This morning I finally finished reading through the Bible again, cover to cover. This time I read the NASB. I’m a big proponent of reading the Bible all the way through, so if you haven’t read it through all the way give it a shot! I learned lots in my read-throughs, nothing helps to cement knowlegde like repetition. I’m going to have to figure out what I’m going to be reading next, this time it was the NASB, been thinking about the NRSV or the ESV. Anyway, check out a Bible read-through plan, I like reading through Chronologically, with all the dates in order. You can find the plan I use here.
I made it here to Walla Walla in one piece, obvious I know. I’m learning the ropes, figuring out classes… still too early to see how hard some of the classes will be. I think the engineering class that’s all taught in Chinese will be the hardest, just a wild guess! I’m thinking that in the next few weeks, when I’ve figured things out, I’ll write a comparison and contrast post on the differences and similarities to Walla Walla and Southern. I have a bunch to do before tomorrow, so I’m signing out.
In a few short hours I’ll be blowing this pop stand and heading north for Walla Walla. It will take in the neighborhood of 15 hours… It will be a long drive. Well, goodbye California!
This summer was unlike most for me, being five months long almost to the day. I’ve finished up at Southern and will be heading up for Walla Walla this next week. I’ll be finishing up work at Hub3 Networks; I just finished the Hub3 website too, just in time. I’ve been able to have some good times… Backpacking, races, friends, campmeeting, mines, Africa… But now it’s time to move on.
I’m really looking forward to my stay at Walla Walla. I will finally be able to really get into the engineering courses. I found it real hard to get through some of the classes when they didn’t really seem to have much to do with engineering, so this is good. I’m only taking four classes this quarter as I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew: Probability and Statistics, Mechanics of Materials, Geology/Soil Mechanics, and Fluid Mechanics. We’ll see how that goes, it won’t be easy.
I won’t be all alone up there since I know people from bunches of different places. I looking forward to making new friends, but I’ll be missing my old ones left behind. Well, here it goes…
Here’s the other one…
I was sorting through my many hard drives, and I found all kinds of old stuff. In there were a couple bike videos I made in high school. I put them up on youtube, now you all can see what a dummy I was…
I have now put up some of the pictures from my Ghana trip, you can find them here. I wish I had tons of pictures to put up, but I didn’t take that many… I’m working on a photo albums page, but that is not up quite yet. It should be up real soon though, so for now, this direct link will have to do. Check back again later, hope you like them…
Rich (the guy I was with) and I had quite the trip back home. We left Wednesday morning to fly out of Accra, Ghana. After a bunch of security stuff, we make it onto the plane after bidding Dr. Pipim farewell. The plane eventually taxied down the runway, but then the captain announced that someone was feeling sick and that we’d have to go back to the terminal area (well there wasn’t a terminal, just a roll-around staircase on the tarmac) to drop her off. It turned out that not only do you have to let her off the plane, you have to dig though 300 people’s stuff to find her luggage too! So 45 minutes later we actually take off for New York City. It was a long eleven and a half hour flight. I wanted to stay awake the whole time, even though we were gaining four hours, so that I could hopefully stave off the jet lag…
Well we finally get there and deplane. First we had to make it through the immigration. I busted out my passport and was ready to roll. Some immigration lady was directing the traffic, but it looked like it was the end of her shift. In the confusion (I guess), she directed me to the wrong line. A little while later Rich points out that the people in our line don’t have U.S. passports, and he was right, we were in the wrong line. Ugh… So we cruise over to the right line, but it looked twice as long. We were a little rushed, as we were late coming in, and who knows how long immigration, customs, luggage check, and security will take.
So after all that mess we walk what seemed to be two miles to where we thought our terminal was, we were looking for B20. We had about an hour at that point, so we aren’t that worried. We see 20 so we sit and wait. But then we realize that there are only about five people around us, and it’s time to board! We ask someone at the desk about it and they said that we were at 20, not B20. A not-super-marked sign said the shuttle for B20 was through a certain door. But we had to wait for the next shuttle. Finally it came and we started driving around in circles and figure eights, I think he was just having fun, because we weren’t going anywhere! While in the shuttle we wave to our plane flying off…
We end up having to get a flight the next morning, which meant we got to spend the night in the terminal. It would have been nice to be able to lie down on the benches, but they had fixed armrests so that didn’t work. Who needs suitcases anyway when they can be hundreds of miles away in some other airport? Not us I guess… We survived though. We hopped on our next flight to Minneapolis, then to San Francisco, but on the way we had to make a crash landing in the Rockies… No, just kidding.
It really wasn’t that bad, but I kinda like those situations, you know, the ones that don’t go at all like you’d planned. It makes life interesting.
Stay tuned, and I’ll post a link to some of the pictures I took on this trip, I didn’t take as many as I wish I had now, but oh well…
Hello from Ghana! I’m sure many of you didn’t even know I was going to Ghana. It was not in the plans for months or anything… I left the states last Thursday and flew to Accra, its capitol. I came to help with the filming of Dr. Pipim. His mother died, and her funeral was to be a big event, and indeed it was. The President and many of the politians came, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of other people. I guess some of this footage will ultimately be used in a documentary of sorts. This is a project of COTA.tv. I had forgotten what it was like to be stared at by everyone, as if I’m some kind of ghost…
The people here are nice, and the food isn’t all bad either. I really liked the food I had yesterday and today. We spent a good chunk of our time in a small village about four hours north of Accra. There we did some filming, well Rich did, I just kind of assisted him with whatever he needed. If the tripod needed moving, I did it. Copy off the footage onto the hard drives? No problem. I like becoming familiar with different cultures of the world. This is my sixth continent if I’m alowed to count Australia (I went to New Zealand, what other continet would that be?!). I’m thankful I was able to spend some time here, it allowed me time to think and helped bring to mind things I normally wouldn’t think about I guess.
Stay tuned for pictures of the trip. I’ll be posting them to mitchd.com, but I’ll put up a line on Twitter and maybe Facebook when I do. It will have to be when I get home. We take off tomorrow morning and I’ll be getting home on Thursday. So there you have it! Another experience to put under the belt, but I’ll have to tell you more about it later, as this internet cafe has time limits…
I left Tuesday this past week to go on a backpack trip in Washington State. This is kind of an annual thing. This time we went up to Washington, in the very middle of the state I think. The hike was to the enchantments it was called. It was very beautiful there, so nice to get away from everything… We saw wild mountain goats, tons of wildflowers, waterfalls, and lots more. If you want to see some of the pictures I took on the trip, check out photos.mitchd.com/enchantments/. That might give you a better picture of what this trip was all about.
On the way back, at the TSA security deal, one of the workers pushed my bag from the conveyor belt coming out of the metal detector. When I got onto the plane, I realized that I didn’t have my cell phone, and that it probably fell out when it got knocked off the belt. I told one of the flight people and they went and “looked,” but didn’t find it. Then five minutes after take off they said they had found it. Long story short, and $45 later I had them Fed-Ex it to me. Oh well, so sorry if any of you were trying to call or text me… I’ll try and get back to you…
