Monday, October 29, 2007 

One Stinkin' Good Weekend

I got back from the race and the big city a couple of weeks ago and hit the ground running (figuratively). That's not really a bad thing, but it does mean I've got a backlog of blogging to catch up on.

The race weekend was the most fun weekend I've had in a long time. I got to travel up to the big city, hang out with other foreign single worker friends, and run in the most disorganized race on the face of the earth.

After sitting on a bus all day, I finally arrived Friday night. I knew I was going to enjoy the weekend when I saw a Pizza Hut, a Burger King, and a Starbucks side by side by side. I stopped and said a thank you to all those American businessmen who expanded globally in order to make the extra buck, and called my single worker guy friend to find out where his house was.

I spent the whole day Saturday hanging out with people up there, and had a blast doing it. I caught up with some big city friends, and even ran into some others that had come up just for the weekend. That evening I enjoyed the perks of the big city with some good friends:
















That's right my friends, I shopped at a Seven-Eleven convenience store, ate a monster roast beef sandwich and curly fries at Arby's, and ate a real dunkin' donut. Then I watched the new Jason Bourne movie. (Well, it was new to us). After a day like that, I could've gone home satisfied. But after 4 months or so of running up and down hills, dodging cars, and outrunning dogs, I wasn't about to go home before running this race.

I woke up Sunday morning excited and ready. Me and my single foreign worker guy friend (how's that for a name?) headed down to the race to find the starting line and get ready.

Before I go on, I should say that this "race" can be raced by running, walking, biking, roller-blading, whatever. They don't care. Most people came out to just walk for a while. As if that weren't enough, due to some border attacks and other political happenings, most people came out with flags and bandannas blazing.

So me and my friend reached the starting line to find that everyone had started already. We were 20 minutes early, but apparently that didn't matter. So, we decided to randomly start running.



As you can see, running through that mess was something else. Fortunately, I managed to dodge the waving flags, vans, roller-bladers, bikers, picnickers, walkers, and buses. My friend and I passed most of the riff-raff in the first few kilometers, and the going got a lot easier without a giant mass of men, women, and children in our way. The rest of the race went pretty well. We passed everybody we came across, and no one ever passed us. We got to the finish line after a good 50 minutes or so of running.

As you probably guessed, though, there was no finish line. There wasn't much of anything to be honest, just another big crowd of people. We found a van and a policeman standing beside it. After giving him our numbers, we got a t-shirt, a medal, and a completion certificate, and headed to a cafe to sit down and enjoy some breakfast.

Unfortunately, the race really was that unorganized. What place did we come in? I have no idea, no one does. It was a crazy morning. But, on the plus side, it was a lot of fun running through the big city (they closed large parts of it for the race), and it wasn't a bad way to finish one stinkin' good weekend.

12:07 PM | |

Saturday, October 27, 2007 

Wish Me Luck!

I'm off to the big city this weekend to enjoy some high life and the big race. I've only been training for 3 months or so, but I think I've got enough to make Rocky Top proud. At the least, I'm sure to bring home some hardware. Whether I come in 1st or 892nd, I still get a medal and a stylish t-shirt. I'll tell you how it goes when I get back!

12:38 PM | |

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 

A Good Question

I met a friend of mine today for some lunch. He's actually studying opera at a university here, but he hurt his voice, so he had to take a year off to get better. Anyway, after a nice lunch we decided to head to a cafe for a rousing game of chess. I've played chess here before, and I figured I had a good chance of winning.




As we walked to the cafe, somehow the topic of religion came up. He asked me how my beliefs were different from Catholic beliefs, and that lead to telling the story of Jesus. After he heard what Jesus did and what that meant for me, he asked me an awesome question:

"[Follower], if Jesus paid for all your sins and completely paid your penalty, why don't you just go out and sin all you want? You're saved."

That's basically a quote of the two questions asked in Romans 6. How cool is that? He had the same response that Paul figured he would get after explaining the gospel. I was a little thrown off by that question, but I told him I didn't want to be a slave to sin, and that Jesus is a lot better than whatever sin can give you.

After that good conversation, it was time to get down to business with the chess game. As we started, it was obvious this guy knew what he was doing. It wasn't long before he had both the piece advantage and the position advantage. After a few piece trades, he was controlling the middle and getting awfully close to my king. He was about to send in the troops when I saw a pretty obvious hook with my queen and my bishop to checkmate him. With no other hope, I took a big swig of my apple tea and moved my queen into position. Fortunately for me, he was so focused on sending out his troops he didn't see the checkmate until it was too late. Score one for USA and the gospel.

1:16 PM | |

Saturday, October 06, 2007 

And The Prize Goes To...

99% of the food here rocks. It's cheap, fresh, and incredibly tasty. There's always that 1% though, and I ate a doozy a couple of days ago.

My friend highly recommended this one sandwich, so we went together Friday and tried it out. I must admit, with shame, it's the first thing I've eaten here that I just couldn't finish.

Basically, it's lamb tongue, lamb brains, and lamb cheek rolled in a tortilla-like bread with some tomatoes and onions. And yes, the lamb parts were cold. (I didn't ask if it was cooked.) I got a third of the way into it and had to tap out. Fortunately, my friend didn't hate me. He just couldn't understand why I didn't enjoy the treat.

1:12 PM | |

Friday, October 05, 2007 

Another (Embarrassing) Day In The Life (Part 4)

I entered the dark theater a little anxious. After all, theater is not really my thing, and theater in a foreign language is REALLY not my thing. I went to the front of the theater where I met the 4 people that were "grading" me, for lack of a better term. I took to the stage not knowing what to expect.



After the usual conversation of why I'm living in a foreign country, where I'm working, and basically what I'm doing over here, we started. The main teacher guy handed me a newspaper article and told me to read it. Then he told me to read it like I'm mad. Now I'm sad. This went on for a while, and my lack of theatrical skill became apparent to all, myself first and foremost.

After the reading was over, Teacher Man gave me a ball and told me to do something non-ball with it, without saying a word. Okay, it's a...mirror! I play-acted looking in the mirror. "Okay, now do something else." Uh, it's a...cell phone! I play-acted a cell phone. "All right, do something else." Well, it's a...an egg! (I know, an egg is pretty lame, but come on. This was off the top of my head!) I cooked and ate my egg, then the teacher mercifully told me I could quit that junk.

Unfortunately, we weren't done. I got rid of the ball, and next he told me to act like I was reading the newspaper, and reading something very funny. But as I read, act like I just read something horrible happened to my family. What is that?!?! I did the best I could, laughing and then giving my pensive "I'm sad" stare off in the distance. Thankfully, that part passed as well.

Next he told me to sing a song. Okay, I can handle that. I belted out "On Christ The Solid Rock I Stand" (in english). Thinking that went pretty well, I was ready to get the heck out of there. But we hadn't come to the grand finale...

The teacher guy gave me some directions: "Okay, now we're gonna play some music, and you do whatever comes into your head. But you can't say anything." There I stood on the stage by myself, waiting for music to play so I could do who knows what. Fortunately, by this time whatever sliver of self-pride I had was long gone, so I went for it.

The first song was pretty grand and big-sounding, so I acted like I was in a war. I ran around shooting my gun and looking through my binoculars, I even stabbed a guy with my bayonet. After a lifetime of 2 minutes, the song ended.

Song 2 sounded like a good fight song, so I acted like I was in a protest. I locked arms and shouted junk (silently) and waved my fists. Then some tear gas came and I coughed and rubbed my eyes. This also, mercifully, passed.

Having completed their rigorous try out, I thanked them and walked away a new man. A smarter man. A wiser man. A man who has much more respect for the theater arts. And no, I didn't get the job.

12:03 PM | |

 

Another (Embarrassing) Day In The Life (Part 3)

While I was waiting for the theater group try-outs, the teacher walked by and we started talking. When he found out I was a foreigner with little theater experience, he wisely advised me to not try out for the troupe, but rather to take the theater course that was being offered at the same building. But, since the course was 60 bucks, I figured I'd take my chances with the try-outs.

As more people came and waited to try out, I realized this wasn't one of my better ideas. The try-out group consisted of 5 high school guys, like 18 high school girls, one middle aged guy, and me. Not the type of people I need to meet. Where are the twenty-something year old guys? Not at the theater troupe try-out, that much is sure.

At that moment, I had a choice. Do I cut out and hit the streets, or do I stay and try out? I had told the teacher I wanted to try out, and I had filled out a form for it, so I decided to wait and give it a go. At this point, I wouldn't have accepted the job if they offered it to me, but I wanted to go through with my word. So, I waited...and waited...and waited. Unfortunately, everyone was trying out one at a time. Everyone was outside the theater waiting, while the try-outee entered the theater and did his/her thing for the teachers. After an hour and a half of waiting, it was finally my turn...

11:27 AM | |

 

Another (Embarrassing) Day In The Life (Part 2)

I arrived at Dustin's shop at just the right time. The lunch crowd had come and gone, and Dustin was sitting by himself eating one of his tasty creations. I sat down next to him and we talked about work, the weather, the normal stuff. Religion came up, and he listened patiently while I explained what Jesus did and my beliefs about hell and other things. Then he basically said "That's nice, but can you stop talking about religion now? I don't care." Not exactly the response I was looking for, but what can I do? He heard truth. I ordered a chicken sandwich (it was especially tasty that day) and said goodbye. With 2 more appointments to go, things were looking up.

While shopping at the big grocery store last week, a couple of kids were handing out notices of a theater group try-out coming up. Thinking it would be a good way to meet people, and not having anything much better to do, I decided to give it a whirl. So, Thursday I headed down to the community center and waited for the try-outs to start.

Now you may be thinking, how can a foreigner do theater? How can a guy who still easily gets lost in conversations become a semi-professional actor? Well, I wish you had asked me that before Thursday night...

11:03 AM | |

 

Another (Embarrassing) Day In The Life (Part 1)

Anyway, as the day started I headed down to Otto the electrician guy in my neighborhood. I didn't have an electric problem, I was just wanting to spend some time with Otto, anxious to see what he thought about the Jesus film I had given him earlier. I headed down to his shop and we made conversation for a while, and the topic of religion came up. We talked for a while, and Otto was getting more and more upset as we talked. We talked about Jesus and what He did, how I don't accept Mohamed as a prophet, and how Otto doesn't accept the Jesus found in the Bible. He argued that he accepts all the prophets, even Jesus, while I'm more close-minded. Then I dropped the J-bomb on him. It went something like this:

Otto - "I accept Jesus. Why don't you accept Mohamed?"

Me - "You don't accept the Jesus of the Bible."

Otto - "What do you mean?"

Me - "According to the Bible, Jesus isn't just a prophet. Jesus is God."

BAM!! After I said that, Otto got up without saying a word and went into the back room of his shop where I couldn't see him. He stayed back there for like 5 minutes(!), then came out and started fiddling with some stuff in his shop. We talked about football for about 5 minutes before I left. It was really awkward, but I count it as a victory. Otto got to hear truth, and even though the last thing I said probably didn't go over so well, he had the chance to hear truth. Encouraged, I left his shop headed straight to Dustin's sandwich shop for a chicken sandwich and some conversation...

10:58 AM | |

 

Another (Embarrassing) Day In The Life (Prequel)

I woke up Thursday morning around 9 knowing it'd be a good day. (Any day you can sleep in until 9 is a good day.) I did the morning stuff and headed outside to make a difference.

I've heard it said that living in a foreign country while learning the language is like walking around with your pants around your ankles all the time. It's pretty embarrassing. Imagine walking around not being able to say anything. People ask you what time it is and all you can do is stare at them. Simple things like buying water can be a challenge.

Even knowing the language is not enough sometimes. Every now and then people ask me for directions to a place, and though I know perfectly well and begin to tell them in their own language, the second they realize I'm a foreigner, they give me the "bless your heart, you're a foreigner" look and walk away. Arrgghhh!! (I hate that look!)

Thursday, though, was a whole different level of shame. I lived through quite possibly the most embarrassing 10 minutes of my life. Fun, and funny in hindsight, but pretty embarrassing.

10:34 AM | |