Jonathan (ジョナサン)

Moldova Pictures, take 2

    I uploaded the pictures from the 2nd camera. Once again, the link is: http://www.potterfam.com/gallery/mission_moldova. If you've already looked, then you'll want to go to the last couple of pages of each album. I added the most pictures to Buildings/Scenary, about 9 to demonstrations, and a couple each to the other two albums.

    I have some video files too, and I'll probably be posting links to those soon, I still need to get, at the least, the one of me doing my bo staff kata. I'm not going to post all the videos either, b/c some are just of the crowds we had at demos, or driving. But I do have a video of each of us doing a weapons kata.

    So, the trip to Moldova, Romania and Ukraine was really great. Quite the adventure. The demonstrations went great, but there was a LOT of traveling to get to places. Going over the borders was a big hassel that took a lot of time, and seemingly for no real reason. I got sick when I woke up on the day we were going to go to Ukraine. I ended up throwing-up about 9 times that day. For about the first hour I was throwing up every 15~20 minutes... and mostly dry heaving... yeah fun. I finally got better toward the evening, and had already stopped throwing-up about mid day. Thanks be to God for that. The day after Ukraine, which I missed b/c of all that, I guess I looked like "walking death", according to my teammates.. and the Moldova Team Members would keep asking if I was ok. That entire day was spent traveling in a bus to get to Romania.

    Other interesting points. There is pretty much no air conditioning over there. This by itself isn't too odd... but they don't have fans either... I mean, the people can buy fans, but they don't, because they believe it will give them a cold. They also don't roll down the windows much in a car, and IF they do, it will only be on one side of the car, because they think that the draft that will be created will cause them to get a cold. They also don't use the air conditioning that they have in the cars. It was usually always above 90 while we were over there. But, the Prison in Romania we did a demo out... it DID have air conditioning. They also didn't use very much meat, but this is because, I imagine, meat is a little more expensive. Lots of potatoes, lots of carbs. The people in Romania and Moldova were very nice, and there were quite a few people that could speak at least a little English. Lots of English shirts and hats and music. Seemed like more American music on the radio then music from their own country. It was very interesting seeing the stark contrasts side by side. A motorcycle passing a donkey driven cart, for example. Lots of horse or donkey drawn carts on the streets, and you'd just pass them. One bus we were in, the speedometer didn't even work, so I guess he just went as fast as he wanted to.

    I'll try and post a more detailed account, but I haven't managed to write it up yet.

    Also, I've signed up to be a substitute teacher for the Jenks High School. Yeah, I know, I'm crazy. Since I will be doing the afterschool karate program every day during the week... well it is AFTERschool, which means I am free DURING school, so I thought, meh, why not. I found out the pay is $65 per day, and some of the teachers I had in Highschool are putting me on their "preferred sub list", so that's pretty cool. Wonder if I'll snap though.

    Also I will be getting a NEW CELL PHONE NUMBER. I actually already have the number, but I don't have the phone yet, so I just know what the number IS. Not going to post it here, but I will be calling people and letting them know. Here is the phone I am getting. Thanks to a deal with United frequent flyer, I was able to get the phone for free, plus frequent flyer miles. Because it is a special deal, one of the restrictions was I could not port an existing cingular wireless number over. Not THAT big of a deal. Why am I doing all of this, parents moving to Texas, I need to get on my own plan. This deal came up, so I took it.

    Ok, that's all, later.

    TUMEO.