At least I think that's where I'm going to be on St Paddy's.

I booked another trip to Ireland! Whoo! I had promised my mother quite awhile ago to take her to Ireland some day, and I had to do a little bit of explaining to her when I booked the first trip that I just had to do it on my own (because of my heritage Ireland has always meant a lot to me and it was one of those solitary things I had to do).

Anyway, I had been wanting to try to get her over to Ireland since then- and I might as well face it, I really wanted to go back. So I was looking through tours and noticed one that takes in the whole Island (yes Paddy, I will be going North this time, though only into Derry mostly- and we do go through Omagh as well). This blonde chick I know (hah, yes it was Liz) pointed out to me that the cheapest rate going would take us there over St Paddy's Day. So I called my mom early the next morning before she headed to work and asked her if she still wanted to go to Ireland. We had the trip booked by that afternoon. ;)

The airfare was ridiculously low. I think we are paying something around a little over $350 apiece roundtrip. There is a layover in Paris before we head into Dublin. I might need to brush up on my French a bit so I don't have to run around the airport yelling "OU EST L'AVION???!!!". :p

Mom advises she won't be going out to the pubs every night, but understands that I will be. She is excited about going out on St Paddy's, and since I think we'll be in Killarney, it will be the perfect spot. Everything is within walking distance there- you don't need to take cabs. Also, the town is lovely in the evening, and I'm sure there will be many revelers to share in the fun. No really, I will keep acts of hooliganism to a minimum- I'll be with me ma and on me best behavior. Mostly. ;)

I was coming home from booking my trip to Ireland and doing some random shopping when I noticed cars stopping up ahead of me. I live on a four lane road and cars usually move pretty fast on it- so it was unusual to see them stopping like that. Both directions even.

It turns out that a dog was running around out in the street. This is a bad thing on any street, but especially mine due to the speed of traffic like I mentioned. I was able to actually pull my car into my own driveway, and got out to try to coax him out of the street. Luckily he came over to me but didn't trust me enough to let me get close. Some neighbors a few houses down from mine caught him, and got a leash on him. His owners did the right thing and had tags on him with their address, so I got him in the car and drove him home. His owner was glad to see me, and thinks that he got out when her son went out of the house.

That made me feel good. I volunteer at the Humane Society, and I have a soft spot for dogs especially. That was my good bit of karma for today or whatever. Anyway, I need to go relax and get some food, I've barely had a chance to eat anything today.

His name was Buddy, by the way. ;)

...because yours truly has booked a trip there, and I plan on drinking it all. ;)

I've been wanting to visit Ireland since I was a little kid. I'm one of those Americans with an O' in his name, and there has always been a place in my heart for my heritage. I'm too excited to type much right now, but I might leave another entry with my itinerary and such later.

For now anyway...

Wooohoo!

Ok, so the other day the movie "Rumble Fish" was on. It is based on an S.E. Hinton novel (the same S.E. Hinton who wrote "The Outsiders") about the relationship between a troubled youth and his charismatic former gang-leading older brother. It was an interesting movie, and it kept me captivated throughout even though I didn't think I was going to care for it.

Among the many themes of the movie is a study of violence. The charismatic older brother comes back home a changed and more thoughtful man after a journey west, and muses on an allegory of human violence through observing Siamese Fighting Fish (also known as Bettas)- though he refers to them as Rumble Fish. These are the colorful little fish you see in small bowls in the pet stores- the males have to be kept separated or they will literally kill each other. He feels that the cause of the violence between the fish is due to their cramped surroundings, and he desires to just put them in the river so they would have room to swim and not feel the urge to fight for their little "turf". Of course he is really considering the inhumane cramped surroundings of the inner city he lives in while contemplating the plight of the fish, and in his desire to save the fish he really desires to set free those people he sees around him from their cycle of violence (in the nature vs nurture debate, he is clearly in the nurture camp).

While watching this scene in the movie, I remembered thinking how much I used to enjoy keeping those kind of fish. I had one that lived about three years once (which apparently is not the case for many people), and I really got attached to him. I even had him trained to jump a bit out of the water to get at a bit of food that I would stick to the end of my finger. The little guy totally ruled. I did sometimes think about getting another one but never got around to it.

So anyway, I come home tonight and start going about my normal activities. Change into something more comfortable, start thinking about what I want to prepare for dinner, get my workout planned out, post on someone else's LJ about the possibility of a historical King Arthur (I'm a geek), etc. I typically exercise in the living room where I keep my television, and after walking into the room all prepared to get my sweat on I happened to look over to see something a little unusual on the book case. It was some big clear plastic thing that had a note attached to it: "please take good care of us". It turns out that my mother had gone to a pet store today and bought me a tank with a divider in which you can keep two Bettas. She does stuff like this all the time. She is completely psychic- we've always been on that kind of "wavelength" thing where she seems to know exactly what it is I am thinking about, and often about very specific things like this. It can be a little freaky sometimes, but she only uses her powers for good (as far as I know, she hasn't tried taking over the world or anything- at least this week). So now I have one little blue guy and one little red guy- two little Rumble Fish. And they totally rule.

Ok, so about 2 months ago I bought a cheap electric chainsaw because the trees in my backyard needed some serious trimming.

Buying a cheap chainsaw was a mistake. The saw was so poorly made that I took it back to the store without even using it, and traded up for a slightly less cheap model. The slightly less cheap model apparently still fell within the category of "cheap chainsaws" and it lasted only a few days. Meanwhile, I have had a large, ugly, and rather dry branch sitting in my backyard this whole time waiting to be cut.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and I bought the Humungo Tree Blaster 3000 (not really the name of the brand, but you get the picture). It is the epitome of badassness. It cuts through stuff...like...like...oh heck, for my Star Wars friends, it cuts through tree limbs like a lightsaber through that surprisingly flimsy plastic Stormtrooper armor. For my medievalist friends, it slices through wood like the deadliest broadsword through the brainpan of a barbarian raider. For those who don't enjoy either genre, remember those Ginsu Knife commercials where the knives could cut through anything and still remain sharp? This saw is like that, only 100x better and powered by petrol.

I had a lot of fun with it (though, it is not a toy). A good chainsaw makes you feel like a manly man. It gives you dreams of felling timber in the Yukon and singing songs about rough and rugged things like putting on women's clothing and such. Ah, the outdoor life- Monty Python framed it perfectly.

In other news, I'm sure most everyone has heard of the severe flooding that occurred in the midwest, especially along the Mississippi. The people affected by the floods are practically my neighbors, and I've been asking at church if we had any plans to go and assist in some manner. I now have an answer- we are heading over there on July 26th for the entire Saturday.

Apparently we will be doing cleanup work of a kind similar to that which I missed doing in New Orleans (by the time I got to Nawlins, the cleanup was done and the work left now is mostly "finishing"- though there is an almost insurmountable number of families still needing assistance). This kind of work is usually mucky and muddy and messy. It is also very hard work, but for some reason I love the feeling of a day of hard work- especially when I can find a little meaning in it. It is one of those circumstances where you might be going to help someone, but in reality it is you that gets the most out of it.

There is also a chance that we might be repairing levees as well, though from my understanding the levees can only be a temporary fix, as the high river levels actually had much to do with the large number of levees built along it (the normal course of the river is to spread outward during heavy rain, but with all the levees, it is pinned in and rises much higher). Either way, I'm going to help, and I look forward to it. I looked at my LJ bio the other day (that I wrote when I first signed up), and in it I mentioned that I wanted to start getting more involved somehow. I feel like I have finally started down that path- I hope it leads to interesting places and times.

Ok. I'll do this quick, just like the play.

I went. Drank beers. Listened to live jazz (including Coltrane's "My Favorite Things", thank you jazz dudes).

Watched "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)". Laughed at ensuing condensed hilarity.

Came home. Checked teh internets.

Preparing to watch a few movies, and sip on a few Guinness.

Putting plans to take over the world on hold for just tonight.

The end.

I just got back from a performance of "The Taming of the Shrew" at the local Shakespeare Festival here in town. I loved it! It was hilarious, and I had a smile on my face the whole time.

I didn't go to the Festival last year, and I missed it. It is held at this lovely European style manor house with landscaped grounds and scenic paved walkways. People often picnic out on the grounds before the show, and madrigal singers will regale you while you enjoy the surroundings.

After the show I left feeling a bit wanting, so I stopped by the Blockbuster in hopes of picking up "10 Things I Hate About You" (based upon Taming of the Shrew) and "Shakespeare in Love". Both of them had been rented out. Apparently some other Festival goer had the same idea that I did, those bastards! ;)

Anyway, tomorrow I shall be attending the "Reduced Shakespeare" performance, which promises to be highly entertaining. I think I might take a little basket full of various goodies (and some Guinness, of course) prior to the show. Should be fun!

I had a wonderful time during my week in Chiapas. We went there to help build a medical clinic for the local Tzeltal people (descendants of the Maya) in a town in central Chiapas called Ocosingo. It seemed a worthy cause- you might have heard of the Zapatista movement and the uprisings that occured in the area a few years back that had to do with the perception of ill will the local people have toward the government. The indigenous peoples of the area feel neglected by the government and do not trust the medical care they can get from the government clinics there, and they are more likely to die of preventable causes than any other group in the country from what I've been told.

So building a medical clinic to be run by the people and for the people seemed to me to be a good thing, and that is why I signed up for the trip. However, the thing I will remember most about my time in Chiapas was the interactions I had with the Tzeltal people themselves. All the hard work we did together turned out to be a kind of social grease that helped to ease the language and cultural barriers between the Estados Unidos group and the Tzeltal we were working with. I really got to know some of them, and I know that someday I will be going to visit them again. More on that in a bit.

We got into the Tuxtla, Chiapas airport Saturday night somewhere around 9pm, and then proceeded on to Ocosingo via a small bus that took us through the mountains. It was about a three hour ride, and that in itself was an adventure. They drive a bit differently there- you tend to ride up closely on the traffic in front of you, and there is a lot of passing on curves and in spots we normally would not consider in the US. Also, there is the presence of "topes" there (phonetically it is pronounced "topays")- these are speed bumps in the road that are apparently put there because there are not any traffic police in the area to guarantee people are not speeding. So you end up having to slow way down, then speed way up again, all while traveling through the mountains and taking curve after curve. Some of our group had to take dramamine for the ride due to carsickness. By the way, not all of these topes are officially put into place. Apparently locals with wares to sell on the sides of certain roads will build these topes in the road to get people to slow down and hopefully stop and buy something.

We got in around midnight or so, and after a short meeting we went straight to bed. We were staying in a compound that contained a small bible school, an administrative building, a house, and sleeping quarters for staff members. There was also a small cow tied up in the yard. It didn't seem to mind us much. The buildings were all built using cinder blocks, and can be best described as "functional", though they met our needs perfectly. We slept on blown up air mattresses, and the evening air was a perfectly cool sleeping temperature.

We woke up in the morning to an extremely persistent rooster, and got about our business on Sunday. We went out into the wilderness of the mountains on a three hour ride to visit a local Tzeltal village called Yaxoquintela where the people were celebrating the one-year birthday of a little girl. The significance of the first year birthday is that if the child has lived that long, the child is likely to survive and continue to grow (this tells you a bit about life-expectancy there). The locals were welcoming of us, and we shared in a church service together and then participated in the birthday party. By the way, if you ever celebrate a birthday there, be aware that you will have your face pushed into the cake. I saw it twice on this trip, so just be warned: go along with it and have fun- which the people spend a lot of their time doing.

I found the ride back to be quite adventurous as well. The three hour ride really doesn't indicate the distance between the village and Ocosingo- it isn't that far. However, the roads were in poor condition in the more remote areas (potholes are called "vaches"), and they weren't paved once you got further into the mountains. On the way back, we ended up one truck short of what we had coming up (I never found out why) and we picked up quite a few more people. So some of the Ocosingo people ended up riding in the bed of one of the pickups, and yours truly ended up there with them. I should clarify what I mean by "some of the Ocosingo people". I think there were approximately 15 of us in the bed of that pickup. The trucks are built especially for this- they are rigged up with a 2 x 4 piece of wood that runs down the center of the bed of the truck and at about shoulder height for the locals (which means lower chest height for me) that they hold onto while riding in the trucks. This is a common form of transportation for the people in the surrounding villages, and the trucks run commercially that way all day long. Upon arriving back in Ocosingo, the members of my group (all of whom had been able to find seats inside of vehicles) had a good time noticing all the dust and dirt on my formerly clean church clothes. I actually enjoyed the experience, and I realize that I got to understand a small part of the life of a Chiapaneco (a person from Chiapas).

We got to work on Monday on the medical clinic. Our work was hard- we were putting down a finishing layer of concrete on the medical center's floor. This involved a lot of shoveling of gravel and sand, carrying buckets, wheelbarrowing the mixed concrete, etc. My job was to take the buckets of sand and gravel, swing them up onto my shoulder, and then dump them in the mixer. They were heavy, but I felt great doing it.

It is here that I found what came to be my favorite part of the trip. A few Tzeltal gentlemen from outlying village churches (like the one we visited in Yaxoquintela) showed up to help with labor for the medical clinic- they aren't waiting for other people to build it, they are taking part themselves. One was named Elias, and the other Manuel. Elias was from a village about two hours away, and Manuel lived on a ranch about an hour away. They were working in the same area that I was, and during the course of the week we ended up talking a lot in the fashion of people that understand just a little of each others' languages, but somehow end up making sense of things. I find that if you show interest in the cultures of other people, they open right up to you and will teach you things. Elias and Manuel spent a lot of time with me, and taught me quite a lot of Spanish that I wouldn't have got otherwise (plus a few Tzeltal words here and there).

They worked extremely hard, and inspired me to do the same. However, they also laughed and found ways to have fun the whole time, and I would say that those two would be the kind of people I'd hang out with if they were here in the States (I am missing them right now, if you can't tell). Elias is a Mariachi in his spare time, and really enjoyed cracking jokes at others' expenses. He also had a lot of fun with our height differences and liked to find things to stand on to talk to me. Manuel was a bit quieter (though he seemed to have a constant smile on his face) and liked to talk about what kinds of things I enjoyed, where I live, what the States are like, etc. Also, Manuel advised that the way out to his ranch is apparently lovely, and you can see "quatro cascadas" on the way there- or four waterfalls for you gringos reading this. I promised both of them that I would be back, and that I wanted to go visit their churches/villages when I do.

We spent our last day in a beautiful town called San Cristobal de las Casas. It is actually a touristy place, and there were quite a few Europeans there. The town is so full of color and culture and life. The buildings are painted in warm yellows and oranges, and the streets and sidewalks are paved with flat rocks. It had finished raining on the evening we arrived there, and the lights glistening off the moist streets and churches was one of the loveliest things I've seen in a city environment. There was a lot of shopping for crafts and people watching to be done there, and it was a nice send-off for the trip.

The Tzeltal that I got to know are a warm and inviting people, and the mountainous land they inhabit is breathtaking. I hope I get to go visit again before too long and continue to cross cultural bridges that I never thought I would have the opportunity to even approach. Trips like these also make one question what is important and worthy in our own lives, and whether people and relationships aren't more important than all the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I know I took a different perspective away from Chiapas, and that I'm going to be working on nurturing my faith more. I know that I miss newly made friends, but I also know that those feelings only anticipate future opportunities. I had a great trip. Mas Chiapas, por favor.

Ok, here's what has been happening lately...

First of all, the banquet involving the award I won for community service was amazing. The room where it was held was very ornate, they had a jazz band, hors d'oeurves, a fancy dinner, etc. I enjoyed it a lot.

Next, I am currently in a three week developmental opportunity at work. Hopefully this will lead to a job in that particular area- it is very exciting and fulfilling.

Finally, I will be going down to southern Mexico for a week-long mission trip. We'll be building a medical facility for the local people, many of whom are distrusting of government run clinics (apparently there is a lot of tension between the indigenous peoples and the Mexican government). This clinic will be locally run by them and for them. Hopefully this is exactly what they need.

...and that's about all that's fit to print in this public forum, since I'm not friends-only. ;)

Ok, I made an entry about a month ago about the possibility of winning this community service award from my employer. Well, I got it! They pick 8 people in the zone I'm in (thousands of employees) for each category for the award. These include leadership, customer service, and my category of community service.

I was called by one of the vice presidents today and informed that I was one of the 8 in my category. We all get to go to this big fancy function in downtown Indianapolis (they are putting us up at the Hilton for a few nights) and live it up for the weekend. It should be great, and it is a big honor.

I can't wait!