'll try to stay in touch when I can.

The joys of Ethiopia are not its technological capabilities, but there are many other things to keep one entertained. I remember when I moved back to the US from here as a kid; I was annoyed that I could never find a rock to throw at things that I needed to throw rocks at. These are the natural pleasures of man - rocks and trucks and dirt and food with lots of meat - and they're all available here. After a few days of worrying about not being able to keep up with my urgent online life, I realized that nothing in my life is actually urgent. Life moves much more slowly here, and it's nice to be able to kick back and go with the flow. Trying to do something other than the flow is really the only thing that'll get you in trouble here, so I guess I don't have any other choice.

I remembered a scene in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness when the main character, Marlowe, visits a doctor before preparing to leave for West Africa. The doctor advises him to avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Nothing produces mental darkness - the kind that creeps up on you without you realizing it - like prolonged irritation does. To be honest, India irritated me immensely. Ethiopia doesn't. I'm realizing how hard the five weeks I spent in India really were now that I'm out.

I spent the last week with my dad and sister, and was able to spend a couple of days attending the leadership training my dad was doing with local Christian church leaders from a number of denominations. It was a very interesting thing to be a part of. Prospects for the rest of my two months here are looking good so far. On arrival, I was fortunate to find that a good friend of our family is going to be spending two weeks traveling around southwest Ethiopia, and leaving on Thursday. He's planning on visiting some of the furthest places accessible (accessible is a generous term) by four wheel drive to encourage Christian evangelists in those areas. Southwest Ethiopia, near the Kenya/Sudan border, is one place that remains 'real' remote tribal Ethiopia. You may have seen pictures of tribes like these - try a Google image search for "mursi tribe" and you'll get some idea. My family used to live that area, and I've been dying to go back and take another look since we left some 11 years ago. Incredibly, he was looking for a buddy to go along on the trip with him, so I'm going to be spending those two weeks visiting all the places in the south that I had hoped to go to. I was hoping to visit one or two of them if I got lucky.

PSA: I'll be out of touch with technology (correspondingly very in touch with the real world) from the 12th through the 26th. If the world ends you can get a hold of my parents. They'll try to get in touch with someone in Addis Ababa, who will try to get in touch with someone relatively near me by short wave radio, who will try to get in touch with me if I show up at their place in the next couple of days.

Following my trip to the south, I plan to spend at least a couple of weeks in northern Ethiopia. Northern Ethiopia remains predominantly Ethiopian Orthodox, and I'm hoping to spend some time in traditional rural areas as well as the historical heart of Ethiopian Orthodoxy in Axum and Lalibela. No one does Orthodoxy the way it's done in Ethiopia, and it should be fascinating.

I love this country. The coffee is incredible, and if I could describe it properly you would be jealous. Unfortunately (or fortunately for you) it wouldn't make any sense unless you've actually been here.

Mumbai and Ahmadabad

2009-01-28T16:56:00.003Z

I haven't written in too long - just haven't been spending much time online. So.

I made it to Mumbai a bit more than a week ago, and it was a bit of a mixed bag, especially at first. I arrived at 5:30AM just coming off of my Goa-inspired personal freedom high into a mission guesthouse, a pre-planned schedule, and a church leader of some sort sitting on the other bed in my room, cigarette in hand and cigarette burns on his blanket. We were both a little confused as to why he was there. It was too early to process such things, and despite the fact that my bed apparently had no linens available for it, I left the room doors open to get rid of the acrid smoke and went to sleep for half an hour. I woke up to the arrival of linens (and more chain smoking from my mysterious buddy), covered the bed, and went back to sleep on it until breakfast. From there, I went straight to a drop in center (run by an organization called Oasis) aimed at helping prostitutes escape prostitution in the neighboring red light district. It was about five minutes away by foot.

I find that most days after an overnight train, especially one arriving as early as that, are a bit hopeless...kind of like walking around in a plastic bag, where all the sounds are muffled, and everything is blurry and distant, and you don't quite feel like you're in the world so much as watching it through a window. I can't answer a barrage of new people asking "how do you like India!??" on a day like that with anything but an apathetic nod and "uh...it's good. I like it." I was not convincing.

It's a great ministry they're running there, and I was super impressed, but...I just wasn't in the mood to appreciate it, I think. Sometimes life is like that. I went on prayer walks with the Oasis staff around the district, watched as they talked to prostitutes, visited the brothels with them and prayed for people, and helped them out with some stuff they needed done at the office. And I felt guilty because I wasn't floored by compassion like I should've been. I felt a bit like an emotional bullfrog, sitting on a log, disinterested in the world, and just watching it pass by with bugged-out eyes.

I spent two days at the drop-in center, helping where I could. The next day I visited an AIDS clinic called JSK, and spoke with a very interesting guy - a Canadian guy whose family had been in India for four generations. We hit it off, I thought, and it was great to hear about what their ministry is doing. I don't have time to go into details of that, but I will say that it was amazing to talk with someone who so well bridged the intense cultural gap between India and the West. From there I got to spend an evening and morning out of the city somewhere. Maybe I'll talk about that later. But JSK clicked with me, and I loved hearing about what they're doing.

Mumbai is connected by these crazy suburban trains, and my longboarding skills finally came in handy for me. I didn't place myself carefully in the rush to get off the train when we arrived at the station I needed, which meant that I was still on the train when the rush to get on happened. Longboarding often involves leaping from a quickly moving platform on to pavement, and that's exactly what was required of me (in flip flops) after I fought through the crowd and disembarked as the train picked up speed. I hit the ground running and would have gone down pretty hard had not an Indian guy, hanging out the door of the train, sort of grabbed my neck and held me up, allowing me to decelerate. At that point I decided that Indians are really super nice people. Now if someone will just explain to me why the trains give hundreds of passengers about ten seconds to get off/get on the train at each stop...

Anyway, I felt like I finally got comfortable being in India somewhere between being...tenderized during rush hour on the train and hanging out the open door, looking out over the city during slack time in an almost empty car. Those are two distinct smells - the smell of cuddling up to about to about ten Indian men simultaneously and the smell of flying past a slum with the wind in your face. I never felt at risk, I never felt like I was going to get robbed, and instead we all just laughed at the ridiculous white guy who refused to buy a first class ticket even though he could afford it.

In Ahmadabad I met up with a wonderful family who welcomed me into their home, and simply got a chance to relax, hang around, do a bit of shopping, and just exist with cool people. It was a recharge that I needed.

I'm in Delhi now, planning on flying out to Ethiopia early on the 1st, where I'll meet up with my dad and sister for about ten days before heading out on my own. My dad's work brought him there anyway, so it'll be a nice chance for us to connect after...well, it'll be six months at that point.

Those of you praying for good health are rockstars - please don't stop. I've gotten sick once in half a year. Not bad. I'm knocking furiously on the desk.

Breakfast

2009-01-19T05:30:00.002Z

Tea: $0.20
Banana Shake: $0.60
Scrambled Eggs: $0.50
Lemon Crepe: $0.50
Chocolate Croissant: $0.60

TOTAL: $2.40

So it was a good Monday morning in Goa.

Kerala

2009-01-15T10:14:00.006Z

I'm in a new place since I wrote last. I'm down in Kerala state, in the city of Trivandrum. This is the area where St. Thomas landed and started his ministry. It's very tropical - there are coconut trees everywhere (Kerala means land of coconuts) and bananas, and even elephants walking down the road. It's humid, but not very hot this time of year. It's actually very comfortable. I've spent the last couple of days doing some interesting things. The first day I got here I mostly chilled out. The next, I familiarized myself with the ministry at the organization I'm staying with - they primarily do research on evangelism. The director found out I was a computer expert (his words, I just nodded) and asked me to spend some time teaching his staff how to use MS Word and stuff. They already knew the basics, so I just covered some points on technical writing for an hour. I don't know how helpful it was, but they were nice about it, and there might've been one or two useful things. It was nice for me to have something to do.

Yesterday I left here for a school about an hour and a half away, where I spent the night. The director, Bishop Moses, and I spoke for a while. I got to meet his family, and tour the school, and even share and pray briefly this morning with the students. They're doing something very interesting there. It's a long explanation, but I'll embark on it nonetheless, and try to keep it on the brief side.

Hinduism is very much a cultural fixture in India. Among other things, the Hindu religion provides some simple definitions for organizing society, which form the roots of the caste system. To put it simply, castes are organized by what part of the god Brahma that they originate from (head, torso, thighs, feet) with the lowest group being the untouchables, who do not come from any part of Brahma at all. As Hinduism teaches that the world is an illusion, and that only the gods are reality, this means that the untouchables don't even have a stake in the reality of the universe. They are, by definition, inconsequential. The different tribes and people groups that compose this untouchable class are also called dhalits.

When the British left India, they required India to draft a constitution. The constitution was supposed to provide equality for everyone, and to that end, the dhalits where given basic constitutional rights, like land ownership, along with guaranteed representation in various parts of society - political offices, schools, universities, and the like. These are actually reserved seats, or vacancies, that are required by law to be filled by dhalits.

Now, there was a clash in values between the Hindu culture and the requirements of India's constitution. Christianity comes into play here. Dhalits began to embrace the faith in huge numbers, mostly because the gospel of Christianity espouses that everyone is equal before God, and that Jesus came for every person from every caste. For the dhalits, Christianity represented the first system under which they actually had inherent value as individuals. It freed them from the oppression, both cultural and physical, that they had been under for centuries.

The Brahmins and other high castes, who had considerable influence in Indian government, were practically concerned about these mass conversions. The reason India never had a flourishing slave trade, or needed one, is because the dhalits have supplied that slavery for years. Dhalit conversions threatened to undermine the status quo. So, the Brahmins put pressure on the government, and in 1950 managed to (illegally) amend the constitution by presidential order so that the basic rights described earlier were only available to dhalits (called "Scheduled Classes" in India's constitution) who are of Hindu religion.

That's a little silly, if you think about it. Only dhalits who are Hindus are entitled to constitutional rights, and only dhalits who are Hindus are forced to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder by their own religion. Effectively, that means that the dhalits are back where they started. Over the years, Sikhs and Buddhists have been able to secure rights for themselves as well, but only to the end that the constitution now provides the aforementioned rights to dhalits who are of the Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist religions.

As a point of clarification, every Indian's caste and religion is a matter of public record. If we did that in the States, imagine those things being stamped on your driver's license.

Christian influence in India has been around for a long time, and some of the results of that influence are good systems for education and healthcare in Christian communites. Christians dhalits, on the whole, tend to be much better educated and qualified than their Hindu counterparts. It's as much an issue of mindset as anything else; the Christians practice an enabling religion that isn't self-oppressive. Now, there are all these vacancies reserved for dhalits in universities and government organizations, but they can't be filled by Christians, because that would be unconstitutional, and they can't be filled by other dhalits, because there aren't any who are qualified.

You see the difficulty of this cycle.

Bishop Moses' school has more than 700 students, about 80% of whom are dhalits. The school is run by dhalits for dhalits, because these children have little or no educational opportunities elsewhere, and no means of bettering themselves or their communities. The school is mostly run by donations, because members of these communities really can't afford to send their children to other schools. The school is run on an international medium to enable students, when they graduate, to be competitive with students not only from India, but from anywhere in the world. Logistics aside, this is one of the only means in the world for dhalits to raise themselves out of the oppressive society in which they live.

I'm a cynic. I usually don't like 'projects.' I'm generally pretty critical and pretty skeptical. But I was deeply moved by being able to visit the school and understand what an incredible work of transformation people are doing there. It was pretty amazing. I'm often of the opinion that Christians cause as much trouble as anybody else (we're all people, after all, and people suck a lot of the time), and it was nice to see something very positive.

If I messed up my facts, feel free to correct. I am only a "computer expert", not a guru (ha! India joke!) when it comes to religious and social structures.

Bangalore and Chennai

2009-01-06T09:56:00.004Z

Hello! I haven't had much of a chance to get online lately, and the time I have spent has involved replying to emails and trying to keep my logistical life from falling all to pieces. Geeze.

I landed in Bangalore on the 30th, and I spent a few days there before coming out to Chennai (on the east coast) yesterday. Chennai has some historical significance - St. Thomas was martyred and buried here. I was able to see both of those sites today.

My schedule through India has been planned out rather well, thanks to some help from a friend of my dad's whom I'm staying with in Bangalore. I'll be returning to Bangalore tomorrow for four days, then heading on to Trivandurum. I'll move north from there to Goa, Mumbai, and Ahmadabad before cutting over to Delhi on the 29th. I'll leave for Addis Ababa from Delhi on the 31st or thereabouts.

I'd write more, but I'm pressed for time. Wanted to point out that I am alive, and doing ok, but running a bit tired. On the positive side, I feel like I'm back on a sort of pilgrimage after a couple of weeks of delightful, but aimless downtime in Hong Kong; on the negative, being a nomad for five months has produced a deep mental/emotional/spiritual/physical exhaustion. I would appreciate your prayer in that regard. Let me know how I can pray for you. My new prayer list 2.0 (a fresh page in my journal) is just waiting for you to tell me.

My blog now gives me the option to type in:
Hindi: हिन्दी
Tamil: தமிழ்
Meleyalem: മേലെയലേം
Kannada: ಕನ್ನಡ
Telegu: తెలేగు

Hong Kong

2008-12-24T11:05:00.002Z

Well, it's been two weeks since I've updated, so I figured I would get the old fingers moving and crank another one out. And crank I will; no careful editing or frilly prose on this one. No sir. Speed is key here - after two weeks without posting anything, I'm sure a number of you are simply panting for an update. Such is my literary appeal. I see I'm up to three 'followers' now, and I would like to thank the two of you who must have become followers more recently. You are the wind beneath my wings, or at least the ones stoking the blazing furnace that is my ego. Ahem.

I arrived in Hong Kong about a week ago on a through train from Beijing. It was a 24 hour trip to get here - one of the faster and more comfy trains I've been on. Leaving from Beijing meant that I backtracked a little bit - I took a D train out of Qufu to Beijing, which is a sort of bullet train. It got up to around 250km/h at some points (that's 155mph), so it was much shorter than the overnight train I took before. I managed to read Around the World in 80 Days from start to finish on the trip - it was weird because they kept talking about places I'm going to and places I've been already as if they were overwhelmingly exotic.

The through train to Hong Kong, like I said, was pretty schnazzy. Lured into a false sense of confidence, then, I ventured to the restaurant car (I just involuntarily shuddered) for dinner that evening. The menu was in Chinese, so I ordered by pictures. Apparently I selected the Unwanted Pork Pieces with Celery in Terrible Sauce, which distinguishes itself in my memory as the only Chinese dish (calling it Chinese is a stretch) that I didn't like, and in fact abhorred. It was one of those nightmare meals that leaves a worse impression afterwards than the actual event of eating it. The ok-tasting parts I picked out went down fine, though, and I slept ok, and roused myself the next morning for my arrival in Hong Kong. I'm staying with a wonderful family here, which is a very fortunate thing; that evening I began to feel strange; I later began to feel downright awful; I spent the next day creating a sort of beaten path on the marble floor between my room and the bathroom. I felt a little better the following day, and proceeded out of doors with Willie, the patriarch of the aforementioned family, to acquaint myself with Hong Kong. I did acquaint myself with the city, and I also had opportunity (and compulsion) to acquaint myself with Hong Kong's fine public restroom facilities. I am happy to report that they are pleasantly well-maintained.

Another day and a finished course of antibiotics later I was feeling much better, and still am. I'm surprised I didn't get sick sooner.

Hong Kong wasn't really a planned stop, and I certainly wasn't intending to spend two weeks here, but that's what ended up happening. My plans to return to mainland China sort of fell through, and I ended up without enough time to really make it where I wanted to go and back in time to catch my flight to India, which is on the 29th. Hong Kong is a crazy place, though. It might be the most developed city I've ever seen. Of course, anywhere outside of the U.S. where you can actually buy Dr. Pepper is a distinguished location, so that should give you some idea of what I'm dealing with here. I had a bit of culture shock as I stood in an enormous shopping mall and looked around at all the stores. I've been sort of away from places like that for quite a while.

Hong Kong is also a very interesting blend of culture and history. It was actually a British colony until 1997, and was and still is a huge center for international trade. Everything is in English, so it's easy to get around, and it's certainly a departure from mainland China in terms of feel. I also had a chance to visit the neighboring island of Macau this afternoon, which was a Portuguese colony for about as long as Hong Kong has been British. Macau was, among other things, the rallying point for Christianity in the Far East: Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries were trained in Macau before being sent to China, and around 8% of the territory is still Catholic. It was interesting to see some standing Christian history in (what is now) China. So, despite these places being off my planned route, I'm still getting a chance to see something I'm interested in.

Pictures. Of China. China Pictures.

2008-12-10T03:28:00.002Z

This is update is because...why the heck not.

This is part of the city wall in Qufu.

A doorway at the temple of Confucius. It was a little foggy that day.

I met a friendly kitten.

There were some cool reliefs at the temple.

Selling art.

Some red pillars.

The second in the series of Lots of Similar Red Things in a Row. These are altars.

Old Chinese ladies are amazing.

At a mansion where historically important people lived. The signs weren't always coherent.

Well, I guess when you put it that way, it's pretty easy.

I took a picture of myself taking a picture of myself in a mirror.

This security camera looked ready to zap you if you made a mistake.

This is a picture of China. See?

The shoe repairman.

The fish guy.

The fruit lady.

The coal guy and his amazing motorized contraption.

At least they had the decency to shroud the bird.

Spices.

The village to the west of the university.

A field right next to the village.

Me with some mini-crab-on-a-stick. It was...crunchy. Very crunchy.

A Chinese wedding and reflections on old age

2008-12-08T04:09:00.007Z

I went to a Chinese wedding on Sunday, which was definitely something that one might term a 'cultural experience'. I was invited along by the friend whom I'm staying with in Qufu; the bride and groom were friends of hers, and what's one more foreigner when there are already a couple going, right? Another teacher, came along as well.

We arrived at the church at about 8:15, just in time for about two more hours of the service. I didn't mind that, actually. It was pretty cool to see and experience a service in China, despite not being able to understand it. My friend was kind enough to translate bits and pieces for us, so I caught the general idea. At about 10:15 the service broke up and began to morph into a wedding ceremony, which apparently is pretty typical. And so the fun began.

I counted about four occasions when a typical American bride would have just called the thing off right there. Since the three of us were treated as special guests, we were put in front where we could watch the chaos unfold. The bride and groom came down the aisle and proceeded to stand awkwardly to the side of the stage until some room was made for them to sit down on a bench. The pastor took about 30 minutes to preach a sermon on marriage, during which the groom's cell phone went off. He, of course, went outside to take the call. He, of course, was still outside when he and his bride were called up on stage. He, of course, had to be brought back inside by someone who ran out to fetch him. That was occasion #1.

Occasion #2 happened a little bit later and was also cell phone related; specifically, the cell phone rang again. While the couple was on stage. Getting married. Occasion #3 was when he tried to pick up said call and accidentally dropped/threw his phone halfway across the stage. Don't worry, though - a friend finished the call for him. If I was the bride, I might've been angry on occasion #4 - my newly married husband hurrying off the stage at the ceremony's conclusion to talk to the friend who picked up the call to see what it was all about (and get the cell phone back), but I am not a Chinese bride, and she didn't seem bothered in the least. These things are what we call cultural differences, and they are also the explanation for the four little boys who were allowed to run around at the front of the stage, try to jump on the stage, and point rubber bands at the bride during the entirety of the ceremony. Chinese children don't wear diapers, and the slits in the little boy's pants that resulted in them exposing themselves to everyone gathered is another example of a cultural difference. It was an eye opening (and then immediately closing) sort of experience.

At the end of the ceremony, after the happy couple walked down the aisle and out of the church (not side by side, but with the groom about four feet in front...the general attitude was apparently that they didn't want anyone to think they liked each other), a student behind us asked Lisa if I was her father. Lisa is a couple years older than I am. Yes, I have a beard. No, I am not 50.

The following is an explanation for my recent Facebook status, in which I revealed that I had imbibed eight (eight!) shots at a Chinese wedding. For one, they were very small shots. For two, those people straight up tricked me. It happened like this. Everyone toasts the bride's parents. When they came around to our table, they brought wine and small shots of something, they tell me it was bai jiu, for the toasting. My friend, sitting next to me, had to take one sip of wine. That seemed reasonable enough, and I figured I would try a shot, just to see what it was like. So I took a shot. Hold on though - it was communicated to me that I should take two, one for the bride's mother and another for her father. I am not a rude person. I took another one. Great, they said, now another take two for the bride's mother! Wait a second, didn't I just...? Oh well. Two wasn't so bad (how wrong I was!) so I figured two more wouldn't hurt. Haha! So I took two for each of them. But really, they pointed out, for the mother one ought to take four shots. Oh. Really? Well...I am not a rude person. And what's six shots when you've already taken four? I took two more. And then, a few minutes later (this is where they get you), the bride and groom came around for their toasts! And again, my friend only had to drink once. I figured I would continue on the trend, you know, prove my manliness, take another shot, seven is a lucky number, whatever. I took another shot. Everyone was impressed. It was communicated that I should take one for the bride as well; I am a gentleman, and have no trouble drinking to a lady. That shot taken, everyone seemed excited for me to take another, and at this point, there was no apparent reason. Take another one, they said! For all I know, they talked to each other before coming in and decided to try to make me drunk by pretending it was the culturally appropriate thing to do. I called it quits after that.

They were really small shots.

Potpourri (for $600, please, Alex)

2008-12-01T06:53:00.015Z

Written content was promised, and written content I will deliver. I never promised coherency.

Turns out cilantro is awesome. Some people don't like it, and that is, quite simply, ridiculous. I've happily encountered it in deep fried mushrooms, deep fried doughy-eggy-oniony breakfast concoctions, and fried (just fried - they took it easy on that one) bread stuffed with egg, peppers, and, well, cilantro. Chinese food continues to impress at every opportunity. I've hardly had the same thing twice, and I've liked everything I've eaten so far. All of it. It's really cool to be in a country where people spend a little bit of time being creative with their food instead of just shoveling it down immediately after boiling water renders it sufficiently malleable. I think the big bowl of friend grubs I saw this morning is proof. I'm gaining weight, mom. Are you happy? At this rate I'm going to haul about ten pounds of China across the border when I leave.

I have this problem writing, and I have this problem in conversations: when you meet tons of new people all the time, you get the feeling that you're telling one person the same story ten times. I've developed an aversion to storytelling because I feel like I'm becoming senile, and constantly regaling one person with that story about that one time I was in someplace doing whatever. I keep rereading what I've posted before to make sure I'm not re-writing an earlier update. When I made my way down to Qufu last week it was an adventure of the usual variety. I went to the central train station in Beijing to get my ticket, and the process took about twenty minutes; the ten minutes before that were spent just finding the ticket office. The ticket agent didn't speak English, but I never really expected that she would. The happy difference between here and a place like Russia is that she was all too willing to help. I had written down the train number, destination, and date that I wanted, but the destination proved confusing. Mandarin is a tone language, and between the five different vowel tones, there are 25 different ways to pronounce "Qufu". Being a foreigner, of course, the only way I could pronounce it was the wrong way. Mandarin is hard! After engaging the assistance of two other ticket agents and a bystander, we decided that I was, indeed, going to Qufu. We then commenced a game that combined elements of Guesstures and Pictionary to establish exactly what kind of ticket I wanted. Yes, I want to sleep, not sit down. Put me in this kind of place with six beds, please. Stick me up on the top - I drew a picture of the bunks. Perfect! There's how much money I need to pay. Thank you! Smiles all around! So I ended up on the top bunk of the triple stack in a hard sleeper for the eight hour overnight train, paid about $25 for it, and was a very happy camper. That might sound sort of like a long and annoying process, but I've got time, and it really was sort of fun. Chinese people are really, really nice. Between that and the $0.50 price tag on my breakfasts, I'm falling in love with this country.

I never remember my dreams. The best I can usually do is to have something happen during the day that clicks on a light in my head and reminds me of something I dreamed a night or two before. Then I'll get the tiniest piece of a flashback, but I can't reconnect the flashback to anything more tangible than a vague feeling or fleeting impression. Other times I might remember the last five seconds of my dreams right before I woke up, and then I have a moment to watch it melt away, diluted in the overpowering reality of consciousness. I can't hold on to that even if I want to. The other night I dreamed that I had gone back home, or close. It was Christmas, I was driving back to Spokane, and for me that means I was eastbound on I-90. It was dark, and I was driving through those hours of featureless road after the Cascades. I could see the street in front of my parents house, too; the snow on the ground, and the snow falling, and the light coming from the decorated Christmas tree in the front window. And I got the feeling that something wasn't right. My conscience started nagging me (you can never get rid of it, even in a dream), and it told me that four months wasn't enough, that I hadn't finished yet. I couldn't keep driving home and feel good about it. That's all I remember of my dream, and I think it ended there. If it hadn't ended I would've turned around, or maybe it ended there because I did. Sometimes it takes a dream to understand how you really feel about something that confuses you while you're awake. You sort of teach yourself something that you'd never have learned if you tried.

I guess what brings those three paragraphs together is the feeling that I've formed a rhythm. Things I've learned, and experienced, and felt for the last four months coalesced into an outline of something sometime around October, and after that materialized it's slowly become more and more defined. In Greek philosophy, Theseus' paradox deals with the identity of something after all of its component parts have been replaced, one by one, over time. I don't know if I'm a different person now, and if I am, I couldn't tell you when it happened, or to what degree.

Tyumen -> Beijing

2008-11-26T05:16:00.008Z

Lots of pictures! I selected about 95 between Tyumen, Russia (the first town I stopped in on the Trans-Mongolian, about 100km past the official beginning of Siberia) and Beijing, which I left yesterday.

No one speaks English in Russia, so I devised a written method for acquiring tickets. There's the scrap of paper I wrote my request on, and the resulting ticket. The picture, unfortunately, eliminates the half hour of waiting in line, and the hand waving, and the generally unhappy ticket lady. It worked out. I made it across Russia!

There's Lenin, being Lenin. One of the cooler statues.

I had a rather extensive book collection at some point. For a guy with a single 79 liter pack, it was a bit excessive. It's a little better now...

I found this awesome beer poster in Siberia. It translates to something like "do you want some?" but it's funnier than that, apparently.

Sunset in Tyumen. Cool clouds and a big obelisk.

The same sunset - the same place, actually, as the photo before - but turned around 180 degrees. There was a cool suspension bridge. I take some of these photos in widescreen with the intention of making them into desktop backgrounds when I get home.

A run-down church in Tobolsk, Siberia. Undergoing renovation, actually, but still rather dismal in a romantic sort of way.

This shot is pretty representative of typical Siberia. Still in Tobolsk...a little bleak, flat, muddy...

There was an orthodox procession of some sort at the Tobolsk kremlin. They have a surprisingly beautiful church for being more or less in the middle of nowhere. I joined the procession for a while along with a bunch of people from town.

A better shot of the pretty kremlin and the cathedral.

A picture of the town of Tyumen. It was a pretty day that day.

This is a little section of Krasnoyarsk, sort of away from the downtown area.

I rode a ski lift. It was pretty fancy. Also cold.

Mountains? In Siberia? Craziness. This was at the top of the ski lift area.

The hills afforded a pretty good view of downtown Krasnoyarsk.

Clattering down the rails to Irkutsk on a 3rd class carriage. The lady on the left is doing a crossword puzzle, and I'm trying to not get noticed by the family I'm taking a picture of...

A picture through the dirty window of the train. This was pretty typical for the little towns along the railway in Siberia. People like that bright green color.

A catholic church in Irkutsk.

The main river that runs through Irkutsk, at a sort of parkish area where all the young people hang out. The locks are like the ones on the metal trees in Moscow; when people get married they attach a lock to the railing together, and then throw the key away into the river.

One of the wedding locks.

The town of Listvyanka on Lake Baikal. 1/5 of the world's fresh water is in this lake - it's enormous.

There was a cool fish market. The fish was really good.

An exciting day for me in Irkutsk! I spent the whole morning and early afternoon watching the election results come in after the sun set on all of you guys in the states. I was happy about the outcome, and so were all the Russians I talked to about it.

The train leaving Irkutsk - my last train leg in Russia. It was very cold that night... -10 C or so, which is about 15 F.

A group of soldiers at one of the stations we stopped at during the night. They were in the next car over.

Our carriage attendant started some trouble by throwing snow at this railway worker. He's busy packing a snowball in retaliation. I don't have any more pictures of this episode - I squared off against the Russian soldiers from the other car with an English guy and an Irish guy from my train car, and we had a friendly snow battle until it was time for the train to pull away.

The scenery the next morning on the way down to Ulan Bator was beautiful.

Sunrise.

Obligatory train travel picture.

A frozen lake.

Arrival at the Russian border exit point. We stayed here for about six hours while the Russian agents were busy not checking anything. During that time our train was rearranged.

Here's our big red train car sitting all by itself. The direct service from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator consists of this single car. A Russian train pulls it down to the border, a different train pulls it across the border, and a third hauls it along to Ulan Bator.

Like I said, we hung around here for about six hours...

Ulan Bator! This Buddhist monk is making his way up to the temple at the top of the hill.

Spinning the drums like faithful Buddhists.

Some people were feeding the birds.

Work, work, work.

I found breakfast! This was a good morning, courtesy of California restaurant, Ulan Bator. I don't know what was in the mug, but it said Starbucks.

The burned out communist party building in Ulan Bator, left over from the July 1st riots.

The next bunch of pictures, beginning with this one, is from six days in the Mongolian countryside.

Sunset, moonrise, middle of nowhere.

Some buddhist monks at a monastery blowing their conch shells. I got to experiment with one. It's like playing a trumpet, sort of.

A good, icy kind of canyon.

Move, sheep, get out the way.

No comment necessary.

Steve and the van.

A Mongolian guy doing horsey things.

Sunset over a frozen lake.

Another moonrise, and another freezing cold outhouse. I love being a guy.

The frozen lake.

A yak! It may not smell good kid, but it'll keep you warm.

Warming my frozen toes by the stove. Laura's toes made it into the picture as well.

Afternoon nap, Mongolian style.

Me, decked out in horseriding gear. You probably can't see the icicles in my mustache. I assure you, they were there.

Our Mongolian driver, Gamba, and the open road.

Mountains, clouds, fields...

Steve surveys the horizon. It's like the Oregon Trail or something.

Home for the evening.

There were sheep and goats milling around.

Sunset.

Sunrise.

There it is.

Moonset the same morning.

Gamba tests the ice to figure out the depth of the river.

This is why the depth of the river was important.

A flat tire, promptly repaired.

Out of Mongolia! Here we are at the Chinese border crossing. The rail gauges between Russia/Mongolia and China are different, so they pull the trains into a warehouse, lift each of the cars up on those pneumatic lifts, and slide a new set of wheels under each.

The Summer Palace, Beijing. The next bunch are all from there.

It was beautiful.

A lady was writing on the ground with water.

The Forbidden City from a hilltop in Beijing.

The Forbidden city and the surrounding moat.

Recyclables need not apply.

The Bird's Nest. A little but surreal, actually. The whole Olympic Park didn't seem to fit in with anything. It was like it fell out of the sky onto the city or something. Very impressive nonetheless.

The great wall at Mutianyu.

Delicious street food in Beijing.

The Chinese version of candied apples. I love what they put on sticks.

A crowded street during the evening. Always something going on.

Waiting for the subway in Beijing with Laura.

Arrival in Qufu! That's where I am now. It was very foggy.

I will provide some kind of written content in the near future.

Life

2008-11-18T03:38:00.005Z

It's weird to pack your current life into a bag, get on a train, and hop over to a new country; it's even weirder when it feels like a perfectly normal day. I arrived yesterday morning on the train from Mongolia, stepped off into the crisp Beijing sunshine, and oddly felt more or less at home. Within about 30 minutes I equipped myself with local currency, got myself a Chinese phone number, and was comfortably checking my email and texting a couple of people. I'm not trying to brag about some kind of extraordinary proficiency - it's simply odd the way people adapt to things.

Good news: I did nothing today, and it was great. Today was laundry day, and with all of my stuff hanging up to dry, I was without enough jackets and such to really go outside. I plan to go outside tomorrow, and take a look at the summer palace and other touristy kinds of attractions. Beijing is a wonderful city at first glance - after Mongolia, everything looks all bright and shiny, and it seems that you can get anything here. There's a McDonald's, KFC, and a Papa John's on the street where I'm staying, and I fully intend to go down there tomorrow and stare at them for a good few minutes each. It's strange how the dumbest things become captivatingly comforting. Familiarity is very loosely defined at the moment.

For lack of content, I'll regale you with the tale of my amazing Mongolian adventure. Myself and four companions (two Brits, a Kiwi, and a Finn) set out for the vast Mongolian wilderness on the morning of Monday, the 10th, with eight bottles of water, an assortment of sleeping bags, and a Mongolian driver in our Russian van. The paved road ended after about an hour and a half, but it seemed we were taking a shortcut, because after a couple of hours of bouncing along arbitrary dirt tracks (there were about five at any given time, all headed in roughly the same direction) we came upon another paved road, which we followed for more or less the rest of the day.

The dirt tracks became something of a pattern from that point forward, as we spent the better part of each day save one flying around on them. No road signs, really. No civilization to speak of. Herds of horses covered the road at several points, or were substituted for by herds of sheep or yaks. Mongolia's a funny place, because when you think of Mongolia, you (or I did, anyway) immediately think of endless steppes, frosty mountains, rugged nomadic horsemen leading herds of cattle, and nothing to sleep in but the occasional yurt. It's a funny place because that's exactly what it's like. It's rare that you go somewhere that actually fully lives up to the stereotype.

Our destination was a place called White Lake (in Mongolian, which I didn't learn in 10 days), where we stayed for two nights before heading back for Ulan Bator. It's a large lake in an area that was volcanically active in the past. I'm actually not going to describe it, but I'll put up some pictures later. That's the only chance I'll have to give you any idea of what it looks like, I think, other than to tell you that it was beautiful, and I walked around on the frozen lake and took a bunch of pictures. The landscapes were all somewhat beyond description, actually, even for a photo. The horizons were too distant, the mountains too high, the skies too bright, the clouds too immense; the scale too vast, in short, to be captured in words or on film. I found myself making a couple of sketches simply to help me remember what they looked like to me - every photo was too small and insufficient - and the sketches were so poorly done that the indignation stirred my imagination to accuracy. I may try it more in the future.

We stayed in ghers the whole time we were out there, and ate Mongolian food for the most part. For your benefit, I have included my own Mongolian food recipe that I gleaned from carefully watching the cooking process at several institutions. I have recorded it below if you would like to try some at home. The whole trip was really a lot like backpacking - making fires to keep warm, sleeping in sleeping bags in the cold, no real civilization. I loved that part of it, because I associate backpacking in the mountains with vacation, and this felt like a vacation to me.

I must give a nod to my four companions, whose terrific senses of humor, stoic acceptance of our shared hardships, and unassailable optimism made the trip far more terrific than it might have been. (Let's just pretend that that's how it was, alright guys? And don't mention anything to anyone about the night I spent throwing up mutton on the cold, moonlit steppe under the watchful eyes of the family dogs, or any of the other 'rubbish bits' of the trip. I would 'fancy' that. I'm trying to pretend none of those things ever happened. Thank you.)

Eric's Mongolian Food Recipe

Cook:
1. Noodles and / or rice
2. An assortment of goat pieces (your choice, or whatever is on hand)
3. Potato, or substitute, preferably frozen, in chip or french fry form

Combine the above ingredients in your container. Add water to taste, making dry noodles, soup, or something exotically in-between. Serve hot. Enjoy with hand sanitizer and 1-2 Pepto Bismol tablets.

Note: Mongolian food is functional. To retain authenticity, do not 'spice it up'. Some Mongolians, however, use a small amount of spicy ketchup, and this is allowable; be sure your ketchup is well past expiration.

Mongolia

2008-11-08T11:09:00.003Z

Well, I made it out of Russia with no problems, with about six hours left to spare on my visa. I shaved it a little close, I admit, but I did make it out; all's well that ends well, and now I'm in Mongolia.

The train ride down from Irkutsk was a little ridiculous. The trip was characterized by general slowness and hanging around...the train seemed to stop about every five minutes (for maybe thirty seconds per stop) the whole way down to the Mongolian border, as we passed tiny little towns. None of them had any passengers to get on the train, nor did the train have any passengers to offload, but the towns are built into the schedule, I think, and in Russia anything on an official piece of paper is to be highly revered. I shared a cabin with an English guy, which was a nice change, and an Irish guy in the next cabin stuck his head in when he heard us talking. I was rather grateful to have some companions to talk to over the two day train ride, and it made the trip a lot of fun. We actually ended up getting into a snowball fight with a group of Russian soldiers in the next train car when we stopped for a few minutes at a station. It was lighthearted, but I couldn't help but laugh at the symbolism.

Ulan Bator is a pretty incredible city. Mongolians are generally really nice and open people, which is a change from Russia, where people are really nice and very reserved. The place has a laid back feel to it. Apparently there's a large expat community here (I don't know what they would have to do) and as a result, there are some great grocery stores and terrific restaurants. I actually found some Kirkland brand stuff in one store, along with a number of other American products like Swiss Miss hot chocolate, and I had buffalo wings, a sandwich, soup, fries, and strawberry lemonade for lunch. It's great.

I'm going to stay here a little longer than I had planned, I think (the story of my life) and I'll probably end up leaving on Sunday, the 16th, for Beijing. It looks like I'm going to join about four other people from a hostel for a six-day excursion out into the countryside - staying in yurts and all of that. It's more expensive than getting around on my own, but public transport here is difficult to arrange and unreliable as well. There's a self-dependent part of my head that's simply screaming at me for paying a little bit more money to have someone arrange something for me instead of figuring it out on my own, but I have limited time here, and it's not every day that you find yourself in Mongolia, so I'm going to take advantage of it.

I think that's about it for now. I'm doing well - still couchsurfing in Ulan Bator, which means I get to make my own food and stuff. I found another bookstore today and picked up Dante's Inferno, which I feel like I owe it to myself to read. I'm working my way through Dickens at the moment.

Siberia

2008-11-01T08:14:00.007Z

Hey all. Siberia is going great, although I haven't been able to update because internet is a little spotty and occasionally hard to come by. Can I really complain? It's Siberia, so I think I'm supposed to be grateful for having enough potatoes to keep me on my feet.

The whole of Siberia is best described as "grey", but I've been able to keep myself entertained by a little sightseeing, moving quickly from place to place, and copious literature that I've stored away for the hours of boredom that organize themselves for surprise attacks in the shadowy future. They seem to find safety in numbers. Reading is essential when you have as much time on your hands as this; it lets you explore the depths of someone else's mind, and saves you from boring too deeply into the recesses of your own.

I've learned that travel isn't just about sightseeing, in fact can't be about sightseeing, because the lonely satisfaction of checking sites off of a list is insufficient gratification to make oneself feel fulfilled. People, rather - company and conversation - are the only real way to occupy time so as not to feel like you're slowly falling into a deep, deep hole where no one will recognize you anymore. It's ego, really, which I'm not ashamed to admit; we need attention to continue to feel that we have purpose and meaning (as my current couchsurfing host's two-year-old brother demonstrates remarkably well), and we need to listen - really listen - to justify the attention we receive. It balances our lives out, and it balances the world out, and there's nothing wrong with that in the least. Long trains rides with forced interaction and some wonderful couchsurfing hosts continue to provide that equilibrium for me, and I'm very glad for it.

I can already see, after only a week, the way this place and this time of year could crush a person doomed to exile, and I see around me the bright colors and twinkling lights invented to provide escape and distraction. People really do have a good time out here, and they're irrepressibly practical about it. Yesterday morning, with David Bowie blasting over the speakers, it all made sense. David Bowie is the most natural thing in the world to pair with Siberia. You've got to have something that delightfully combines ridiculous and upbeat to be able to look out the window at that featureless, lead-grey sky and think "life's going to be awesome today." It worked like you wouldn't believe.

Leaving Moscow

2008-10-24T17:57:00.004+01:00

I'm finally leaving western "European" Russia tonight. I'm sort of sad, really. I've loved my time here, both in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and it's been nice to spend a lot of time in one place and get used to it. I ended up with about ten days total in Moscow, split up by three days in St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg was terrific. I stayed with another couch surfer there, which, again, made the experience awesome. Using overnight trains each way meant that I had about three full days, and I tried to make the most of them. I went to the Hermitage museum the first day, which is full of original artwork by a number of rather famous individuals. They have a whole room dedicated to Picasso, both paintings as well as sculptures and ceramics, and a number of originals from artists like Rembrant, Matisse, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc. They even had work by Da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Despite being a little too much art to process in a handful of hours, I enjoyed the experience very much. The second day I made use of the computer, kicked back for the morning, and caught up on the first three episodes of The Office for this season. Absolutely loved it. Snuck an episode of Chuck in there while I was at it. That was a great morning, and I followed it up with a trip to the Cathedral of the Savior on Spilled Blood. There's all kinds of history in St. Petersburg, with that cathedral being part of it. The third day I explored a different part of the city and made it out to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where a lot of the Tsars are buried. St. Petersburg has the same kind of artsy, cultural feel that parts of Seattle do, but it's much older.

For the last couple of weeks I've been able to do most of my own cooking (like real cooking) instead of eating out or trying to patch something together on a table in a hostel dorm. There's a lot of variety of food available once you get past all of the Russian labels. I've been able to find most anything, though I have a strange fear when asking for chicken breast...my phrasebook says 'breast' is 'grud', and on the chicken breast packages it's 'grudka', and I can't quite keep them straight, and I worry that if I screw it up I'll ask the butcher for chicken tits or something. In St. Petersburg I made myself a sort of bacon-wrapped chicken breast and white sauce over pasta (whole wheat, mother dear), and I did similar Italian themed things for the past couple of days here in Moscow. I've made omelettes in the mornings. I even tried to make biscuits yesterday, which, to my surprise, wasn't a horrendous disaster. It's not that I'm bad at biscuits, but they require baking powder, which I wasn't able to find. I accidentally bought a pound of corn starch, which was not useful, and since I had most of the other ingredients ready, I decided to try for a baking powder substitute. You can substitute for baking powder with baking soda and buttermilk, but the ratio is sort of whack and leads to a huge excess of buttermilk. So I switched recipes to one that had a bunch of buttermilk anyway, and then, since I didn't have buttermilk (oops) I tried kefir, which is...well...a buttermilk substitute. The biscuits didn't rise, so much, but they're not bad, and I'll enjoy munching them as I clatter over the rails heading east. They are an improvement over hardtack, the making of which was Plan B.

Speaking of going east, I'm leaving in about an hour and a half (hmm...I should get going soon) for the city of Tyumen. I'll be staying a couple of nights with a couch surfer there (they're everywhere) and doing a little exploring. Tyumen is officially in Siberia by about 100km or so. I'm breaking up my trip to Ulan Batur, Mongolia, into three legs. This first leg to Tyumen will involve about 35 hours on the train, with the other two legs being a little bit shorter. That's sort of weird...it means I'll be on the train for a longer time than I've spent in three different countries. I guess that's the real trans-siberian experience. Before this I've only known of these places by their names on the Risk (the board game) board.

There are a few different schools of thought for choosing train classes. You can either get yourself a locked compartment with as few people as possible and go for high security, or you can try to have as many people around you as possible so that you can all look out for each other. First class is the first option; there are two people to a compartment, you can lock the door, and it's extraordinarily expensive. Third class is the other choice - there are really no compartments, and everyone sort of squeezes in. There are beds, at least. Second class is sort of no man's land...it's expensive, and you're locked in a compartment with three other people, who may or may not be large, drunk Russian men. Based on my third class experiences going to and from St. Petersburg and on other travellers' reports, I'm going for third class again. I'm looking forward to it, actually. It should be fun, and the ticket cost a whole $80.

Ok, time to leave. That means this post is, yet again, not checked for spelling, grammar, or punctuation, and is likely as not pretty scattered. Such is life.

2008-10-23T14:44:00.010+01:00

Photo update! This time it's a pretty big one. I've had a lot of time to use a computer, and had all my cables and camera and stuff all together at once. It's sort of like an alignment of the stars. All of these are in chronological order, starting all the way back in Macedonia. That was about a month ago, I think. Hmm...

Disclaimer: I can't get the spellchecker to work. If I look dumb, I blame it on Microsoft. Firefox would never treat me this way.

Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. This is out at a monastery near the source of the lake. It was a very pretty spot - the one day of good weather that I had there.

They're building the largest orthodox church in the world in Belgrade, turns out. Being more orthodox than other surrounding nations is sort of important there.

Hanging out on the train on our way from Belgrade to Bar, Montenegro. This actually solved a long-standing question in my mind. You always see a single set of rails along the road going off somewhere, and I've always wondered how they get trains to go both ways on the thing. Turns out they just make short sections of double/triple/quadruple sets of rails, and the trains hop off the main track and wait off to the side until the train coming the other way passes. This was supposed to be an eight hour train ride, but it was four hours late. *sigh*

Finally on our way again. The advantage to the four hour delay was that I got to see a lot of beautiful countryside.

I made a day trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, because it was only about three hours away from the place I was staying in Montenegro. I think it was well worth it, though it was super touristy. Here's a street artist sorting his stuff out.

A shot down the main street of Dubrovnik's old town. Very picturesque - it was quite a beautiful place.

There were a bunch of pigeons there.

A friend and I found this big, asymmetrical suspension bridge on the road out of Dubrovnik. It was pretty cool.

A picture of the old town in Budva, Montenegro, where I stayed for two nights. A lot of the coastal towns in this area have an old town that was built in this format, with the sea wall and everything.

Please frolic in pairs on the sidewalk while in Belgrade. Thank you.

This picture and the next belong with my October 5th post.

Sunset east of Belgrade - shot from a moving train.

Timisoara was rainy most of the time I was there. This is sort of an old town square. Most of the buildings there had a similar kind of feel.

The train to Moldova from Bucharest.

Me at a barber shop in Chisinau, Moldova. This was the zenith of my hair's length - it was very exciting. The barber was a really nice old guy, though he didn't speak any English. I arrived in the morning at Chisinau, and since I needed to wash my hair anyway, I decided I might as well get it all cut off again for $3. He made sure that I really wanted it all cut as short as I said (9mm), apparently worried that I would be unhappy with how short it was. The barber was appreciative of my deodorant (he put some on his neck), and he tried to help me put on my pack afterwards, but he couldn't lift it.

I found a very blue church in Kiev. Kiev had some spectacular cathedrals.

I shamelessly photographed someone else's wedding. If you know these people, don't tell them.

The cathedral and bell tower at the Caves Monastery in Kiev. This place was fascinating. All of the bodies of the deceased saints of the monastery are wrapped up in cloth, placed in glass-topped coffins, and placed underground in a huge cave network. Pilgrims filter through the passageways, with only candles for lights, and pray to the saints.

The Tsaritsino Palace on the southern edge of Moscow.

St. Basil's cathedral in Red Square. It looks like a piece of candy.

The Tsar Cannon in Moscow's kremlin. It was built for the defence of Moscow, but it was never fired in a war. The one time they did fire it was to blast the remains of a false leader back towards Poland.

One of the cathedrals inside the Moscow Kremlin.

This is just a park somewhere, but I liked the fall colors. It's a beautiful time of year, especially when the sun decides to shine.

A footbridge in Moscow has a series of metal trees along it. This is one of them. Newlyweds come here and place a lock on a tree, then throw the key into the river. Cool tradition.

Some urban jungle.

A picture of the kremlin from a bridge over the Moscow River. Downtown Moscow is gorgeous.

Some Russian Orthodox art on an iconostasis. There weren't any people in the chapel at the time, so I threw reverence to the wind and snapped a bunch of pictures.

A picturesque church in downtown Moscow.

In keeping with the Lost sightings theme, I found a nice portrait of Jack and Kate to go along with the ad I found of Sawyer. This street painter was on Arbat, a large pedestrian thoroughfare in Moscow.

The Starbucks menu comes in Cyrilic, too. Way too expensive, though.

The Moscow Metro. I heard somewhere that it moves nine million people per day. I believe it.

The Novedevichy Cemetery in Moscow. A lot of famous people are buried here...actors, politicians, war heroes, etc.

Kruschev.

A cat at a museum found my bag interesting.

Pedestrian lights in St. Petersburg. I think they were trying to drive me crazy.

A canal in St. Petersburg. All of the downtown buildings looked like this. The place had a very European feel.

The Cathedral of the Savior on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg. Rather similar to St. Basil's. A very pretty church.

Some of the artwork in the cathedral above. The place was so richly decorated it was overwhelming. This is all mosaic work, not paintings.

A closer shot of one of the mosaics.

The Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, on the island where the city was sort of founded. The 'dome', if you could call it that, is very distinctive.

Moscow

2008-10-15T15:15:00.006+01:00

I arrived in Moscow a few days ago. I haven't updated because I've been...like...out doing stuff.

Moscow has marked the beginning of my couchsurfing experience, which I hope will continue when I go to St. Petersburg this weekend. Couchsurfing is a sort of social networking site designed around giving travellers a chance to meet one another and potentially stay at each other's houses. I suppose that sounds kind of sketchy ("Hey, I'm staying over at this dude's house that I met online!") but it's actually a pretty secure system. It's been great so far. I met the guy hosting me in Moscow the day I arrived, where he and a number of other couchsurfers were doing community service at a Russian Orthodox church. There was sort of an after party following that, where I met some other people in the community and made a friend or two. It was great to be able to swap tips with a bunch of other travellers (some of the official aspects of staying in Russia and maintaining a Russian visa are complicated) and meet some Russians as well. Just making simple connections like this is of inestimitable value, especially in a place where few people speak English. I got an instant orientation to Moscow as well as advice on where to go next, and I felt comfortable immediately. Staying with someone has been far better than any hostel. I even ran into someone I had met earlier when I was touring around the Kremlin today.

I took the first day or two pretty easy. I'm staying in Podolsk, which is a suburb of Moscow, so I sort of commute into the city. I found a great English bookstore, which was awesome - it can be really hard to find diverse English titles anywhere. The even better part was that they had a huge (relatively) section of classics for $3 each. I was sort of like a kid in a candy store. I got:

Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Gulliver's Travels (Jonathon Swift)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
A collection of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe
Little Dorritt (Charles Dickens)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling)

I should be set for a little while, at least. :) I've been reading Gulliver's Travels on the Metro, which has actually been really weird. In the book, the author keeps finding himself in strange places where he doesn't speak the language and everyone thinks differently. I keep looking up after getting absorbed in the book, and it's kind of close to home.

Moscow is an incredible city. I don't know about you, but I had this image of Russia as a country on a sort of communist hangover. I keep finding shopping malls full of stores like Apple, Puma, Gucci, Reebok, etc, with a Mr. Wok upstairs in the food court. The metro is impressive - you can get anywhere you want on it for about $0.60 per ride.

In terms of sightseeing, I did most of that today and yesterday. I started with a place called Tsaritsino Palace, which is sort of out of the way. The place is a genuine palace in every sense of the word. Breathtaking architecture, perfectly kept grounds, gold chandeliers - it was like going back three centuries to see how the wealthiest people in the world lived. The Kremlin armory was equally amazing. It's full of treasures given to the Tsars over the centuries, as well as church artifacts and ornaments, carriages used by Russian royalty, and 500 years worth of weapons and armor. I went to St. Basil's cathedral today, which was well worth seeing. The inside of the Kremlin might be one of the coolest places I've seen so far. The oddest thing today was the Lenin mausoleum, where they have Lenin himself embalmed. I took a good look at him, and also at Stalin's grave, which is right outside.

That's all for now.

Dear Mom

2008-10-11T15:06:00.003+01:00

I am doing well and eating well. I made a friend the day before yesterday in Kiev. That night he went with some Russian biker guys to a dark alley to drink alcohol, but I politely refused and went to bed early instead. This turned out to be a Good Choice, because later they got in trouble with the police. I had hot soup and steamed vegetables and a roll for dinner - the kind of roll with the birdseed in it, because those are better for you. It was delicious. I flossed and brushed my teeth before going to bed and used filtered water. I did not drink any water from the tap.

I have had a lot of sleep the last two nights. The bed was warm and comfortable.

This morning I took a shower, then went to a cafeteria kind of place for breakfast. I had orange juice and a muffin and a croissant and some coffee. I took a multivitamin and bought some more water. I've been drinking a LOT of water. I packed myself a lunch for going out sightseeing this afternoon: two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some dried apricots. I bought the apricots from the supermarket in a sealed package, not from the grubby street vendor with dirty hands, even though those were cheaper. I cleaned my hands with hand sanitizer stuff before I ate, because I had been on the subway and a lot of people touch those surfaces. When it got cold I put on my warm hat.

I have plenty of clean clothes, soap, shampoo.

Thought you might like to know.

Overnight Train VI: The Undiscovered Country

2008-10-09T16:49:00.004+01:00

Well, I've arrived safely in Kiev. I'll be here tonight and tomorrow night, after which I'm catching an overnight train to Moscow. Today is cloudless and clear, and it's starting to feel decidedly northern. "Crisp" is the word.

I planned a morning train out of Timisoara that would get me to Bucharest by about 3:00PM. The ride over was beautiful. It was the nicest train I've ever seen, and the journey began with green hills and rivers that gave way to flat expanses of farmland. Traveling by train in the daylight is very nice.

I was told that there was an 8:00 PM train out of Bucharest to Kiev, but this turned out not to be the case. There was a 6:30 AM train the next day, but then I would have to stay a night in Bucharest, and I just didn't feel like finding accomodation. Given the choice between catching the train in the morning and catching an 8:00 PM train out of Bucharest to Chisinau, Moldova, I decided on the latter.

I arrived in Chisinau in the morning and spent the day bumming around the train station part of the city. I think I was coming down with a 24-hour bug of some sort, probably caused by not enough sleep on the overnight trains. I have no trouble sleeping on the train...it's the 2:00AM passport check on one side of the border followed by the passport check on the other side (about 45 minutes later) that does you in. Chisinau seemed like a sleepy sort of place. I spent the majority of my time in an internet cafe trying to catch up on emails and the rest of my online self-projections. I found a little monastery in the center of the city that was interesting as well.

My train left Chisinau at 11:00. I was prepared, of course, for the double passport check. I was cleared out of Moldova just fine, and we stopped for the second - I was glad it was almost over so I could get to sleep. This was not to be. Just when you thought my travel was about to be boring, I did what we've all been wanting to do since we were children: I discovered a new country.

Transnistria technically doesn't exist. This makes it very easy to dismiss for you, reader - it's not even on the map - but the problem with such an ethereal country is that it suddenly becomes very real when you try to take a train through it.

It took a few moments for me to understand, in my tired state, what was going on. The young border guard came in. He saw that I was American. We had a problem, he said. He closed the cabin door, leaving just the two of us inside. You see, I needed to go through central customs in Chisinau. Did I understand? No...I did not. I needed to go through central customs, he explained. I could not pass through this country without going through central customs. "This is not Ukraine," he said. What? "This is not Ukraine."

A light bulb flickered on in my head. I had heard about this with trains from Chisinau. Had I not accidentally thrown away the Moldova section of Lonely Planet I might've checked before leaving. I would have to go back, he explained. Get off the train and go back to Chisinau. Did I understand? "Yes," I said, "but I still don't understand the problem."

He sighed. Did I have any bags? One? Ok. Was I carrying guns? Drugs?
"No, of course not."
Was I carrying pornographic magazines?
"No." I suppressed an amused grin.
Did I have a camera? Did I photograph the border?
"No, I did not."
Hmm...this was a big problem. But perhaps...perhaps I could pay a fine. You know. A fine for me not to be seen. Um...$100?

I thought of the cash I had on me...about 120 Euro and $25 USD - almost $200 USD altogether. I always split my money up, you see. Most of my cash hides in my bag, in my journal, and a little bit of it lives in my wallet. I have an ok head for numbers, and I remembered where it all was.

"Oh, no." I said. "I don't have $100!" I gave him a very sad look. "I have some euro?"
"Ok," he said. "50 euro."
I took out my wallet and emptied it on the seat next to me. I acted sort of distressed (I'm really not sure what came over me). "I only have 20 euro!" I showed him the empty wallet, and patted my empty pockets down, hoping to find more cash.
He looked at it for a moment. "Ok," he said. 20 euro would be enough. He was sorry for the problem - he really wished it wasn't a problem. I told him it was fine...I was disappointed, but I thanked him for being so kind. He walked out and closed the door. I laughed for a couple of minutes inside.

Crossing into Ukraine an hour later was no problem. I feel like I got a fun story out of it - well worth 20 euro, at any rate. :) And just when I thought things were getting boring.

To Kiev

2008-10-06T18:30:00.002+01:00

I'm leaving in the morning for Kiev. I had planned originally to stay two weeks in Ukraine, but I've spent that time on Mt. Athos and in the Balkans instead. I would simply push back my timeline, but the validity of my Russian visa and the extreme hassle of getting one in the first place mean that I need to push on in order to get a decent amount of time in Russia. I'll be two or three days in Kiev, and then on to Moscow.

I've been staying in Timisoara for the last four nights or so with a wonderful Romanian family - another friend of a friend connection - and it's been incredible. It's been very interesting to get a sort of inside look at Romanian culture and Christianity, and Timisoara has turned out to be a great place for that. This city has Baptist churches, Orthodox cathedrals, Catholic churches, and Jewish synagogues, and all of them (unusually) are getting along rather well. The family I'm staying with has been incredibly kind, and I'm sad to be leaving in the morning. This has almost started to feel like home!

My Mt. Athos post ended with me in Greece. Just to catch you up (with very few details, unfortunately, for the sake of my fingers) I've been spending the time since then sort of country hopping through the Balkans. I went to Macedonia from Greece and spent about five days there. From Macedonia I went to Montenegro via Belgrade (Serbia), managed a day trip from Montenegro to Croatia, then passed back through Belgrade again on my way to Romania. I've learned an incredible amount of things I had no idea about. This part of the world has a very complex history and is changing at an incredible rate. Orthodoxy here is very much intertwined with national identity; it's been fascinating to see the contrast from country to country.

On a personal note, I've been growing a lot as I try to adapt to a very different lifestyle, and I've come to the startling realization that no, actually, I'm not really invincible. Who would've thought, huh? If you're one of those individuals who is inclined to pray, I would appreciate prayer not for safety, necessarily, but rather for a sense of peace in depending on God.

Serbia -> Romania

2008-10-05T11:41:00.005+01:00

Cornfields.
The sun sets, red, orange, in scattered clouds.
Leaning telephone poles, wires hanging to the ground, lead to small villages.
Roofs sag and smoke rises from chimneys.
A thumbnail moon hangs in the dusk.
Abandoned railway stations sleep along the tracks, windows shattered.
Dirt tracks cross the rails; children walk home.
A pile of slash burns in a field - the smell of smoke and earth and trash.
The train echoes over a river crossing.
The silhouette of a belfry in the distance.
Serpentine fire.

I don't understand a word the old lady is saying. That seems fine with her. She finishes; I nod. Her good eye wanders. I look back out the window.

I think this is what I wanted.

Mt Athos wrap-up

2008-10-02T11:14:00.006+01:00

Well, I'm finding it difficult to cover the rest of my time on Athos in detail, so I'll give you the rest in broad strokes and snapshots. Disclaimer: this post may be grammatically (or otherwise...theologically?) incorrect. :)

The rhythm of life in the monasteries and sketes I've already established somewhat. The morning service and liturgy generally began around 4:00 AM at most places I went to, and finished somewhere around 8:00 AM. This was followed by breakfast, usually something simple. On fasting days it was bread, olives, and tea, and on other days it was usually something like bread, cheese, possibly wine, and an egg, some vegetables, and/or an apple. Each meal was eaten in silence. On fasting days, no one said a word; on regular days, scripture was read for the duration of the meal. Following breakfast there was often a short scripture reading in the church, usually around 30 minutes. Many of the monks didn't attend this, as they had other jobs they needed to get to.

For monks, the rest of the day until about 4:00 PM (depending on the monastery) was dedicated to work. There's quite a bit to do. Each monastery is self-sustained. Simonos Petras, for example, had a tailor who mended anything that needed mending. One monk used to be a chemical engineer, and he had designed the monastery's combination hydroelectric/solar power system. I found him fixing pipes for the hot water system. Other monks tended to the garden, as each monastery grows about 70-90% of its own food, including fruit and vegetables, tea, and olives. Some monks cooked and baked, others were responsible for the pilgrims quarters, or maintaining the library, doing the dishes, or any other tasks that a small community might need doing.

Work was followed by an hour of free time, during which monks napped or read, or perhaps socialized with visitors. Usually there was a service lasting about one hour (vespers?) before dinner. I'd give more detail regarding the content of these services, but again, Greek. Even if I had spoken Greek, this was like...classical Greek that Greeks don't really speak (and have trouble understanding). Dinner usually involved something hot, like rice-stuffed peppers, hot potatoes, or a soup. Wine was also included, and often a Greek salad with tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, and olive oil. There was usually some kind of cheese. The food was incredibly simple, and there wasn't a ton of it, but I didn't really find myself hungry the entire time I was there. It was incredibly satisfying, very clean stuff. The simplicity of fresh vegetables, water, and wine was really nice. The wine, by the way, was pressed from each of the monastery's vineyards. The same grapes used for the wine were often on the table to eat as well. Each place I stayed had different grapes, and each wine had a very distinct taste. It was interesting to sort of taste each monastery as I moved from place to place - a sort of extra perception that you don't usually get. Dinner was followed by a 15 minute reading from scripture in the church, after which the relics were brought out for veneration. I got used to seeing these incredible treasures at each monastery: the bones of the apostle Mark and St. George, the hand of Mary Magdelene, the hand of John the Baptist, the three gifts that the wise men gave to Jesus when he was born, olive oil that appeared miraculously during a time of famine, ancient icons and reliefs, and several pieces of the true cross, always encased in silver. The rest of the evening was cell time for the monks - a chance for them to retreat to their own rooms and read, pray, and eventually sleep.

After I returned from Iviron on the second day, I spent another night at Karyes; I was less excited for the four hour service this time. I learned later that it's perfectly acceptable to fall asleep during the service, or to walk out part of the way through and come back later. No one really cares. So I attended the first hour, slept the next hour and a half, came back for another hour, and then went to breakfast. At later monasteries I woke up in time for the liturgy, which usually began at around 6:00, so that I could enjoy the chanting and avoid some of the lengthier parts of the service. I suppose that sounds weird and impious, but I'll defend myself by saying that it wasn't my idea - a couple of the monks recommended it to me.

It was time to move on from Karyes, but my companion and I had joined up with another older Greek pilgrim who told us that many of the monasteries were full. We spent that night about 15 minutes walk outside of Karyes with some monks he knew from an earlier visit. This was quite a different experience. The monks who don't live in sketes or monasteries (and there are many) often live in houses with one or two other monks. The house includes a small chapel that was no less impressive despite its small size. Nectarius and Christophilos were two of the three monks who lived there. They had been in the same house together for the last 50 years - they were 70 and 80 years old, respectively. Christophilos was given to laughing and dancing, and worked with incredible energy in the garden. Again, these guys were more or less self-contained, but without the benefit of a larger brotherhood to split the work. Nectarius was a sweet old guy who sort of tottered around the house (also very capable despite his age) and simply smiled, ate his food, and took a moment to bless me whenever he thought to. It was an incredible experience - a lot of the structure of a monastery was disposed of, and what was left was a couple of guys who had simply devoted their lives to purity and seeking God. Church services were still done in the morning and evening, but there was discussion of the reading and the rhythm of the service while it went on. Instead of reading the scriptures, Christophilos simply recited them. At 80, he occasionally received a prompt of the start of the next sentence, after which he would rattle off scriptures from memory for another five minutes until the next prompt. He essentially had the Bible memorized.

Here I must explain the exclusion of pictures. Pictures of the inside of most of these churches were not allowed, and taking pictures of the monks was discouraged. Nectarius and Christophilos were very kind and allowed me to take their pictures, but I'm keeping them to myself out of respect for them and their lives.

From Karyes we took a bus to Dafni and a ferry on to Dionysiou. The monastery was very well run and well put together, and I met a lot of great people there. It was my first experience in a monastery instead of a skete, and the structure and organization was impressive. Everything was in place, and there were a lot more modern conveniences. There was quite a range of lifestyle. Some monks, like the monks I mentioned, live a very simple and often difficult lifestyle in their devotion to God. Others, especially the monks in monasteries, find that having some basic amenities and comforts help ease their distraction from their own preoccupations and allow them to focus more closely on their faith.

I took a day trip from Dionysiou over the mountains to the monasteries of Gregoriou and Simonos Petras, roughly four or five kilometers northwest along the coast. I could've taken the ferry, but I opted to hike and get a better feel for the landscape. I left most of my things at Dionysiou and traveled with only my camera and some water that day. I left at about 10:00 in the morning, and it took me about four hours to get to Simonos Petras. Quite a long time, but traveling along the footpaths along the rugged coast involved a lot of up and down as I crossed each of the mountain roots that stuck out into the sea. The trail between Gregoriou and Simonos Petras was only about 2km long, but it plunged down to sea level before starting the 1000ft climb to Simonos Petras, switchbacks and stone steps the entire way.

I showed up in Simonos Petras winded, and was taken in by the kindest monks I met on Athos. I was fed lunch and immediately introduced to an American father (monks are called fathers). I'll call him Father X, because he'd get a kick out of it, and he was one of the most humble, unpretentious, and warm people I've ever met. He took it upon himself to show me everything. He took me to the library, let me hold a 15th century book that was one of the earliest books to actually be printed on a press, and talked with me about the monastery and its history. He had work to do, but he dropped it for that afternoon and evening. He pointed out that I had come a long way, found a place for me to stay for the night (people reserve their stays here six months in advance), and dug up a toothbrush and toothpaste (both brand new) for me to use that evening. He stayed with me during church to explain aspects of the service. After dinner, he took me to the cemetery for sunset views of the monastery, then on to the garden, where he brewed the monastery's local tea. It was the strangest thing to have someone simply ignore themselves and selflessly look after my interests - rarely have I felt such tangible grace in a person. I even wondered a couple of times that evening, as we sat outside the gardener's hut (take a look at that picture of the sunlight over the water - that was the view as we drank tea), if he wanted something. In the real world, you know, anyone who is that nice to you wants you to do something for him, but Father X simply wanted to make sure I had something to do, I think. We talked about literature, our favorite authors, why I was there, and some theology and history of the orthodox church. Every so often you connect with a person almost instantaneously - this was one of those times.

I woke up at about 6:00 the next morning to listen to the divine liturgy. The choir at Simonos Petros was spectacular. Father X found me in the church; he had been looking for me, jacket in hand, because his first thought of the morning apparently was "it's cold. Eric didn't bring anything with him - he's probably cold. I should bring him a jacket." Tell me. Who does this? I've never seen someone so absorbed with everything but themselves. He found a seat for me right inside of the church where I could watch everything.

I left after lunch - they insisted I stay for some food before I left - and walked back to Dionysiou. I arrived at about 2:00 in the afternoon and packed my things. My experience traveling to monasteries alone had convinced me that I should strike out on my own from here on. I parted with my Greek American friend and hiked off to Agios Pavlos, or St. Paul's, the next monastery down.

The contrast was a slap in the face. A sign was posted on the door that non-orthodox were not allowed in during the church service. I sat outside that evening until dinner. At dinner, I was taken away from the group of pilgrims and monks eating at one end of the room and escorted to a table on the other side, left to eat along with one other man - a catholic. Excluded from the service that morning, I simply slept in until 7:00, packed my things, and left.

I was headed further down the peninsula towards Nea Skiti (New Skete), where a celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary, one of the biggest events on Athos, was set to take place the next day. There was no place to stay at New Skete, so I continued another kilometer or so to St. Anne's Skete, just over the mountain. I found a place to stay there after waiting until 3:00 in the afternoon. I met with a monk whom Father X had told me to see, and we talked for an hour about America, politics, and other aspects of the outside world that he was interested in. He had email, which he explained was good when used properly, but sinful when not. A very kind guy.

The monk at the guesthouse where I was staying asked me if I was orthodox. I told him that I was protestant, but trying to learn more about orthodoxy. He became suspicious when he read my pass, which said that I was catholic (I hadn't noticed this until now). He asked me why I wasn't orthodox, to which I replied that I had been raised protestant and that my parents were protestant - I never really had an opportunity to be orthodox. He gave me a look, sort of disgusted, like "what does that have to do with anything? You should be orthodox." His English wasn't very good, so the conversation didn't progress much more beyond that, except for his reminder the next morning: "You must be orthodox. You must be orthodox to go to paradise. Do you understand?" I nodded. He was intimidating and responsible for my food. My nod didn't do much. Evidently, I understood that I must be orthodox, but still wasn't. What was I thinking?

This leads to a greater question that's going to continue to play out while I travel; a question I've been expecting all along. We protestants, you understand, don't have much of a claim on the original church of Christ, at least historically. The Greek Orthodox have a pretty good claim (well, pretty great, actually), and so do the Ethiopians. And the Serbians, it turns out, and the Russians, and the Mar Thoma, and the many who would be frustrated to see that I've left them out. We protestants split off from the Catholic church thanks to Martin Luther, and as far as the Orthodox are concerned, we're a breakaway sect of a breakaway sect that now lies far from the original church in a splintered, scattered sort of a mess. And they have a point, in a way. We don't think much about our history or our right to much, but this is a big deal for many others. I'm not going to toss a conclusion out, but think about that.

I was able to attend the celebration of the birth of the Virgin Mary at New Skete - an all night vigil filled with praying, chanting, scripture reading, sermons, Eucharistic communion, and beautiful symbolism. They pulled out all the stops - huge candle chandeliers fully lit and set swinging around in a circle, palm branches over the doors, incense and lamps everywhere. It was beautiful and twelve hours long.

I caught a ferry to Dafni the next morning after crashing on a couch for a couple of hours. It was Sunday, so a ferry wasn't running to the next and last monastery I wanted to visit. I hiked about 5km from Dafni, and arrived at Xenophondos, having been taught a couple of words of Georgian (which I now forget) by a guy I met along the way. I met another American monk that evening, but he was unfortunately tied up that night and the next morning, so we didn't have an opportunity to talk. He found me a bed, towels, and food, for which I was very grateful.

I left the next rainy morning to head back to Ouranopoulis. I was struck by the way each monk personally interpreted his faith despite the rigid theological unity of the Greek orthodox church - some incredibly warm, some approaching hostility; some looking a little glazed over, others seemingly unable to contain their joy. Reverence and piety were universal, something I believe that protestants can all too often overlook. I loved the symbolism, and the colors, and the smell of incense, symbolizing the sweetness of prayers rising up to God. Lighting a candle to pray is a beautiful thing.

Everyone takes what they learn in a different way. I left Athos having decided that I'm a minimalist when it comes to my faith. We'll see.

Pictures!

2008-09-28T15:15:00.016+01:00

I got an opportunity to upload a few pictures for you guys. I picked out some that I like, but I have more than 2000 now, so it's tough to sort through all of them on the fly.

A picture of souvenirs for sale in central Turkey.

A picture of the ruins of a church in Ephesus. The four pillars and low platform in the foreground are over the grave of the apostle John. The grate is an airshaft for an underground passage to the actual grave. It was locked.

A shot of the monastery on the top of Patmos. A little hazy that day. The white buildings are the old city around the monastery (it's like a maze) and the castle in the middle is the monastery itself. It was built like this to repel pirate raids and protect the treasures of the monastery.

Me enjoying myself on top of Mars Hill in Athens. Things like the Acropolis in the background. It was all up in scaffolding while I was there.

Simonos Petras monastery on Mt Athos. This one is the new kid on the block among Mt. Athos' 20 monasteries, as it was built in the 13th century. Simon, the hermit who founded it, wanted to name it New Bethlehem. The name didn't stick. Instead, everyone started calling it Simonos Petras - Simon's Rock.

The view from the garden balcony at Simonos Petras, where I spent the evening drinking tea and talking literature with an American monk. When you commit to a monastery as a monk, the vows are like marriage - you commit to that specific place for the rest of your life. If you must commit to a specific monastery, they chose a beautiful spot. Shot in color.

Dionysiou monastery. Stayed here for one night and made it my base for the hike to Simonos Petras. Location, location, location.

The border crossing between Greece and Macedonia. That's my train. We stopped for a few moments to get passports and stuff sorted out.

I spotted this on a truck on the island of Samos, Greece. It must be a political advertisement, but I don't get it. That home cooking feel? Comfort food?

What the heck is he talking about?

2008-09-26T09:10:00.004+01:00

There's a guide to Mt. Athos on wikipedia: click here.

It might be helpful in looking up some of this stuff, or finding a map, or whatever. There's a lot of information on there that's interesting.

Athos

2008-09-26T08:16:00.003+01:00

Time to catch you up on my experiences on the holy mountain. I feel a need to earn my keep somehow, so I'm considering this blog post sort of like homework. That doesn't mean I don't want to do it - hardly. These days I wish I had homework, and I'm excited to have found some.

I arrived on Mt. Athos after two days in the coastal town of Ouranoupolis. The only way to access the peninsula is by ferry, and the ride from Ouranoupolis took about two hours. I met a Greek-American guy on the way over, doing a sort of pilgrimage of his own, and that turned out to be very helpful for the first few days. I arrived at the port of Dafni, the sort of central port on the peninsula (though it's all of four buildings or so) with no plans whatsoever. Many people plan their stops and places to stay as much as six months in advance, so maybe that was a sort of foolish thing to do...whatever.

My Greek-American friend asked around a little bit. I was planning to walk to a monastery called Simonas Petras that day, but we heard that it was full, or rather that if we wanted to stay there we should pray and kind of cross our fingers. This being discouraging, we decided to head for a surer bet - the central village of Kayres. We found a mini bus headed that way, elbowed our way onto it, and secured seats when my friend explained that we had come all the way from New York to get there. This was more or less true.

Upon arriving in Kayres, we found that the nearby St. Andrew's Skete had beds available, so we walked down that way and found a place to stay. A skete, in case you didn't know (as if I did), isn't quite a full monastery. Rather, it's a collection of monks who decided to put together something of a community. A monastery is composed of a brotherhood of monks, governed by a council of elders and an abbot, and each monk's duties and the schedule of the monastery are assigned by this council. A skete has no central guidance - monks live together in groups of two or three and take care of themselves. They tend to be less organized and, as a result, a little less accommodating to visitors. St. Andrew's skete exists in the ruins of what used to be an impressive building before it was damaged by fire, and the group of monks living there (about 20, I think) are a pretty strict bunch.

Church and the divine liturgy were executed (it didn't just start, these guys were like clockwork) at 3:45 in the morning. I was all gung-ho at this point, so I woke up on time and sat through the entire thing. Believe it or not, I developed a sort of stamina as a child for four-hour-long church services in languages I don't know, but I was allowed to read a book then. From what I could tell, the service was composed of extensive scripture reading and chanting, which is scripture reading put to a little more rhythm and tone, though not quite a song. You may have heard Gregorian chants in Latin. Done well, it can sound very nice, and the same was true here. The divine relics were brought out after the service, the most interesting of which was the forehead of St. Andrew. It was in a box, and inside was a sort of silver mask of the entire face of St. Andrew with a cutout in the forehead for the actual bone to show through. It was all dark and shadowy in the church, which heightened the aura a little bit. It was pretty striking. We had a little bit of breakfast following the service - about 8:00 AM. Pretty simple - some bread, feta cheese (cheese is allowed on non fasting days...fasting days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), an apple, and a kind of gruel kind of thing. Gruel sounds grueling, like you live in an orphanage or something, but this wasn't bad at all.

I had helped was dishes the night before - like I said, I like to feel like I'm earning my keep - and I helped with dishes again that morning. Two Greek guys (I think they were brothers) I had met doing dishes the night before were helping again that morning. We tried to talk a little bit, because they knew a handful of German words. I sat outside to journal for a bit. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself all day when the two of them came outside and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk into the village with them. I figured sure, why not, so we walked into Kayres. We continued from there into a monastery called Koutloumousiou, which is almost right there in the town. The place had beautiful frescoes - the monastery is known for its artists - and the chapel was breathtaking. Instead of wallpaper or something, every inch of the wall was covered in portraits of saints, or depictions of Bible stories or stories about the saints, etc. A huge gold candle chandelier hung from the ceiling, and the walls held icons, some done in silver. There were ropes, and robes, some orthodox-style wooden pews - it was really a symbolism overload. It was filled to bursting with colors and the shine of gold. And guess what? No pictures allowed! Sorry about that. I forgot my camera anyway.

From there it seemed like the guys wanted to go to Iviron monastery, which was all the way down the side of the mountain, and it ended up being about a two hour walk there. It's amazing, really, what can be communicated through "bam'e", Greek for "let's go", and words like "kaput". We made it to Iviron, where we were greeted with the same hospitality experienced whenever visitors arrive at a monastery. A tray is brought out, which holds, for each person, a piece of Turkish delight, a glass of water, and a shot glass of raki - homemade aniseed moonshine. Strong stuff - you can light it on fire if you want. I found this out when I borrowed a lighter to see what would happen.

Alright, I've covered about 24 hours worth of my nine days on Mt. Athos, and I'm going to get going. The sun is actually shining outside (I haven't seen it for three days), so it's a good day to do something. I'm thinking about leaving for Belgrade today, so please continue to pray for safe travels. When traveling alone, you always have to be on your guard against something, or someone, and it can be tiring. Please let me know how I can pray for you.

Still alive!

2008-09-23T07:56:00.009+01:00

I haven't written anything since Ephesus, which is strange. I have plenty of things to relate, but limited time (the recurring theme of my blog) and am using a slow keyboard. The space bar requires excessive force, and I considered, but decided against, writingtheentirepostlikethis. That would be unkind and unbecoming of someone as fond of grammar as I.

I'll start where I left off, and continue until I have to leave or tire of the keyboard. Let's see...

Leaving Turkey was strangely cathartic. I left on the morning of the 7th, I think, for Samos via ferry. It felt great - new places, a new country, good weather, etc. Samos was an interesting place, but I only stayed for a couple of hours to make a connection to a ferry leaving for Patmos. I boarded the Kalymnos - a big, rusty, slow moving beast of a ship - for the four hour trip to Patmos. Most of my time was spent reading a book I had (I only suggest picking up Lorna Doone if you like drawn out, slow moving, excessively wordy British literature as much as I do; it put Wuthering Heights to shame in that regard, and I consequently enjoyed it very much) and trying to avoid making eye contact with the gentleman across the table from me. He had sat down, you see, where I had placed my pack. I, of course, sat next to my stuff, leaving us in the awkward position of both being at the same table (there were other empty tables everywhere), not speaking the same language, but not wanting to offend each other by picking up our stuff and moving away. This left him slightly uncomfortable and me slighly amused. He broke first, but only after a three hour war of wills.

Patmos was an incredible place. I'll get some pictures up sometime (this computer is uncooperative despite my coaxings) but you can Google image search the place. It's a fairly small island crowned by a fortress of a monastery. I spent the night in a rented tent at a campground, which is probably my favorite place that I've stayed so far. Give me a sleeping bag, put me outside in the cold, and I'm a happy person. I had one full day on Patmos between trips back and forth to Samos, and I spent it covering the majority of the island on foot. I walked to the Cave of the Apocalypse, where the apostle John received the revelation that (surprise!) became the biblical book of Revelation. Thus began a string of experiences that were very difficult to wrap my mind around. To think that such a significant event had happened right where I was standing was amazing. I felt drawn to stay in the cave, but really wasn't sure what to do with it. I spent some time praying and thinking, and picked up and moved on after maybe half an hour.

I walked to the monastery at the top of the island after the visiting cave. It was in excellent condition, with a number of fairly new mosaics. The museum there was interesting - they had a number of biblical texts on display from anywhere between the 6th and 15th centuries. One manuscript was a handwritten copy of the book of Job, complete with color illustrations. The relics they had were also impressive. I walked into the church, and there, in a glass case, surrounded by a band of silver, was the skull of St. Thomas. How incredibly...real. What else can I say about it?

I was in a hurry to get to Athens so that I could spend a day seeing the city and still make it to Mt. Athos in time. The only way to get off of Patmos the next day was by hydrofoil; having ridden one, I now consider it my duty to inform you of the nature of this vile machine. Hyrdofoils, my friends, are in no way harmonious with the natural order of the world. Boats are fine in their own gently rocking, slow moving sort of way. Airplanes, too, offer a smooth and fast means of transportation that birds engage in constantly. Nature, then, is certainly meant to sail and to soar, but no man or beast was ever meant to half fly and half float across expanses of water, skittering along the top like a dry leaf blowing and tumbling across the sidewalk. If you have ever made it to Disneyland and enjoyed the Indiana Jones ride, perhaps I can impart the experience to you. The Indiana Jones ride is fun because you grip the side of the car in fear as it roars up and down and slips from side to side, wondering if it's going to tumble over or end your life in a fiery explosion. The ride is fun, moreover, because after a mere three minutes you DISEMBARK. Wasn't that scary! Ha ha! Let's go again, but maybe we'll wait for an hour! To feel the same gut-wrenching feeling as you pound, pound, pound over the waves for a full 90 minutes, with no land in sight, is not at all enjoyable. You know that when the fragile craft finally does capitulate to the waves, there is absolutely no hope of swimming to safety. For this priviledge, you are permitted to pay twice the price of the liesurely, gentle boat. Never again.

Well. I showed up in Samos and stumbled to the bus to make my connection to Athens. An all-night ferry left at 10:30PM and arrived in Athens the next day at 7:00, which actually worked out pretty well. The next day (though it hardly felt like the next...all night trains/buses/ferries mess with your head) I visited Athens. It's a very modern city, with a very nice metro system. I got a 24 hour pass for about three euros and made the most of it, because I love metros, and because once you pay for a 24 hour pass it's like riding the metro is free. I walked through the ancient Agora, and visited Mars Hill, where Paul introduced Christianity. It was a very interesting place, despite the fact that all ruins start to look the same after a while. Despite what Lonely Planet might have you believe, ruins don't mystically sweep you away to another time and place. It's still 2008, and you're still looking at a rock. Forgive my cynicism. :) That said, many of these rocks are very cool. I picked up a SIM card for my phone in Athens - you may have seen my number on Facebook.

Left the next day via train for Thessaloniki, and got to see a large portion of the Greek countryside along the way. It looks a lot like the foothills of California, actually. Arrived in Thessaloniki and was rather unimpressed. I found myself on autopilot as I walked through most of the town with my pack, sort of looking around and not feeling like finding a hotel room. I found directions to the bus station that would connect me with Ouranopoulis, so I got a public bus to take me to the station, not knowing if there were any buses to Ouranopoulis that evening and knowing that if I didn't find one it was pretty late to go back into town and find a hotel. It turned out that there was a bus to Our. in about 30 minutes, so it worked out perfectly.

Thus I arrived at the staging area for my visit to Mt. Athos. It was an incredible place (I'm writing from Thessaloniki, having returned from Athos yesterday), but I unfortunately am out of time to talk about it now. I have a train to catch to Skopje, Macedonia, this afternoon, and I need to get going. I'll find a chance to write about Athos in a couple of days, I hope.

I'm currently reading a copy of Charlotte Brontë's "Shirley" that I found on Patmos, and have once again fallen in love with Charlotte as much as anyone can fall in love with a deceased 19th century author. I'm a weird guy. I hope everything is going well in your time zone. I understand that school is starting for some.

Ha.

Ephesus

2008-09-06T16:09:00.003+01:00

Yesterday was a rather spectacular day in Ephesus. I'll relate as best I can...

I started out as part of a tour group going through the ruins of Ephesus. A lot of the old city is very well restored - fountains, theatres, columns, temples, and the like. The main road is also restored, so you can walk through most of the city and a get a pretty decent feel of what it was like. It was amazing to walk down streets that St. Paul and St. John walked down, and to stand in a theatre where he presumably preached.

After the city, I walked a little way to the church of the Virgin Mary. Again, it was amazing to be in a place where early believers came together and worshipped, were baptized, etc. I walked around that ruin for a while and took a lot of pictures.

Next, I went up to the place where the Virgin Mary lived and died, up on a hill overlooking Ephesus. There's a shrine there with an actual nun (the first I've seen so far), and a spring of holy water coming out near it. I lit a candle (first time I've ever done such a thing) and crossed myself a lot to fit in. It was a pretty incredible place.

Around about 6:30PM, after making some travel arrangements for a morning ferry to the island of Samos, I walked up to the church of St. John. The sun was going down and the light was perfect. There were hardly any other people up there, so I got to walk around the ruin, which must've been absolutely incredible when it was up, and to see the tomb of St John. It's a very strange thing to find myself so close to figures who, thus far in my life, have felt extremely abstract and faraway in the Bible. Making real-world connections to a book that often feels (admit it) like fiction has a way of changing the way I read it, and suddenly it all seems much more tangible than it ever has before.

I was able to make arrangements with a place called Mt. Athos in Greece. On the 13th, I'll be one of 10 non-orthodox visitors allowed on the mountain to spend four days (or more) living with monks in a community completely cut off from the rest of the world. No women are allowed on the island, and the 20 monasteries on the peninsula still operate according to the 13th century Byzantine calendar and time system. I've been told that it's the equivalent of stepping into 13th century monastic life, and it should be an amazing experience. You might Google "Friends of Mt. Athos" for an informative site on the area - I won't try to describe it all here. The fact that I was able to get a Mt. Athos permit on such short notice, and on a date that works so well with my schedule, was perhaps a lucky coincidence (with a nod to you cynics), and maybe something more. :) Again, I appreciate all of you who are taking the time to pray. If you'd like something specific, please pray that I make it to Mt. Athos in time for my reservation. It's not something I would like to miss, and train / ferry schedules are sometimes unpredictable.

I'm finding myself rather hard pressed to keep up with my online life, and the next week certainly won't be any better. I'm leaving in the morning for the Greek island of Samos, and then from there to Patmos, where St. John was exiled from Ephesus for a time and where he wrote the book of Revelation. I'll try to make my way back to Athens by ferry, then straight from there to Thessaloniki. From Thessaloniki I'll leave for a little place called Ouranoupolis and catch a ferry to Mt. Athos. As a result of all of my hopping around and the consequent stay at a Byzantine monastery, I may not update for a week or two. Try not to panic; find someone who can help support you through my e-absence. It helps my self esteem to imagine that you might have difficulty living without my updates. :)

I'm in Fethiye

2008-09-03T15:50:00.002+01:00

Checking in from Fethiye. I don't have much to report - the last few days have just been nice for clearing my head and doing a lot of reading.

I'm leaving for Selcuk tomorrow, where I'll be for my last three/four nights in Turkey.

I'm in Olympos!

2008-08-30T09:38:00.003+01:00

And I'm paying freaking $4/hr for internet here, so this blog post will be appropriately short. I just can't afford you guys anymore.

I'm having a good time, and feeling a little decadent because swimming in the Mediterranean is kind of cool (like it's warm but it's neato), and I should be helping the poor or praying in front of a crucifix or something. Seriously, I feel guilty about it, and it's weird. I will purchase an indulgence at my next convenience.

PSA: I'll be out of internet contact for the next four days or so while I'm on the coast. After that, it's off to Ephesus and two more churches of the revelation in Pergamom and Izmir. Should be fascinating. Then on to Greece, where there are some actual Christians and not just ruins. I'm pretty ruined out.

Look! Pictures!

2008-08-27T10:15:00.009+01:00

Alright everybody. It's a picture update, and it's hugely exciting. Buckle up or something.

I'm going to go ahead and start with the most amazing picture of them all.

That's right - Sawyer is taking a break from badassing his way around a mystical island to sell a credit card. This isn't just any old credit card - it's a credit card with the logo of some kind of chocolate / candy / ice cream company. You thought your REI card was cool? Move to Turkey.

I have a ton of pictures, and unfortunately it's hard for me to tell which, if any, are good. I'm working with an old monitor that has a bunch of glare, so these are kind of a shot in the dark.

I mentioned Mt. Nemrud in a previous blog post, I think. This is the same King Nimrod who built the Tower of Babel. He was a little vain. He ruled over a small empire in southeastern Turkey, and is buried at the top of this mountain, or something. The mountain is covered with tombs and with some amazing rock sculptures, mostly Greek gods. Here's a couple of them.

It was a pretty amazing place. A group of us went up for sunrise, and it was quite spectacular. It actually made waking up at 2:30AM to get up there worth it. We also saw a 6th century Roman bridge:

From there I've moved on to Goreme, in central Turkey, where I've been for the last eight days or so. I mentioned earlier that the landscape here is very weird. The entire area was populated with Christians, with some churches dating back to the 2nd or 3rd centuries. Many of the caves in this area (there are tons...holes in the mountains wherever you look, and 25% of the local population still lives in caves) were turned into churches or monasteries. The cave below is one such church. The picture of the cross beside it was carved into the ceiling.

That's just one...I've been to maybe 10 different churches so far, maybe more. Around the 11th century, Italian artists came through and added frescoes to a lot of the churches. The one below was one of the better preserved ones, although in one church I saw some that looked brand new. They deteriorate with harsh light, and the collapse of caves in many places has exposed the frescoes.

You might notice that some of the eyes or faces are scratched out. This one was better off than many, but I've seen a lot of places where every eye in the church has been destroyed. When the Christians were booted out by Muslim populations, they were afraid that looking at the frescoes would cause people to lose their faith or convert. That, combined with the fact that Islam prohibits images of people or animals, means that a lot of these frescoes have been damaged over the years.

The place I'm staying is beautiful. I got up a couple of mornings to see the sunrise and to watch the hot air balloons take off. A lot of places around here offer morning tours in hot air balloons, though the price is a little steep for me. About $200 for an hour. After watching the balloons, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I would see anyway, so I don't feel like I'm missing out. Here's a picture from one of the sunrises:

Staying here has been great. The staff at the hostel I'm at are terrific. There's a guy from New Zealand working here while he's waiting for a replacement passport. His was stolen on a bus. They've been really helpful in finding things to do around town, make a great breakfast, and have been a lot of fun to hang out with. I'm a little sad to be leaving...it makes such a difference to have great company and to be in a place with things to go out and do.

I'm leaving for Olympos tonight via a night bus, where I'll be for a couple of days before a four day boat trip to Fethiye. Olympus is supposed to be beautiful - lots of beaches and such, so it'll be a mini vacation. Hope you all are doing well.

Hello from Göreme

2008-08-23T09:58:00.002+01:00

Hey folks.

Finally made it out of Urfa, and moved on to a place called Göreme via a tour of Mt. Nemrud. I'd put up some pictures, but right now I can't tell whether or not they turned out...it seems that I (or my camera) might've made some poor lighting decisions. I'll try to get some up some other time.

Things are going pretty well here - I feel like I'm settling into the traveling life a little more, aided by a number of people here who have done a lot of traveling and are rather experienced. The last couple of days have been pretty fun. I took some days off, then spent yesterday touring around a nearby valley. The rock formations here are incredible, and the landscape is pretty unreal. If you Google "Goreme" and go to the image search, you'll get some idea of what I'm talking about.

There are strange looking cones scattered everywhere, the result of large deposits of volcanic ash being unevenly eroded by rain and snow. People have hollowed them out for centuries and turned them into houses. This area used to be a sort of Christian holdout, and I saw a number of cave churches yesterday. I also toured an underground city, which is exactly what it sounds like - a place where around 5000 people used to live in times of emergency. The place is 8 levels deep and goes down about 300 feet. There was a small church in there, too, with a couple of crosses carved into the walls.

I'll be spending about two more weeks in Turkey, with five more days left in Göreme. From here I'll head out to Olympos. After Turkey I'll be going to Greece, and I'm hoping to be able to visit some cool places and possibly even stay in a monastery for a week or so. I'm looking forward to going to a place where Christianity hasn't been almost completely annhilated.

Further updates as events warrant, I suppose.

Still in Urfa

2008-08-16T14:13:00.002+01:00

I'm still in Urfa. It turns out that there's not much to do here, but travel arrangements I made for next week have sort of kept me pinned down.

I've met a couple of interesting people passing through the guest house, but most seem to want to see the sights for a day or two and then move quickly on. I've run out of books to read, and everyone at the guest house was off on tours today, so there wasn't a whole lot to do. It's actually getting a little lonely.

The evenings are beautiful, and I sort of wait all day for it. My bed is up on the roof, and as the sun goes down the air cools off and a breeze starts to move. All the lights in the city come on, and Urfa becomes a much more attractive place than it is during the hot and dusty afternoon.

On the 18th I'll be moving on to Kahta, a town a little ways north of here, for a tour of Mt. Nemrud. Again, thanks to all of you for continuing to pray. If you want something specific, you could pray for me to figure out some idea of what, really, I'm supposed to be doing. :) For now, I just feel like a poorly informed tourist.

I'll try to get some pictures up here again. Feel free to shoot me an email to keep me updated on your lives. I really enjoy hearing from people.

Urfa

2008-08-14T07:14:00.002+01:00

So I met this guy named Yousef yesterday, and he invited me over for dinner tonight. I would go, but the people I'm staying with have told me that he'll probably drug my food, steal all of my money, rack up huge credit card debts, take me outside of the city, steal my clothes (I think), rape me (this part was also unclear), and then when I stumble back to the guesthouse my bank will call me and tell me that I owe them 2000 and 1000 dollars.

But it's my choice - I can go or not go, but I shouldn't go. If I go, there is nothing they can do. I have been warned. But, you know, if I really want to go, well...they won't stop me. But I can tell Yousef that I'm sick and can't go. That would be the best.

A real update: Istanbul

2008-08-13T08:13:00.009+01:00

Ok - a real update! I spent about four days in Istanbul before getting bored and feeling compelled to leave by swarms of tourists. I probably should've stayed longer and taken things more slowly, but...I felt like it was time to go. I did get to see a lot of the cool things Istanbul is known for, and I even took some pictures. So...here's the Hagia Sophia (pronounced Ayasofya if you don't want to sound like an idiot):

And a mosaic above the entryway:

The inside is huge - birds flying around near the roof. The place is a little at odds with itself, too. It was converted into a mosque before becoming a museum, and the mosaics were plastered over, which probably didn't help much in preserving them. There's a nook that points towards Mecca and Muslim frescoes (mostly just patterns) mixed in among ruined mosaics and such. A very interesting place. I also saw the Blue Mosque:

A very beautiful place, if a little sterile. It's across the street from the Hagia Sophia, and was built in an attempt to compete, so it's similarly impressive. Strict Islam, however, prohibits images of living things, and it doesn't have the rich imagery of the Christian mosaics and frescoes - just patterns. Beautiful nonetheless, but in a clean way.

I also saw an ancient Roman cistern - the 6th century Basilica Cistern, complete with pillars supported by the head of Medusa...I think they got the Medusa head from somewhere else.

I was very glad of my camera's manual mode for the cistern pictures. It was very dark, so I had to take 10-15 second exposures to get it to turn out right. The pictures actually ended up looking better than it did it real life. More light, I guess. :)

Now I've moved on to the other side of Turkey, courtesy of a 20+ hour bus ride (no one spoke a word of English) from Istanbul. I'm in Urfa (or Shaliurfa) which seems to be the Ur mentioned in the Bible. Abraham was born here, so yesterday I went to the cave where they say he was born. Muslims come here on pilgrimages, but there are otherwise very few tourists. It's also fairly close to Mt. Nemrud, which sounds suspiciously similar to Nimrod - the guy who built the tower of Babel. The mountain is covered with huge stone images and ruins. So...there's history here. The start of it all, really; Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all point to Abraham as a sort of beginning. I'll be here for about six days, I think, staying at a guesthouse with a very kind Kurdish couple. I'll get some time to relax and read, though I managed to finish East of Eden in about three days, dooming myself to boredom...I might read it again.

From here I'll move on to central Turkey, then southwestern, then the west near the ruins of Ephesus where they say Mary the mother of Jesus died. From there back to Istanbul, making a big loop around Turkey. I'll leave for Greece, I think, on about the 10th of September. I'll spend a couple of days there, then start to move through the Balkans for a month.

I've met some very nice people. A Canadian from Vancouver helped me with travel arrangements in Istanbul, and I met several Aussies. Three Spanish girls are here for the next day, and two Italians stayed last night here in Urfa. Met four Basque ladies on a train. Not many Americans. Apparently Turkey is a vacation hotspot for Europe, so the prices are European to match.

There's a lot to see, but for some reason I feel unsettled...maybe it'll pass. As for now, it seems I'll feel better when I'm out of Turkey and moving again. I very much appreciate those of you who are praying.

I'm starting. It's starting. We're starting. The trip and me.

2008-08-06T07:16:00.003+01:00

I'm leaving tomorrow morning, so expect some 'real' updates relatively soon, like in the next handful of days or so. I should be arriving in Istanbul at about 5:00 PM (local time) on the 7th, although my first priority might not be updating my blog. Sorry.

In other news, this is the first time in a very long time when I haven't had a personal computer. The desktop is sitting alone in my room, and my laptop is being used by my mother. Sounds a little weird, but we definitely take these things for granted...especially us computer science / electrical engineer types. This'll be a little different, I think.

Update

2008-07-17T07:59:00.000+01:00

Having a blog means that someone might read it, so I should probably generate some 'content'.

Um...I'm not up to much. It's looking like I'll be leaving for Istanbul on the 6th of August, and the travel agent I'm working with is very good at things. I'll have a railpass that will allow me a month of traveling anywhere in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Macedonia, and Serbia, so I might add Greece to the list, even if it's only for a couple of days.

I drove from Spokane to Seattle today to pick up the last of my stuff from the house I've been living in this past year. I took my time along the way, taking pictures and making a couple of fishing stops. It's been a long time since I've had a camera, and I don't think I've ever had a digital camera, so this is new and exciting. Here's some of the very few I thought were ok. I don't know who Dwayne James is, but he seems like a real stand-up guy.

2008-07-06T05:35:00.001+01:00

This went up as a Facebook note a while back - I'm just repeating it here.

I got the Bonderman! Woot! A lot of people are wondering what that means, so I thought I would utilize Facebook's handy note feature to give you all a little description. This is my first foray into the emo blog world, so hold on to your pants.

No, seriously, are you holding on? Ok, great.

The Bonderman Travel Fellowship is a...well...travel fellowship awarded by David Bonderman through the UW Honors program. Recipients go on a trip that lasts at least 8 months and covers six or more countries in two or more major regions of the world. You have to travel solo, and the fellowship covers costs up to $20,000.

The entire process is specifically non-academic, which means that I can't attend a foreign university, use it as part of a research project, or really earn credits in any way. Instead, applicants provide an essay describing a sort of overarching proposal for their trip that describes where they want to go, why they want to go there, and what they hope to accomplish. One also provides an itinerary of the places they want to go, approximate dates and costs, and that jazz. There are a lot of cool proposals out there - you can read them here:

http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/news/04aut/bonderman.htm

It may seem a little touchy feely, but that's sort of the point, and I think it's what makes this fellowship so unique. It's not so much study abroad as a self-defined trip for the purpose of personal growth. That turns out to be a very good thing, because my proposal has a decidedly 'spiritual' bent. More like a 'Jesus' bent.

Sometimes I think deep thoughts (like once a month) and the theme that's been rolling around in my head for the past year or two (or three, or more) is what it means to follow Jesus when one strips away all of the restrictions and peculiarities of culture. Growing up in the U.S., one can often get the sense that we hold a monopoly on what it means to be a Christian, and we forget that there are a number of Christian traditions all around the world that have been around for a much longer time than ours.

I proposed to travel around to a number of these foundations of Christianity, including orthodox traditions in Istanbul, Ukraine, Russia, and Ethiopia. I'll also be spending some time among the Mar Thoma church in India, a church begun by the apostle Thomas around 52 AD. In addition to these foundational churches, I also plan to look at developing churches in tribal southwestern Ethiopia, India, and Nepal, as well as the registered Three Self church in China. I plan to leave during the last week of this July and return about 10 months later. I'll be packing what I can carry on my back, and won't have a computer or anything like that. I will try to update the world on where I am so that everyone knows I'm alive, probably through a blog or Facebook notes or something.

I've tagged all of the places I plan to visit as 'places that I want to go to' on my Where I've Been Map. Check that out.

I woke up this morning and realized that I like my bed a lot, and that I'm going to be spending 10 months sleeping in a whole lot of random places. That drove it home a little bit, but I'm still trying to figure out what this is going to be like. A lot of people have asked if I'm excited; I am, but that's one feeling among many. My mom is worried, which in my experience means it's going to be super fun.

Thanks to all of you who are excited for me - I definitely appreciate it.

2008-05-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

Checking things out.