Training Log Archive: E-li-sha

C • New Shoes 4

since this is the new FB heres wat iv been doing the last week or so...
4 those who dont know im in borneo, which is an island, but in the indonesian part (its made up of three countries), surprisingly the mayalsian part is quite well off in comparison to the indonesian part. and im staying at living waters village run by some europeans (surprisingly a lot of dutch) plus some NZers and Assies, with the help of locals.
as far as work goes a bit varried started off doing brick laying then painting a fence then making a fence out of wire mesh to fit onto the fence frame, did that 4 ages then we got 2 a bit where the carpenters had stopped about 5 bays short of the end so we had to make the wooden part of that bit as well and finishing off da painting of it 2morrow.
other things we did:
We went to church in mangala (a small village) and sat through a 2 and 3/4 hr service which we didnt understand any of.
One of our friends needed petrol so we had to go 2 phnom penh (small town 45min away) its quite interesting the government hav some weird ideas like they own the only petrol station company which is only open till 4.30 and limits the amount of petrol that can be sold there each day, so locals bring heaps of 40 gallon drums and fill them up whenever they can then sell the petrol @ a 15% mark up from their houses in plastic containers. and the roads there are soooo rough, it looks like they try to make sealed roads but do it on the cheap and of course nothing over there gets maintenance, they almost doing believe in it, like the local hospital, only 2 years old, is already run down. so the roads get tons of potholes, which doesnt worry the locals too much as they all ride small motorbikes which they can get easily on credit. but as we drove in2 town we say a new highway, which has been half finishd for several years and some very expensive city council buildings like the mayors house which is huge! ironically the road to all those buildings is abysmal but theyre only new so were expecting the road to them to suddenly get an upgrade.
inside the town the city centre is like one huge market, but everyone double their prices whenever they see a white person so thats not so cool. but everything is real cheap cuz the NZD buys about 7000 rupees, which means machettes are about 2.50 NZ with a holder, a trumpet icecream is about $1 NZ, yay. and there arnt really rubbish bins so every1 uses the gutters, and the river nearby is used as a toilet, bath and drinking water...
the weather here is quite up and down, now that iv gotten used to it normally its quite nice, but within 5min they could have dumping of rain with almost no notice then 10min latter it would stop and the sun would be out again, its been nice the last few days as its been quite cloudy, without them its way too hot as a few times a day the sun will be out in full force and its insane.
i think iv gotten used to the meals, rice three times a day, but at first it was kinda weird, and on the 1st day i tried some chilli sauce and i burnt my throat and it hurt 4 ages, they grow their own chillies here as well as many other fruit etc, i heard if u touch the leaves of chilli then wipe ur eyes they burn 4 hours.
transport around here is either motorcycle or ontop of 4wheel drives, even the buses hav people sitting ontop.
the kids @ living waters come in from surrounding village and range in age from 4 till 18, most of them come as animists but many become christians while they are here. there is a primary school onsite but the older ones go 2 the local school in pnom penn or mangala, the younger ones are real hyperactive too (listening to yelling in the background now) but some of them are real helpful when your working they will stand there and watch and hand u nails and the lyk, they try to teach the children skills while at living waters so they can get a job latter on or some get paid through university. every morning @ 5.30 there is a prayer meeting here and services tues, thurs and sunday, they have some guys who play some instruments 4 da services, some of them r quite amazing teaching themselves guitar, bass, piano etc. some of the songs they sing are in english but not many. i played one of the girls in a chess game, the one with the best english!, and she kept wanting a rematch after i bet her, so i bet her three times in a row, poor girl, she could be scared 4 life, yea some of the children that have been there a while learn english reasonably well but they 1st learn indonesian if they dont know it already (some villages have their own language). most the kids are dalak, some malays and a few chinese. the boys who play football are prety cool, i think they were suprised that a white guy could play football cuz the other english guys there arnt very good,lol. and all the indonesians its really hard 2 know how old they are cuz they are all so short and just look really young.
yea so thats about it so far, i think, one more day then we'll be leaving on the 12hr trip back to kuching (malaysia) on sat morning.
ha, this is really quite long...sorry

C • Those chillis sound like Fi... 4

run down 2 and past the local village mangalla, and witnessed the huge logging trucks which are destroying one of the last rainforests in the world, so sad.

rafting down a bigger section of the river and learnt how to stare a piece of bamboo, 'borrowed' some fruit from nearby fields, all of which were quite exotic and iv never seen b4