Hello everyone! I am taking a break from talking about myself today to talk about something more important:
I know it is the holidays and economy isn’t exactly the greatest, but I need your help. I am trying to organize a Christmas present for my brother-in-law Jimmy, who is living in the middle nowhere Tanzania serving in the Peace Corp. He has been there since June of 2007.
Currently, Jimmy is working on building a dispensary for the village he has been living in. The overall project will cost $13,916.00. BUT, he has already raised $12,886!!! The final $3,965.00 has eluded him… I hope… up until now.
For Jimmy’s Christmas present, I would like to raise the final $3,965.00 by the end of the year. So, I have one month! So, what do I want from you? Help and support. Please CLICK HERE to go to the official Peace Corp web page that features Jimmy’s project, read about it… and if you feel so called, please donate $10.00. If we can get 13 people a day to donate $10.00 we can completely fund his program before the end of the year!!!
Other Note:
1. Jimmy’s real name is Wilber James Newhall, so don’t get confused by the Volunteer Coordinators name being “Newhall, W. of GA”. That’s Jimmy.
2. Please share this information with as many people as possible. Although, you might not be able to help, someone you know might love to help.
Thank you so much!
___________________
Starting Amount Needed: $3,965.00
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Day 132 - Steak, My Kindom for a Steak!!!
Now that we have internet I thought I would try and catch you, the reader, up on some funny and interesting stories that have happened since we have arrive. Here we go!
On my second day I ventured out to find a market. Found one… after walking about 6 blocks straight up a 75 degree hill. I walked around with my basket trying not to look stupid or say much. I went to the butcher and pointed at some nice looking steaks and said "Dva" (meaning “two”)… and the butcher looked at me and said, "Dve?" (which also means “two”… but I had used the feminine form of the word… and I guess steak is not considered feminine). So, once having my monosalavic case/gender ending corrected I simply said "Da" (Yes). Little did I know that he needed more information. My "Dve” was referring to the number of steaks I wanted… but he was selling steak by the kilogram. So after some very nice interpretive dance I received my two steaks. So at which point, with my steaks safely laid to rest in my basket, I looked up to say "xvala" (thank you)… and then the butcher cut me off saying, "is there anything else I can help you with today, sir." That's right… not only did he speak perfect English… he called me "sir". The nerve of some people, right?
Later when I got home, Serena informed me that my beef steaks were actually pork. Hmmm… well I swear they were red. Dang it!
-JP
On my second day I ventured out to find a market. Found one… after walking about 6 blocks straight up a 75 degree hill. I walked around with my basket trying not to look stupid or say much. I went to the butcher and pointed at some nice looking steaks and said "Dva" (meaning “two”)… and the butcher looked at me and said, "Dve?" (which also means “two”… but I had used the feminine form of the word… and I guess steak is not considered feminine). So, once having my monosalavic case/gender ending corrected I simply said "Da" (Yes). Little did I know that he needed more information. My "Dve” was referring to the number of steaks I wanted… but he was selling steak by the kilogram. So after some very nice interpretive dance I received my two steaks. So at which point, with my steaks safely laid to rest in my basket, I looked up to say "xvala" (thank you)… and then the butcher cut me off saying, "is there anything else I can help you with today, sir." That's right… not only did he speak perfect English… he called me "sir". The nerve of some people, right?
Later when I got home, Serena informed me that my beef steaks were actually pork. Hmmm… well I swear they were red. Dang it!
-JP
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Day 130 - Thanksgiving
There is a lot to be thankful for this year, but it all seems trivial to me until we get more news from Mumbai. Talk to you soon and Happy Thanksgiving.
-JP
-JP
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Day 129 - Soccer & Snow
So, we have a pretty large dinning room in our temporary house. To give you an idea, the dinning room table seats about twelve. It is pretty ridiculous actually. Our permanent housing will not be nearly that big, but it has been fun living like kings in the digs that we have now. We will be celebrating Thanksgiving with our upstairs neighbors tomorrow, they are hosting all of us "orphans" here in Belgrade that are still in the process of getting settled… about 20 or so of us. So, in preparations, this past Sunday we moved our dinning room table upstairs… so we have this very large empty space in the middle of our apartment. So, what do you do with all that empty space when you have an almost three year old? You him his first soccer ball of course!
The dinning room is now referred to as our soccer field… or as I like to call it "Stadium Schutz"… it is only fitting since we are living between to the two largest rival futbal clubs in the city. It is loads of fun.
It has been raining pretty relentlessly over the past few days and getting home last night was near miserable. The only thing making it bearable was the knowledge that I was living in Belgrade… how crazy is that? Although, I am living a normal 9 to 5 grind, the realization and wonder of living here creeps into by head from time to time and it is a great feeling.
So, it's been raining and when I got home Grayson and I of course had to play a game of soccer… and while we were playing I looked up and out the window and saw the most beautiful thing. The rain had become snow. The largest and thickest snow flakes I have ever seen. Now keep in mind, it wasn't all that long ago that I was living in Charleston, SC wearing t-shirts and shorts in February… and last year in Switzerland was the first time I had experienced the every elusive "White Christmas" and now, it looks like we will be celebrating a "White Thanksgiving". Very cool.
Also, on another cool note, I received my new business cards today. Although, there would seem to be anything overly special about them… the anomaly is that they are double sided… English on one side… and Cyrillic Serbian on the other. Just call me ЏонПал Шоц.
Take care,
-ЏП
The dinning room is now referred to as our soccer field… or as I like to call it "Stadium Schutz"… it is only fitting since we are living between to the two largest rival futbal clubs in the city. It is loads of fun.
It has been raining pretty relentlessly over the past few days and getting home last night was near miserable. The only thing making it bearable was the knowledge that I was living in Belgrade… how crazy is that? Although, I am living a normal 9 to 5 grind, the realization and wonder of living here creeps into by head from time to time and it is a great feeling.
So, it's been raining and when I got home Grayson and I of course had to play a game of soccer… and while we were playing I looked up and out the window and saw the most beautiful thing. The rain had become snow. The largest and thickest snow flakes I have ever seen. Now keep in mind, it wasn't all that long ago that I was living in Charleston, SC wearing t-shirts and shorts in February… and last year in Switzerland was the first time I had experienced the every elusive "White Christmas" and now, it looks like we will be celebrating a "White Thanksgiving". Very cool.
Also, on another cool note, I received my new business cards today. Although, there would seem to be anything overly special about them… the anomaly is that they are double sided… English on one side… and Cyrillic Serbian on the other. Just call me ЏонПал Шоц.
Take care,
-ЏП
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Day 128 – JohnPaul Hath Discovered the Internet… and it was good…
Whelp… we are here... for a little over a week now. And to be honest, it is pretty great. I am sure the Belgrade honeymoon will fade, but for right now I am really enjoying myself. Even more so since I finally discovered that we have internet!
Much to our surprise, when we arrived in Munich for a three hour layover from 7:30am – 10:30am our time… 1:30am – 4:30am US time… after spending 8 hours on the second most turbulent flight I have ever been on… and for those that know Serena… she is not a great flier. It was not very fun. But fortunately, Grayson slept the entire flight. He was really great. Unfortunately, Grayson woke up from a full night’s sleep at 1:30am in Munich. ARG! But don’t worry, somehow his battered and tossed around parents mustered the energy to take him on walks and buy him candy... and hey, I finally made it to Germany, although I only saw the inside of the airport. Hmmm… I’ll have to work on that.
But I digress… when we arrived in Munich we decided to splurge a little bit and purchased web access to check our emails… knowing that it might be a while before we had access again. Whelp, that is when we found out that when we arrive in Belgrade we would not be moving into our permanent housing, we were going to be in temporary housing for up to thirty days. At first we were pretty disappointed. But, you also have to realize that it is quite normal to start out in temporary house so we got over ourselves pretty quickly. The apartment is great by the way. Very roomy… and after a few days I discovered internet!
It’s pretty funny actually. After about two or three days cut off from the world, especially Serena being stuck at home with Gray, with no internet access, I decided that we needed to do something about it and got the ball rolling to try and get connected. Little did I know, it would be easier than trying to schedule an installer to come to the house. You see, in the apartment we have an office, and in this office we have a desk. And when I first looked at the desk I noticed that there were a ton of cables, a DSL router, and Vonage box. I thought it was pretty weird that those items had been left behind and didn’t think much about it… until Tuesday. On Tuesday night, after I had started calling around to get internet service started at our temporary residence, I started staring at all the equipment cluttering the office… and started putting it all together. It had been a while since I had dealt with DSL, but I gave it a shot. And about ten minutes later, we had internet access. It all worked, amazingly enough I hooked everything up correctly on my first try.
So now we have internet. Well, sometimes. It is not the most reliable service… but, we will survive. And via Skype we had the opportunity to call some of our family when the service has been running smoothly.
So, yeah, it is very nice to be connected. And my next order of business was to get the cable and internet up in running at our permanent residence. I heard that it can take up to a month sometimes to schedule a service call and after being in a temporary place for 30 days, I wanted to make sure we had everything up and running before that move. That turned out to be amazingly easy as well. On Wednesday I started bugging the GSO’s office (who handles resident issues) to see how to go about getting hooked up before the move. Well, later that day, the GSO received an email from the guy who is currently living in what will become our house. He wanted to know if the family moving in after him would like to transfer his DSL service into their name rather than turning it off. SCORE! So, we are totally set.
I am going to be getting together with the guy next week to transfer the name and he even invited us over to get a tour of the place this weekend. He will be leaving on November 30th, and after the GSO’s office cleans it up a little, we will be set to move in. So, the good news is that we should be receiving the first part of our shipment (the items we sent Air Freight) in early December and we will be moving into our permanent housing before Christmas. It will probably be January before the rest of our household items and car arrives. But we will survive. All in all things seem to be going very smooth.
-JP
5 DAYS LATER
Okay, so after I wrote this entry and just before I had a chance to post it… we lost our internet access. But thank god for Jasko! He’s a local tech guru that a bunch of us use. He totally fixed us up and we are finally back on line. And because of how great he was to work with, I no longer plan to continue that other guys plan, I am going to cancel it and let Jasko hook me up. It will be much more reliable.
-JP
Much to our surprise, when we arrived in Munich for a three hour layover from 7:30am – 10:30am our time… 1:30am – 4:30am US time… after spending 8 hours on the second most turbulent flight I have ever been on… and for those that know Serena… she is not a great flier. It was not very fun. But fortunately, Grayson slept the entire flight. He was really great. Unfortunately, Grayson woke up from a full night’s sleep at 1:30am in Munich. ARG! But don’t worry, somehow his battered and tossed around parents mustered the energy to take him on walks and buy him candy... and hey, I finally made it to Germany, although I only saw the inside of the airport. Hmmm… I’ll have to work on that.
But I digress… when we arrived in Munich we decided to splurge a little bit and purchased web access to check our emails… knowing that it might be a while before we had access again. Whelp, that is when we found out that when we arrive in Belgrade we would not be moving into our permanent housing, we were going to be in temporary housing for up to thirty days. At first we were pretty disappointed. But, you also have to realize that it is quite normal to start out in temporary house so we got over ourselves pretty quickly. The apartment is great by the way. Very roomy… and after a few days I discovered internet!
It’s pretty funny actually. After about two or three days cut off from the world, especially Serena being stuck at home with Gray, with no internet access, I decided that we needed to do something about it and got the ball rolling to try and get connected. Little did I know, it would be easier than trying to schedule an installer to come to the house. You see, in the apartment we have an office, and in this office we have a desk. And when I first looked at the desk I noticed that there were a ton of cables, a DSL router, and Vonage box. I thought it was pretty weird that those items had been left behind and didn’t think much about it… until Tuesday. On Tuesday night, after I had started calling around to get internet service started at our temporary residence, I started staring at all the equipment cluttering the office… and started putting it all together. It had been a while since I had dealt with DSL, but I gave it a shot. And about ten minutes later, we had internet access. It all worked, amazingly enough I hooked everything up correctly on my first try.
So now we have internet. Well, sometimes. It is not the most reliable service… but, we will survive. And via Skype we had the opportunity to call some of our family when the service has been running smoothly.
So, yeah, it is very nice to be connected. And my next order of business was to get the cable and internet up in running at our permanent residence. I heard that it can take up to a month sometimes to schedule a service call and after being in a temporary place for 30 days, I wanted to make sure we had everything up and running before that move. That turned out to be amazingly easy as well. On Wednesday I started bugging the GSO’s office (who handles resident issues) to see how to go about getting hooked up before the move. Well, later that day, the GSO received an email from the guy who is currently living in what will become our house. He wanted to know if the family moving in after him would like to transfer his DSL service into their name rather than turning it off. SCORE! So, we are totally set.
I am going to be getting together with the guy next week to transfer the name and he even invited us over to get a tour of the place this weekend. He will be leaving on November 30th, and after the GSO’s office cleans it up a little, we will be set to move in. So, the good news is that we should be receiving the first part of our shipment (the items we sent Air Freight) in early December and we will be moving into our permanent housing before Christmas. It will probably be January before the rest of our household items and car arrives. But we will survive. All in all things seem to be going very smooth.
-JP
5 DAYS LATER
Okay, so after I wrote this entry and just before I had a chance to post it… we lost our internet access. But thank god for Jasko! He’s a local tech guru that a bunch of us use. He totally fixed us up and we are finally back on line. And because of how great he was to work with, I no longer plan to continue that other guys plan, I am going to cancel it and let Jasko hook me up. It will be much more reliable.
-JP
Friday, November 7, 2008
Day 110: Almost Time To Go
Man, I really need to start writing more. The time is just flying by. It seems like I left Atlanta… well, not yesterday… but not that long ago… and here I am, almost a 3rd of a year has passed. And we are still in Washington, DC.
Crazy.
But, that number is quickly dwindling. In six days we will finally be moving on to our ultimate destination: Serbia. It is all very exciting. But so much to do. So much in fact, that it will be impossible to complete everything on my to-do list. Oh well, if I don’t get it done in the next 60 days, it wasn’t worth doing, right? Or at least, I can do it in two years when we come back.
Hmm. When I started writing this, I thought I would have more to say… but I don’t. Sitting along in an apartment (Serena and Gray are out of town again) in Washington isn’t nearly as interesting to me as arriving in Serbia. It’s kind of like Christmas as a kid… it has almost been two years since applying for this opportunity… and now, finally… the day is approaching. But, it still isn’t real. The surreal feelings that had had when I first arrived in DC have long since faded and now, simply put, this is what I do… but unfortunately… actually getting on a plane and going has eluded me. In six days… the time will come… and I am sure I will stop sleeping sometime in the next four days.
Oh, some great thing since I last wrote. Halloween! We had a wonderful Halloween this year. Grayson has become obsessed with superheroes and on a trip to the stop picked out the coolest Batman costume I have ever seen. For those that know me… you know that Batman is my favorite superhero… but, please keep in mind, I was not on this shopping trip and had no influence over Grayson’s decision. But I will say that I must be doing something right when it comes to this fatherhood thing.
So, yeah, dawned in his Batman costume, Grayson went trick-or-treating for the first time. It was really cool. He was so excited. Anticipating the night like it was Christmas. For about a week before the big night, Grayson was obsessed with practicing. He would pick-up his little pumpkin candy bag and close himself in one of our bedrooms and shout “trick-or-treat!” It was very cute stuff.
The apartment complex we are in allowed residents to sign up as “trick-or-treat” houses and then we picked up the list and went out for the night of our lives. Now, I will say that trick-or-treating in an apartment complex is kind of weird… we all have very well lit interior halls… to it didn’t really have the “feel” of a real Halloween, the Halloween of our youth, running around dark neighborhoods. But, Grayson didn’t care… he was simple interested in a five day sugar high. Which he got.
Take care,
JohnPaul.
Crazy.
But, that number is quickly dwindling. In six days we will finally be moving on to our ultimate destination: Serbia. It is all very exciting. But so much to do. So much in fact, that it will be impossible to complete everything on my to-do list. Oh well, if I don’t get it done in the next 60 days, it wasn’t worth doing, right? Or at least, I can do it in two years when we come back.
Hmm. When I started writing this, I thought I would have more to say… but I don’t. Sitting along in an apartment (Serena and Gray are out of town again) in Washington isn’t nearly as interesting to me as arriving in Serbia. It’s kind of like Christmas as a kid… it has almost been two years since applying for this opportunity… and now, finally… the day is approaching. But, it still isn’t real. The surreal feelings that had had when I first arrived in DC have long since faded and now, simply put, this is what I do… but unfortunately… actually getting on a plane and going has eluded me. In six days… the time will come… and I am sure I will stop sleeping sometime in the next four days.
Oh, some great thing since I last wrote. Halloween! We had a wonderful Halloween this year. Grayson has become obsessed with superheroes and on a trip to the stop picked out the coolest Batman costume I have ever seen. For those that know me… you know that Batman is my favorite superhero… but, please keep in mind, I was not on this shopping trip and had no influence over Grayson’s decision. But I will say that I must be doing something right when it comes to this fatherhood thing.
So, yeah, dawned in his Batman costume, Grayson went trick-or-treating for the first time. It was really cool. He was so excited. Anticipating the night like it was Christmas. For about a week before the big night, Grayson was obsessed with practicing. He would pick-up his little pumpkin candy bag and close himself in one of our bedrooms and shout “trick-or-treat!” It was very cute stuff.
The apartment complex we are in allowed residents to sign up as “trick-or-treat” houses and then we picked up the list and went out for the night of our lives. Now, I will say that trick-or-treating in an apartment complex is kind of weird… we all have very well lit interior halls… to it didn’t really have the “feel” of a real Halloween, the Halloween of our youth, running around dark neighborhoods. But, Grayson didn’t care… he was simple interested in a five day sugar high. Which he got.
Take care,
JohnPaul.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
I can't believe it's fall already! The high today was 67. The trees will begin to change anytime. I love this time of year.
My friend, Julie, visited with her daughter last week. They drove my VW up from Atlanta and then flew back. We spent last weekend in Baltimore for a wedding of one of JP's 50 cousins. We have another to attend next weekend. Then I think Gray and I will fly off to Indy for a last visit before we leave. It will be nice to be home for a while.
Apparently our neighborhood in Belgrade gets foggy and spooky around mid October. Too bad we'll miss Halloween there.
Yesterday Grayson and I walked into our building with a friend. A man had entered the elevator and was holding it for us. Grayson reached the elevator first and stopped outside the ope door. He looked up a the older man carrying a grocery bag and asked, "Are you going up or down?" Of course he was going up because we were on the first floor, but that is beside the point. It was really cute.
Grayson is really big. And he'll be 3 in four months! My goodness. There's no going back now. We just treasure him--one silly phrase, look and bruise at a time.
My friend, Julie, visited with her daughter last week. They drove my VW up from Atlanta and then flew back. We spent last weekend in Baltimore for a wedding of one of JP's 50 cousins. We have another to attend next weekend. Then I think Gray and I will fly off to Indy for a last visit before we leave. It will be nice to be home for a while.
Apparently our neighborhood in Belgrade gets foggy and spooky around mid October. Too bad we'll miss Halloween there.
Yesterday Grayson and I walked into our building with a friend. A man had entered the elevator and was holding it for us. Grayson reached the elevator first and stopped outside the ope door. He looked up a the older man carrying a grocery bag and asked, "Are you going up or down?" Of course he was going up because we were on the first floor, but that is beside the point. It was really cute.
Grayson is really big. And he'll be 3 in four months! My goodness. There's no going back now. We just treasure him--one silly phrase, look and bruise at a time.
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