Monday, March 31, 2008 

Fun In The Sun

This past weekend was one to remember, one I had been looking forward to for a long time. I got the chance to head to another city and see a good friend of mine, and at the same time run my first half marathon. I flew down Friday night to meet my friend there, and when I arrived I found that 12 other people had come down! They had come down to run as well, and we spent a great weekend together.

That Friday night we all met at a restaurant for one of my top 5 favorite foods of all time.


Look at that meat!!

It was great to hang out with some good friends, it's something I don't get to do much of over here. I hang out with people a lot over here, just not those that speak my language or have my viewpoint or believe like I do. It's always good when I can get together with others doing what I'm doing. I feel like I can relax and just enjoy the time together.

Aside from spending time with good people, I did go to run a half marathon. My friends had been training for like 6 months for this thing, and I had been training for a month or so. With that in mind, you'd think we'd have been a little more serious about it, but we were having too good of a time together.

The day before the marathon we went and got registered, then spent the entire day touring around and seeing all the sites. The marathon was in a small city, but the place was packed with historical sites, from the prophet Daniel's grave to a place where Seth (as in Adam's son) once lived, to a well owned by Paul. I'm not commenting on the authenticity of those sites, but it's pretty impressive that they would make the claim anyway.




After walking a good 10k or so touring the city, we all headed back for a pasta party. Pasta parties are a good idea before a marathon, but ours didn't get going until 10:30 at night! It was fun nonetheless, and we had a good time carbing up. After a full day of walking around, historical site seeing, and pasta eating, we finally got to bed around 1 in the morning.

We all got up at 6am and promptly headed to the race site. I was really tired, but I perked up when we got to the race. Around 9am we joined the thousands of people running through the old city. To make a long story short, I ran for a long time and then finished. I was doing pretty well until the 14th kilometer, and then the going got hard. I was really tired, and it occurred to me that I need to train for more than a month for a half-marathon. But, I did manage to run the whole thing and finished with a respectable time.

After the race we lazied around and had some more of that wonderful meat, then it was off to the airport to head back home.


9:58 AM | |

Monday, March 24, 2008 

Culture Clash

I love the food here, but every now and then I get the hankering for some good ol' American cooking. Unfortunately, I can't cook. So, when I get the craving for home food, I head out to one of the American restaurants around here. We've got McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, all the basics. Down around the corner from my apartment there's even a Domino's Pizza, but I don't eat there much. The normal price for a medium pizza is like 20 bucks. Every now and then the local Domino's will have a sale day, though, and they'll sell a pizza for 6 bucks. Those days are good days.

My roomie with our latest Domino's Sale Day bounty

On one Domino's Sale Day occasion, I went in, ordered a couple of cheap pizzas, and sat down to wait for my order. They were pretty swamped that day, since everybody loves a deal, and the store manager was constantly yelling at the employees to make the pizzas faster. Sometimes he would bang on the counter and yell (something like) "Come on, come on, come on!" It was all done in a kind of encouraging way, the manager never singled anybody out, he just really, really encouraged them to make pizzas really fast. This might seem normal to us Americans as we think about this, but that's not the norm over here.

If I had gone to the local "pizza" restaurant a few meters away, I would have experienced something completely different. I would have walked in and made conversation for at least 15 minutes with the employees there before they even asked me what I wanted to eat. I would have been offered tea multiple times. Finally, after a glass or two of tea and some good conversation they would have started on my order, still making conversation as they worked on it.

At Domino's, I couldn't talk with any of the employees. They were running around as fast as they possibly could, squeezing out pizzas by the dozens while their boss "encouraged" them to do more in less time. It was weird to see that kind of environment. It was a little piece of America over here, and it was out of place. I prefer the local way.

12:39 PM | |

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 

Our Big Break

My church over here is 10 or so people (all American) who meet in each other's houses. Me and a couple of other guys lead the singing every week, and though it was pretty rough when we first started, we've definitely pulled together and gotten better as time has passed. So, we figured it was time for our public debut. Unfortunately, we didn't know any concert promoters to book us a sweet venue, so we just set up shop outside on a popular walking street and treated whoever passed by with some music. Not only did we rock the place, we made 6.50 from people who threw change at our feet.


Our big closing number was FreeBird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, where everybody got a solo.



The future cover of our Greatest Hits Album

10:28 AM | |