late again

So when I woke up in the morning, I called the front desk to ask if they could call a taxi for me. Their response was "absolutely not."(said in an indian accent)

Most distressing. So I packed up and started walking to Kolkuta. First, a truck picked me up and took me 2 kilometers to a taxi stop. When no one showed up there, I walked another kilometer to the rickshaw stop. Still no one. So after a while I walked to the bus stop. I got picked up with some help from a couple of really nice guys. When I got on, and was shooed up to the front of the bus, the ticket guy was in the back. 70 kilometers later, when I got off, he had almost made it to the door. Since I couldn't reach him, and needed to get off, I guess it was free. Also, the other passengers were somewhat shocked that I let an old lady take a seat instead of claiming it for myself. I am not supposed to be a gentleman! Very strange.

For once, I got to the airport early, and got in easily. I also was feeling well enough that I risked eating a couple of samosas. They weren't really that good, since they were microwaved, but still pretty nice. I think that I threw them up before I got to Bangkok, but they were worth it.

Love Bangkok. Accidentaly left my bag at the baggage claim, and after about 45 minutes of waiting, someone showed up to take me to it. Nevertheless, I got Subway, Baskin Robbins, and Dunkin Donuts for supper!!!

The train took me to right across the street from the Nasa Vegas Hotel. Wonderful place.

Had church on Sabbath at Ekkamai School, and they invited me to a potluck too! That was good times. Kept it down too. Spent Sabbath afternoon lounging in bed and reading the Great Controversy.

Saturday night I went to the Paragon... American food and a huge bookstore. Enough said. (Except: Great Burrito)

Sunday morning? Back to the airport for more Subway, and, keeping track of my bags this time, to the gate to meet with the other SM's. An easy flight back, and supper at Fay and Tim's, where they were shocked at how little we ate, and then it was bed!

Trains and taxis and rickshaws oh my

The train to Agra took about 21 hours. The bed was comfortable, the light was sufficient, the ride was quiet (-ish), and I had Wheel of Time. It was the most rest I have had in a while. They even served vege- samosas in the train! Fantasitc. There was a guy who walked up and down the train, for 21 hours, saying "chai! Coffee!... Chai! Coffee!" He was funny.

We arrived in a little town out side of Agra at about 1700. The rickshaws wanted to charge us hundreds of rupees to travel to Agra, but we found a bus for 40. It was fully awesome. Then after a short ride on a rickshaw, we found our hotel. Not too bad, and only sort of expensive, the drawback was lots of mosquitos.

Tuesday morning we got up and did the Taj Mahal. India was worth it just for that hour and a half. The girls kept wandering off, which made our tour guide mad, so he hurried us. It was still beautiful. I'll have pictures up soon. Words just can't describe. I was just raptured...

Tuesday night we split up. Olga didn't want to fly, because it was too expensive. We didn't want to take the train, because we wouldn't have enough time in Darjeeling. I wanted to fly so I could make my flight back to Thailand. Phil and Olga stayed to take the train. Annie, Nikki, and I took a taxi to the airport in Delhi. We stayed the night at a fairly nice little hotel in Delhi, and when I awoke in the morning, I discovered that the water we had purchased during the car ride was bad. I had noticed that the cap didn't seal, and had been a little worried that it would make me sick. Sure enough, it did.

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were miserable. I had constant diarrhea, and in the morning i threw up. I thought it was over after i hurled, but no. I threw up twice on the plane, with constant diarrhea. When we arrived in Bagdogra, I was far too miserable to take the train or jeep up to Darjeeling. I got a hotel while the girls continued up the mountain. My hotel was nice, and in the morning I got up, got a rickshaw to the airport, and prepared to get on the plane. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to print my itinerary. This meant that I couldn't enter the airport building. Also, the internet was off, because the power was off, so I couldn't even get an itinerary printed. I wasted 2 hours with the lady at the airline counter, until someone finally found that I was indeed on the flight which was now scheduled to leave in only 30 minutes. I hurried through security and into the terminal, to find that my plane had been delayed more than three hours. Still not too horrible, because I had my Wheel of Time books.

While we waited, there was almost a small riot because of the delay. Idiots. Flight to Kolkota was fine, although I have not yet mentioned that I was still throwing up.

I landed in Kolkota, collected my bag and got a taxi to the hotel that Mom had booked for me. I then found out that it was 70 km away from the city. It took 2:30 to get there. It was a beautiful place, but getting back to Kolkota to make my flight was looking like it was going to be a nightmare.

Continue Tomorrow...

So very sleepy.

But before India...

I forgot to write about our trip to Kampong Thom to open a new church. Phil and I shared the back of the truck. After a long ride up, which was fun, we arrived at a hotel. We went out to eat before sundown, and then it was off to vespers. The church was very nice, with modern wiring, and a beautiful interior. The services were alright, vespers, church, and sabbath school. They fed us several meals, of which the highlight was excellent mango. That mango was sooo good. On the way back to Phnom Penh, we stopped at a feed and read school. I got to see a lot of it, and I am both very impressed with the work that they have done, and glad that I didn't choose to go somewhere like there. I got absolutely fired on the trip. I only stopped peeling when we went to India

Surrender Cont.

Oh hey! Before that... i forgot about the periodic table! And science fair! How could I forget about the science fair? It was pretty cool. A lot of my students did awesome, and I just loved some of the projects! Some were irredeemably lame, and some focused pretty much just on presentation, but over all, my students did well. I kinda miss doing science fairs.

Periodic Table. I offered extra credit to my students for doing full page element layouts. This way, i can make a giant, student made, periodic table. I am probably not going to be able to finish it though. too bad.

So, India. First, we had to get visas. that involves going to the embassy, filling forms out, paying $77, and leaving my passport with them. All that would be just plain annoying if only they didn't also require the pictures on the forms to meet certain, unrevealable conditions. The first time we went there, we couldn't even find the embassy! When we finally did, we were too late, since they only accept applications between 900 and 1100. When Phil went back the next time, my application was returned because I was missing a page. That is understandable. Then, when I sent it again, it was turned down because the pictures were "wrong." No more explanation than that. There was a scratch on it, so I came back the next day with fresh pictures. Great, except the scratch wasn't the problem. The background was blue instead of white. Went back the next day, and the background was STILL too dark, but he took it and told me to bring better pictures on Friday, the day I was leaving. Fine, came back with new pictures on Friday, and he told me to come back at 1430. Flight was at 1700. Grrrr! Fine! Went back, paid my fortune, and fortunately, Gary Rogers had offered to drive me since i thought i would probably need to hurry, so we went to the airport.

Finally on the way! Got to Thailand, and we were too late for the van up to mission college. So, we stayed the night in Alex's room, and left for the van at 0500. Very early. Long trip up. Got there just in time for church. It was so so so awesome! A real church... Hymns, pews, sermon in English, and cool bulletins. Absolutely loved it. We spent the afternoon with Pastor Ashlock and his daughters, which was also completely awesome. Then we had a fantastic supper, and played a game called Puerto Rico, which I totally got my ass kicked at. Grrr. Oh well. I have gotten kind of a reputation for sucking at games. Which is odd, cuz I am after all a nerd. I have played more Risk, poker, apples to apples, settlers of catan, and the like than anyone else here, and i still manage to lose consistently. Bah!

Pastor Ashlock, who let us stay at his house Saturday night, made us delicious pancakes of deliciousness for breakfast with homemade peanut butter and syrup. I ate so very much. Rarely have I been so happy for pancakes. Sunday, we rode back, hopped on the plane after meeting up with Nikki at the airport, and flew off to Kolkota. We grabbed our bags, and headed to the train station, where we proceeded to wait for 5 hours to get on a train to Agra. I had some good Indian food, so it was ok. They had 2 guys bathrooms! One was just for peeing, and the other one had squatpots. that was cool. We almost got kicked out of the restaurant for playing dutch blitz (another game that i suck at).

Got on the train after much wrangling, and headed off to Agra. 21 hours...

Continue tomorrow night.

Go to bed all you people!

Surrender

Ok. I don't post often. This thing is kind of dieing. None the less, I shall attempt to catch this thing up. Weeks back, we had alumni weekend. Bad enough to have that. I dislike Alumni weekend, and it is worse because i don't know anyone here. To make it much MUCH worse, two of my friends were hit by a truck on Sabbath afternoon. Neeha and Aliya. I didn't know much at first. All the responsible people vanished, either to help or to get in the way. That left me with a bunch of panicking kids and some adults with empty heads. I spent the rest of the afternoon telling bible stories to the kids to keep their minds off of whatever had happened. No one had told me anything yet. Halfway through the afternoon, the mission president's wife and the librarian from our school came back to give an "update." This of course gave little actual information, and mostly accomplished scaring the children again. At least i finally heard who was in trouble.

After vespers, we had the talent show to do. I was MC, but it kind of sucked. There were some fun events, but since most of us had Neeha on our minds there wasn't much energy in it. That evening I walked over to the Mission to finally hear news. I got there just before the ambulance came to take Neeha away. That was when i found out that she was dead. I was really numb. There wasn't really much I could do, as the Aliya was still comatose, and I really couldn't stand being around any more. I took the students back to the school and went to bed. I didn't really do much for the next few days. Barely paid attention to what I said in class, and just laid around mostly. I think the Memorial service was on Tuesday. It was hot and miserable, and a lot was in Khmer or Urdu. Afterwards I talked with Aliya for a little while, said hi to Avak and went to hide. Slipped in my own tears and fell down the stairs. It hurt (both things did). Since then I've kind of accepted it and I am waiting for heaven. I would still like to remove the skin of the miserable scum-sucking vermin that hit them, but otherwise I am back.

For the next week or so I didn't have a terrible lot of energy for much of anything. I fell behind on grading papers and cleaning, and most everything else. I have been working on catching up since, but there were still a lot of mistakes in my midterm grades that i didn't have time to work out. {If Sharon is reading this, they won't be on the final grade, and I've talked to the affected students, so everything is OK (hopefully)}. I am still getting caught up with everything. I got in the habit of staying up late during those few weeks and listening to music, which is yet another habit i am gonna have to break. Just as I was getting my feet back under me, it was spring break! or rather new years. (songkran in Thailand by the way)

This week

So on Monday, I was supposed to give a test to my physical science class. I forgot. We had to write our 3rd quarter exams, to turn in on Monday morning, and I was up very late finishing them. So rather than do the test, we ended up going over balancing chemical equations, which they needed to learn anyway, since there were questions about it in the book and no explanations. I guess it worked out OK, since the science fair will be worth 3 test grades anyway. Monday night i was up pretty late, although i don't remember why. I am sure there was a reason.

To make things even more fun, this week we have to write year long plans for distribution of days on chapters in each book. I have to do 5. We are supposed to do 1 per day, and I have done none. I gotta get some of them done tonight. I, as you can imagine, don't want to. Sure it sounds simple, you just have to divide the book into 180 days. Except, i only get 4 days per week for most classes, not 5. Also, Algebra 2 is on a different 4 days than the rest. to complicate things further, Health is 2 days a week. Now this may still sound easy, but consider that when we have a holiday on Monday or Friday, I lose a day on some classes and not others. The only day i have all my classes is Tuesday, and we have never had a holiday on Tuesday.

My heart is a hate-filled pineapple. Grrr

Last sabbath was potluck, and this sabbath will be Church potluck. Last sabbath, I made a dish with some Indian curry paste. It tasted incomplete without naan. Also, although I thought it was very mild, everyone treated it with a great deal of trepidation. I guess I have a bit of a reputation. It was pretty good when i had it for breakfast on sunday morning with some bread.

The whole science fair thing is leaving me pretty drained. I think that I have accomplished nearly everything that is necessary for it. I am a little annoyed that Phil hasn't really put in the work that I have. He kinda only reminded his students about it this week, whereas I started putting in some groundwork 2nd quarter. I hope that my students enjoy the end product.

Didn't bother with the weapon master angle. It is very focused on critical hits and both in the Mask of the Betrayer and the Original Campaign, critical hits are completely useless. Whether it's undead or Telthor, you just can't get them with crits. I downloaded a character editor, and i think that I am going to see if i can edit in a feat that allows my characters to score critical hits on undead and telthors. Then maybe i could do Swashy! Started a sorcerer in the OC, and a ranger in MotB. Rangers kinda suck, but it is fun having SERIOUS damage on my favored enemy. Plus, they get all the cool dual-wielding feats. Maybe I'll edit that into another character.

Whelp, back to work

Then Later

Last week, on wednesday, Dalai came up to me and asked me to preach for his church on Sabbath. I said sure. In retrospect, I should have started my sermon of Wednesday, but I didn't. I waited until friday afternoon to get to it. Fortunately, dad gave me some very good advice, and that was to take a chapter of the Great Controversy and summarize it into a sermon. It worked out very well, all things considered. The main problems were that it is extremely hard to maintain a contiguous train of thought while stopping every few words for translation, and Dalai was translating, so I could never be totally sure that he's actually repeating what I said. His english isn't really that good.

I had promised my students that I would give them a demonstration of my project, so that they would have an example of a presentation. I didn't get that done. It was supposed to be done on Thursday, and I didn't have the materials by then. I got them on Monday, and never got around to the experiment, so for Tuesday morning, I just created data, so that they could have a presentation. It worked out, but I want to try to actually do it this weekend. I want to present it at the science fair.

Anyway, since I didn't have my presentation for Thursday, we watched the Leidenfrost Experiment on mythbusters' "mini myth mayhem." They enjoyed that, so i guess job done.

Shortly after last Post

Several weeks ago I had vespers to do. I got the idea to do a talk about the majesty of the universe, and equate it to the power that Jesus gave up to come down to us. Did some quick research to top off the plans and I had a pretty good talk ready to go.

Two things escaped my attention. 1st, is the fact that the majority, if not all of the people at vespers couldn't begin to grasp the magnitude of the numbers that we were talking about. To be entirely fair, I don't think that any one can perfectly. I am afraid that some of the numerical stuff went over everyones' heads. None the less, it worked out all right.

I have kept experimenting with different ways of teaching and grading, and I find that if I stay in the school building instead of coming back to my room on breaks, I tend to get much more work done. The bad thing is that every time I want to move my computer, I have to shut it down. The battery still doesn't charge on it, and that means that I essentially have an underpowered, light desktop computer. Kinda inconvenient. Still, I have gotten a lot more work done that way.

I have also been working on Great Controversy. I really enjoy the historical stuff, and I appreciate a new perspective on it all. After all, the majority of history from that time is told from the perspective of the Catholic Church. As they say, the winners are the ones who get to write the histories.

Physical science is leaving the pure, fascinating world of physics and moving into the less fun world of chemistry. oh well, i guess the intro-chem stuff is kinda interesting, before everything gets lame. Having 3 classes of Physical Science all moving at different paces kinda confuses things. I am not keeping up with any of them as I should.

We had a girl here from Australia for 2 weeks, which was really fun. She helped Annie out with ESL, and was a HUGE hit with the dorm kids. She was a neat girl. Then, one of the AFM workers from up north came down to the city with her bosses for some meetings. It was nice to see her, and we got to go to a restaurant over near the river for some very expensive food. The chocolate milk was worth it though.

Oh Nights

Shoot. This has been neglected for a long time poor little blog. OK

Here we go

So, had some good times. Gonna break things up for you all

pictures of Senior Survival

I ran out of batteries after these. So sad

Onward

I can't believe how fast this week went. I was feeling a little lonely after my family took off, but on Tuesday, I went to the post office to pick up a package that has been waiting there for me for a while, and what sight does greet my eyes but not just one, yes two christmas packages from Union. I opened them as soon as I got home, and found many wonderful things.

There were candies and socks, candies and newspapers, candies and frychick, candies and the peanut gallery, and candies and fake jerky! Oh there was some candy corn too.

It was just what I needed. I was thrilled just to get something from my friends at school, but there was so much awesome in there that it went beyond just thrilled. I had a wonderful time sorting through it all, and then putting it away.

Speaking of candies, i couldn't eat many because I am still sick. Got it pretty much down to a stuffy nose now, and am hopeful that i will be able to skip the coughing phase. Apparently the other symptom is inane segues.

So I kinda thought that the other sm's didn't get me anything for christmas since they keep putting off us having our little christmas. I tried to give them my presents, but was assured that this will indeed happen at some point. I guess i'll just wait.

I never did post much about senior survival. It was really cool. Most of the stuff was ropes courses, but there was also the ever dreaded "giant shoes" where you have to try to walk on boards with 10 other people. The worst part had to be the tiny tiny ladders they had. The ladders were just rebar pounded into the tree trunk, and in some places the trunk had grown out so far that they rebar was too close to the trunk to hook your fingers through. They sucked. The rest was fairly awesome though. There was this tree trunk you had to walk up barefoot, it was a balance thing, and I did pretty good. There was a climbing wall with slick wooden handholds which I failed pretty hard at. I even strained my grip muscles trying to hold on. With my weight, it was all but impossible to get off the ground. Even that was fun to watch, and I got to climb up a much shorter wall which did have normal handholds on it. We did the planks and stumps, and we had a rope for reasons i never did understand. We did the inevitable spiders web without having to start over. There was this one activity where we had to get a box out of the middle of a large circle with just a rope and a plank. We had to do it like 4 ways, and only 2 of them could we use the trees in the circle. The most fun ones were the giant swing, the leap of faith, the swinging bridge, and the stairway to heaven.

The stairway to heaven was one of those twisty ladders that look kind of like a hammock, every time you try to go up a rung it tries to flip you over... I made it first try, which was thrilling for me.

The swinging bridge was, creatively enough a swinging bridge. The complications were dual. First, the slats of the bridge were at odd intervals and angles. There were a couple with more than a meter between slats, and there were some which intersected the guidewires at 45 degree angles. The second was you were tethered, so you had to keep dragging a pulley with you which would trip you up if you tried to take a big step without it right overhead.

The leap of faith, they called the gibbon swing. After climbing the tall, pathetic excuse for a ladder, you jumped off a platform some 19 meters in the air for a bar about a meter and a half away. Then they let you down. It was very fun. I got the bar.

The giant swing, they called the butterfly swing. Shockingly, it was a giant swing. Creative nomenclature. You are harnessed in, and a team of people pull you up into the tops of the trees. You then pull a quick-release ( a screw that is pushing on your harness, very high tech) and plummet about 7 stories down and back, swing up to the peak of the next period and fall again. Very very fun.

I had an extremely good time getting to know the seniors better, and enjoyed them without energy drinks. Call me stuffy if you wish, but kids don't need those. Even kids older than me don't need those.

Olga had her birthday party, which was pasta and raviolis. They were really good. Potluck came and I mad a dish which got... sorta eaten. Maybe less spicy next time. I thought it was good.

Listening to Final Fantasy Advent Children theme right now while i play Neverwinter Nights 2. Gonna have to start over. I found out that the swashbuckler's insightful strike doesn't work on undead, and undead are pretty much the whole original campaign... too bad, because Swashbuckler is a very cool class. Probably go back to fighter, which is always fun, although I might try a weapon master prestige class

SICK!!!

Hey all,

These last weeks have been awesome. Pure, unadulterated awesome. First, the family was here, and then there was senior survival. You will receive pictures from both occurrences, but for the time being i will be sleeping. I know this has been fairly devoid of posts for a while now, and I will change that.

Good night