Sunday, September 30, 2007

Change of plans

Okay, well, I don't have the time or energy to post today, and I think that this posting on Sunday thing just isn't working out for me. It's not you, Sunday, it's me. I just don't think I'm ready for this kind of commitment when there are so many other things I could be doing today besides spending time on a blog.

Anyway, I'll be posting on Tuesdays from now on. Expect a great one on Tuesday.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

A Momentous Occasion! And a video . . .

Woohoo. For the first time ever in the history of humankind more than 20 different people visited my blog in one day! Twenty-three to be exact. I know, it's awesome.

To celebrate, here's a video done by a magazine I enjoy. Watch the video and if you have some time, watch the other videos by these guys.


Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Brenda Lee

First of all, I'm sorry. I told all of you that I would post every Sunday, and I didn't post this Sunday. For those of you who thought I was dead or worse, I'm alive. For those of you who thought I just stopped caring about you, my heart is overflowing with emotions for you. For those of you who thought I had lost all of my money and was therefore unable to afford internet time, rest easy. I am not yet bankrupt. I was simply irresponsible. I was irresponsible with my offline time, with my online time, and most importantly, I was irresponsible with your hearts. Forgive me.

Well, now that that's out of the way, I think I've got a lot to tell you about.

I think I'll start with last Thursday. Nothing too too exciting happened, but I did go to a city in Switzerland that I had never been to before. That city is Montreux (pronounced "Maun-true" not "Maun-tro" as people at L'Abri are apt to say; in French 'eux' is 'ue' like at the end of 'true' and 'eaux' is 'oh' like at the middle of 'Geaux Tigers' [for LSU]). Whether you know it or not, you have a relationship, albeit an unknowing one, with Montreux. "How is that?" I hear you say. Let me show you. Here is the first verse from a well-known song by a band that we all love, Deep Purple:

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

So, that's where I was. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about the song. Anyway, I went with Jon, Kate, and Chloe, all of whom are at least four years younger than me, which means that they're younger than my awesome little sister, Whitney. The thought in the back of my mind for the first 30 minutes was "These people are younger than Whitney", but I got over it. The reason the three of them wanted to go to Montreux was to get holes poked into their bodies. Kate wanted one (besides the original two) in her nose. Chloe wanted two on each ear. Jon wanted one in his eyebrow. I tagged along because I wanted to see what I thought then--and only believe more firmly now--is the most spectacular and awe-inspiring sight in all of the Land of the Switzers. Here are some pictures:



If you can't tell by the sweet mustache and firm buttocks, that's the late Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen. Apparently, there are a lot of Freddy fans in Montreux and they actually have a Freddy Mercury Montreux Memorial Weekend the first weekend of every September. The statue is right on Lake Geneva and across the street from the piercing boutique that the three young'uns so since the boutique wasn't open when we first arrived, we walked down and admired the statue for a long while. After they got their various body parts peirced, Chloe went back up to Huemoz, and Jon, Kate, and I got a hitch to Vevey (pronounced "Vuh-vay") and ate lunch and hung out down by the lake. It was nice.

On Friday, the whole group of us had a field trip! We drove to a little town about half-an-hour away called Martigny and went to a Marc Chagall exhibit. I don't really feel like describing him or his paintings, so here's a link to his Wikipedia page. It was a good exhibit. Very enjoyable.

What else? Ah yes. Sunday nights are high tea nights here. We don't really have high tea (that ended when Edith Schaeffer left L'Abri), but we have dinner and a group activity afterwards. This Sunday night was the classic bonfire.

I need to be honest with you right now. I'm getting tired of writing this blog post. I've got about an hour's worth of good, motivated writing in me anytime I write anything, be it a paper, a poem, a song, or a blog post. I've been working on this post for about an hour and I'm almost out of motivation. I will struggle on, for your sake, and for the sake of my children, and my children's children.

So we had a bonfire. Jon and I created it, and it was good. We all sat around it and told a communal story (everyone got a minute or two to talk) involving children, their parents, ogres, beanstalks, flying squirrels, and laser guns. The laser guns were my idea. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is an excerpt from the story. Actually, it's just the two times that I got to tell part of the story. I think you'll agree (without even hearing the rest of the story) that it's the only exciting and imaginative part.



Well, that's all I can think of to write right now. There are other things, I guess that I could tell you about, but I think I'll wait until Sunday. Here's one final picture for you to enjoy before you go.


Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Singing Jogger

Just something to make everyone happy.


Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Pictures of the race

So here are the pictures from the car race that took place on Saturday and Sunday. I hope you guys enjoy them. Also, I realize that the image quality of the pics in the hiking slideshow isn't spectacular, but I had to shrink the files down to upload them. I apologize.


America power!

More America power!!!

This guy is typical of the type of people in the race. Old, bearded, probably French.

I don't know what kind of car this is, but it probably talks to you.

Again, no idea what kind of car this is. Maybe a custom?

Where we were standing was the beginning of the longest straightaway in the race, so people were trying to pass each other coming out of that last turn.

Here's a couple cars from the Formula 1/Indy Car category. Some were old school, some were pretty modern.

And lastly, here's the line of motorcycles making their way back down the mountain after the race. Those motorcycles with the sidecars were hauling some major buttocks.


Pictures of the hike

Alrighty, here is the slideshow of 50 pictures from the hike. Here's a copied and pasted version of how to use the slideshow (from the other post that I used a slideshow on):

Here's how to work the slideshow: first, put your mouse over the slideshow and a little menu will come up from the bottom, click on the little comment bubble to be able to see my captions for the pictures; second, you can either press the play button to play the slideshow or, if the pace of the slideshow is too fast (I can't slow it down) then you can just click through the pictures using the arrows; third, if you'd rather see the pictures without the slideshow, just click on one of the pictures and you'll be taken to the album itself on Picasa's website.

Enjoy!


Sunday, September 16, 2007

Hell is a stairmaster

Well hello there everyone. Thank you for stopping by today. Today I have a harrowing tale of adventure on the high seas. High seas in Switzerland? you say. Yes, high seas. The high seas of the Swiss Alps.

So . . . no, not the high seas, per se. A harrowing tale, nonetheless, of an epic journey to the top of an epic mount reminiscent of that sacred mount upon which Moses was handed down the laws for a nation of outcasts by a man named "I am." This, my friends, was no ordinary hike. It was a covenant entered into by four willing and yet unable persons.

I feel like if I try to keep using that metaphor, the fact that I went on a hike on Wednesday and Thursday would be completely lost amidst my verbal self-indulgence. So on with the story!

Wednesday afternoon at 5 pm, Nichole, Jon, Greg (a new guy here who's staying with his wife and kids in a chalet just up the road), and I set out for a hike to the top of one of the mountains across the valley from Huemoz. Greg had mentioned it to me the first day he got here, and when we realized that the next Thursday would be bad because of weather we decided to make it happen this Thursday. Since the hike was such a long one, we had to leave on Wednesday afternoon to get a ride to the bottom of the mountain and hike up to a refuge (a little cabin type thing) to spend the night. Now, Greg is in pretty good shape and he told us before we started that it was going to be really strenuous, but I don't think any of us thought it would be as hard a hike as it turned out to be. The hike up to the refuge was an 800 meter climb over the course of about four kilometers laterally. It was steep. Almost all the time it was steep. By the halfway point of the hike up to the refuge, I was wiped out and wondering if I could keep going. Luckily, there was no turning back really, so I had to keep going. I say luckily because spending the night up at the refuge was one of the coolest things I've done since I've been here.

What is a refuge? Well, let me tell you. All throughout the mountains in Switzerland are these little (or not so little sometimes) cabins that are kept up by the districts in which they're located. Most of them are at a scenic point or strategic point for a through hike of some part of the mountains. The one we stayed at was one of the smallest and hardest to get to, but the views were outstanding and the place was just plain cool to stay at. It was basically just a little stone cabin with some tables and a kitchen downstairs and two rows of sleeping mats and comforters upstairs for people to sleep in. We took a bunch of food up with us that night and cooked tuna lemon pasta for dinner and had a nice bottle of wine and some beer that they had there. There were about four other people there besides the four of us, and they all spoke French exclusively. Fortunately for us, both Greg and Nichole are fluent in French and were able to translate for Jon and I.

So, we spent the night at the refuge and woke up the next morning slightly sore, but ready to set out for a day of hiking. The map we had said that our route would take us 14 hours, but we were pretty sure we could cut that by a third at least. We set out down the mountain (yes, we had to go all the way back down to where we started the day before so that we could pick up the other trail) at about 8:30 that morning. Going down was nice. Very nice.

The new trail at the bottom wasn't too bad at first. I actually started to think that maybe it wouldn't be hard at all and that Greg had just been exaggerating about the difficulty of the hike. Well, after about the first mile or two, things took a sharp turn vertically and we started up the first of two 500 meter ascents. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the ascents were 500 meters up over the course of only about 1000 meters laterally. This meant that most of the time, I could bend at the waist slightly and put both of my hands on the ground. It was steep. At points, I started to think that maybe it would be better just to "slip" and tumble down the mountain to the bottom instead of continuing up. After about an hour or so of climbing, we reached the top of the first ascent and had some cheese sandwiches and chocolate for lunch. It was the best tasting food and water I've ever had in my entire life. Alas, we only rested for about twenty minutes before setting out on the second ascent of 540 meters.

This ascent was ever harder than the first because it was mostly over a bunch of scree, just loose rocks and rubble, which forced you to concentrate on every single step you took so that you wouldn't just slide off somewhere down the mountain. About halfway up the second ascent we came across a little glacier area and stopped to chill out (pun only slightly intended) there for a little bit before heading up to the top which was about 45 minutes away. The last stretch was by far the hardest. Just like being in hell. It seemed like it would never end. Jon and Greg were about 10 minutes ahead of me most of the time and Nichole was about 10 minutes behind me so I used waiting for her as an excuse to stop a few times.

Finally, after five hours of hiking, I made it to the top, and let me assure you, it was totally worth it. The top was at 2520 meters elevation so the views were spectacular of the entire valley. We stopped and took a little break to enjoy the view and take a bunch of pictures and videos of the top before setting off down the mountain.

The hike down was almost as tough as the hike up just because we had been going and going for sooooooo long that everyone's knees and feet started to hurt. After another three hours of hiking down, however, we made it to a little village where we got a few cold beers and called a cab. Mission complete. Greg told us afterwards that this hike is the second hardest hike he's ever done. So, yeah. We were all proud of ourselves and each other and we all had great stories to tell when we got back to L'Abri that night. It was a great time with great people and it made me really glad I decided to come back for a second time.

I'm typing this post on my laptop so I don't know how much I'll be able to get done today, but hopefully I will have posted some pictures or a video or both. If I post pictures then I'll put some comments on each picture to give it some context (to see how to work the slideshow, check out this post) and if I post the video (more likely since pictures take longer to upload) then here's the context: the first clip was taken when we had hiked into the middle of the mountains and were in a little bowl sort of place with a bunch of cows; it's right before we started climbing. The second clip is of us at the top of the mountain. Enjoy!

In other news, if you watched the video I posted yesterday then you'll know that they've been having a big vintage car race from Ollon to Villars. It was neat to see the old school cars the first couple times, but now it's just really really loud and obnoxious. Today is the last day of the race. I think I'll post some pictures of the cars coming by at the bottom of this post. That means that I'll for sure be posting the video and not the pictures of the hike. So, I'll post the pictures on Tuesday when I've got some time (for free) on the internet.

Also, the weather here has been awesome for the last week or so. Every day is sunny and 70 and at night it drops to about 50. I'm hoping this keeps up for the rest of the month.

What else? Jon and I have decided to hitchhike east for the break. We haven't quite decided where to go yet. We're thinking southern Italy or Greece. I think if we can make it down to southern Italy, we might be able to get a boat ride to Greece somehow. The big thing, at least at this point, is just making it back to Switzerland to do the bungee jumping on the last day of the break. If you want to see what the jump is like, go here, and be impressed. We're also thinking about compiling a list of "challenges" for us to try to complete while we're out. So far we don't have much, just to get to an island at some point, bungee jump, and get free rides on scooters somewhere. If you have any ideas, please chime in. We're not trying to make the challenges unreachable, but so far I think we only have things that can be pretty easily accomplished, so give us something actually challenging.

I need to stop typing now. This has been my longest post yet, I think. Thanks for sticking around.

Later.

PS I am now on the computer, and I forgot to put pictures on my USB drive so all we have for right now is the video of the top of the mountain. I'll put lots of pictures up on Tuesday.


Saturday, September 15, 2007

Awesome Vehicularity

In keeping with the trend towards awesome vehicularity in and around Huemoz, I present to you a video of the Ollon-Villars Car Race. It's held once every four years and it goes from Ollon (the big town beneath us) to Villars (the big town above us). It's mostly old cars from Europe, but I've got some pictures of a couple of Mustangs and even a Corvette. I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but for now, here's a little video I took of some of the cars going by. I hope you enjoy.


Sunday, September 9, 2007

Post-self-fluxitudinal Semiotic Buddhism

Hey everybody. Thanks for tuning in again. Let's see . . . what can I tell you about this week?

Well, for starters I went on the best hike so far this past Thurday. Thomas, one of the workers here, got the car for the day and he drove us (me, him, Nichole, Valerie, and Jon) to a place called Solalex (pronounced 'Soul-ah-lay') from whence we hiked to a place called Azendaz (pronounced 'Ah-zen-dahz'). Now, dispensing with the parentheticals, I will tell you about the hike.

We started up at about 10:15 am and the air was chilly. The sun was out, however, and they day looked promising. I can already tell that I'm not going to be able to keep up this style of writing for much longer. In fact, I think two sentences is enough. Details are overrated and a picture says a thousand words so there are some pictures down at the bottom. Just in case you didn't venture to drag your cursor over the pictures on this blog--at which point you would be rewarded for your effort by seeing the little pointy hand which would have tipped you off to exactly what I'm about to tell you--you can click on any of the pictures here to see a bigger version. Anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about the hike. The hike was cool because on the way up it was very rocky and craggy (think of the Aggro-Crag from Global Guts) and on the way down there were tons of boulders to jump around on, and let's face it, the most fun thing for any person to do in this world is climb up a rock, stand triumphantly on top, shout at the people beneath you, and then jump off and do a roll for good measure.

It wasn't a long hike, maybe four hours round trip. Afterwards we went back to L'Abri for a few minutes to change into our bathing suits and then we went to the Turkish baths down at the bottom of the mountain. The baths are pretty cool as well. Not as cool (not even close really) as jumping up and down on rocks but nice. There's a big pool with a bunch of fountains in it. There's also a sauna, Turkish baths (which is like a sauna but with thick fog inside), an aroma therapy room, and a weird room that just has black lights in it and slow chill techno music playing. We stayed at the baths and destressed for about three hours and then headed back up to L'Abri for a nice dinner of the week's leftovers. It was a day well spent. Possibly, no, definitely my favorite Thursday so far.

In other news, my tutor Greg assigned me two new books this week. The titles are "Seeing Through Cynicism" and "Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self" and if you care to investigate them further, you'll notice the updated "What I'm Reading" list over there on the right. "Seeing Through Cynicism" is easy enough, but "Interpreting God" is as obtuse as the title suggests. Let me give you a little quote, just one sentence, from the introduction to give you an idea of what it's like: "An adequate account of the self and of personhood cannot stop with its situatedness in some instantaneous moment within processes of shifting flux." If that's not enough for you, try this baby on for size: "This is an approach which combines the Buddhist negation of a stable differentiation between levels or between opposites with a postmodernist theory of signs as semiotic system." So, yeah. If I decipher what in the world he's talking about I'll let you all know.

I think it has something to do with post-self-fluxitudinal semiotic Buddhism.

PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are about to cross over the river. In the spring, all of the rocks are where the water is.

King of the hill....stump.

We are walking.

King of the hill....crag. "Let's check out the leaderboard, Moe!"

And finally, here I am getting back into the car to go to the baths.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

TastiBurger

Yes, I'll still do an update tomorrow (and it's going to be a good one), but I've got a few minutes on my hands right now while a file is saving (I'm editing audio files for my work time today). I found this video on some random website and I thought that all 18 of you (avg number of visits to the blog per day) should see it.

The caption was: "Ever wonder why fast food employees seem so sad? Joey and David have a prediction."

Enjoy!


Sunday, September 2, 2007

Ze Plane, Ze Plane

Yesterday and the day before were amazing here. Not because of any awesome lectures or any great discussions or any good conversations, though there were many. No, these past two days have been amazing here at L'Abri, perched amidst the Swiss Alps, because the Swiss Air Force has been having practice in the valley right outside my door. The past two mornings at about 11 am groups of 2-7 fighter planes have made their way into the valley and practiced flying in formation. But not just flying in a straight line. These guys were doing backflips, barrel rolls, nose dives, and sharp banking turns all while flying what looked like five meters apart. At some points they would come screaming past L'Abri within 200 meters of our heads. It makes for a loud day, but every time you hear and feel the jet sound wash over the mountain, you know you're about to see something awesome.

I'm not sure what kind of planes they're flying. When they're flying in formation they have some smaller planes, but after flying in formation for a couple of hours they send in one huge jet at a time to really show off. The guys in these jets were doing some amazing stuff. At one point I saw one of them fly straight up into the air, seemingly stall out, and then roll over backwards and go into a full-throttle nose dive, pulling up at the last second. A girl up on the mountain we hiked today said that the Air Force does this every month at the end of the month to use most of their resources so that they can get the same amount next month. Whatever reason they have for doing it, it is so freakin cool.

I took some pictures so you could see. They'll be at the bottom. I only got a couple of the formation flying, but I got some good ones of the single jets. If you guys know what kind of jets they are, post and fill me in.

In other news, I got my first real outsider comment on my blog the other day. Yep, after I posted the video of Miss Teen South Carolina at the Miss Teen USA competition and made a little comment about South Carolina's education system, I got a nice long comment from some guy or girl from Oregon. So that's exciting. I didn't think real people (ie people who don't know me) read this blog. It turns out I was wrong.

Also, I'm starting to plan out what I'm going to do for the break we have here from October 11-21. I was thinking about going to England to visit some people that were here last term, but it turns out that they won't be available during the break. That's okay though because I had already started to formulate another plan with a guy here named Jon. We're going to try to hitchhike somewhere in Europe or maybe even to Africa. Africa? Yes, Africa. We think we might be able to get to Morocco in the 11 days we have off. Actually, I'm pretty sure we could get to Morocco in three days, but then getting around there might be a little more difficult. I don't know what it's like to hitchhike in Africa. But, it's a predominantly Muslim country and they're pretty hospitable people, so maybe it'll be easy. Who knows.

We're in the planning stages right now so we only have one for-sure stop. That stop is right outside Locarno, Switzerland, at the Vascazo (sp?) Dam. It's the home to the world's second-tallest bungee jump. It measures in at 220 meters. If you've ever seen Goldeneye (the 007 movie) then you may remember the scene where Bond bungee jumps off of a dam. This is the dam. This is the jump he did. It's going to be awesome. So, since that is east of where we are now, we may end up going down to Greece and trying to get to one or more of the Greek isles. We just aren't sure yet. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Let's see . . . what else is there to tell you . . . I went on another great hike today. Today Nichole, Renea, and I hiked to a little town called Bretaye. It was really cloudy at the top when we got there but the temperature was nice and the company was good. Plus, our waitress at a little cafe we stopped at up there was from Goldsboro, North Carolina. She came backpacking through Europe after she graduated from UNC six years ago and never left. Her French is actually better than her English now.

As for the temperature here, it's still pretty warm. I'd say an average of 70 each day, but the nights are getting cooler and cooler. From what I've read and heard, the temperature should drop about 10 degrees each month. Actually, this Tuesday it's supposed to be pretty chilly. In the 40s I think.

So, comment, email, whatever, I'd love to hear from you guys. Lata.




Just in case you can't see it in the picture (above), the guy is doing a nose dive.