I'm home and away again

Hi Marjoriacs,

This is an entirely personal and not at all Marjorie related blog entry.

I got home from Belize last night. I'll give you a few words on Belize and a few other random updates before disappearing again to my sales meeting in Florida early a.m. tomorrow.

Belize is one wacky place and should be the subject of one of those TV programs set in a place where everyone is insane in a charming way (think Northern Exposure gone tropical). At the same time the poverty of the place is completely oppressive and heartbreaking.

I spent most of my week in a slum in Belize City. The neighborhood is known as either the "Burial Grounds" because of its proximity to the city's largest cemetary or "London Bridges" because it is a swamp where squatters build shacks and little bridges to get to them. The residents of the Burial Grounds dump all manner of trash to fill the swamp in an attempt to create land. It's a real toxic soup.

I was mostly working on a school building that will be opening this fall. I don't see how--it's nowhere near ready. It was hot and dirty work. Belize City is a crime riddled and very dangerous place. There were four murders here on the day I arrived and three on the day I left (and that's in a city of only 80,000 people). A couple of days we were wiring this building. There was a guy staying in the building overnight, but Rudolfo must have gone off for a while because while he was away, thieves came in and stole most of the wires we had spent two days installing. It's just a really frustrating place to be.

The food was beans and rice or rice with beans (and a little chicken) for most lunches and dinners. Breakfast was beans and some sort of bread. Pretty basic fare.

It wasn't all "suffering for Jesus". On Sunday drove across the country to visit some nearly deserted Mayan ruins on the Guatemalan border and jump off a waterfall in the jungle nearby. On my last day I got sent off to hop a boat for a four hour ride to an island in the north of the country to help deliver a bunch of new computers to a school. I slept on the boat and hopped an "air taxi" back to Belize City the next day and headed for home.

Here is just one picture showing a few of the "London Bridges" shanties taken from the roof of the school building. I've got other very cool pictures that show more of the beauty of the place, but that will wait until I can bore you with them later.

Mike and Jen and their kids are on the road to their new Lynchburg home as I write this. We'll sure miss having them around here.

Okay this blog will return to Marjorie-related business soon. Speaking of which, did you notice that Cathleen thrashed her competition in the now closed "shopaholic" poll?

I Do Know How To Spell

I thought I was editing my poorly spelled post, but instead I was posting it. So high tech!

SO HERE HANK'S EMAIL.. IHAVE NO IDEA WHY IT DIDN'T POST ON THE LAST TRY. I'M NEW ATY THIS ND JUST TRYING TO KEEP THINGS GOING WHILE HANK IS GONE....

FROM BELIZE....

Okay, how do I put this. Let's just say that when the first thing you do when you land in a Third World nation is to visit its only prison and deal with customs agents there, it makes your initial impression pretty powerful.

So, after going through customs I stepped out into the world. A random, very sketchy looking guy asked me "are you Hank". This was Kenny, my chauffeur. He and a strange little white guy named Carl led me to a field behind what appeared to be a derelict hotel where a couple of abandoned pickup truck sat. Over the course of the next little while it dawned on me that one of those abandoned vehicles was to be my limo.

We were met there by Tim Tam (so help me, that's his name), the head of the missionary organization and by a middle aged American ex-pat named Judy, who turned out to be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader in another life--believe me, you'd never guess that in a million years. Then the discussion ensued in the parking lot, for about an hour and it was ultimately was determined that Tim would take me to the hotel while Carl and Kenny took the other rolling junker somewhere else. Tim and I spent an hour getting gas at a full service gas station (where we were the only customers the entire time--literally nothing happens fast in this country).

Then we went into the boonies to the prison--the home of 1,347 prisoners (men, women and children)--(only 40 of whom are women--I'm not sure how many are kids). This is the only prison in the country. Let's just say that I think I could engineer an escape for all 1,347 inmates and that nobody would notice for a while. We were there for a couple of hours hanging with one of the top prison officials and waited for a customs guy to show up so they could break the seal on a container of medical and school supplies that had been donated to the mission. Why they were being stored at the prison was never quite clear to me.

Then it was off to downtown Belize City to pick up Carl and Kenny. Okay then we finally ended up at the hotel, I ended up buying the guys dinner at the hotel restaurant (not cheap, not expensive, but also not good). At that point (probably close to midnight your time), I literally fell on the bed and crashed into a deep sleep.

Woke up this morning too late to scuba. Tried chartering a half day of fishing and they wanted $300 US for it, so, POOL DAY!

Hank's First message from Belize

I thought you might be interested in Hank's first email from the mission trip in Belize.  I talked with him for about three minutes tonight at a gazillion dollars a minute and he was doing great.  I figured in his absence I should blog something, so here is his message to me at 10 this morning:

Teri Makes a Surprise Trip to Paris!

A couple of quick items

Today the Helena Henleys gathered with the Hoover Henleys along with a bunch of their friends for a kind of official farewell party as they complete their move to Lynchburg. We cooked a bunch of hot dogs and hamburgers while the kids swam and the adults mostly shared laughs and memories. It was a good time--very bittersweet. As I write this, Mike is flying back to Lynchburg so he can get to work bright and early tomorrow. Later tonight he'll be sleeping in their new Virginia home (on a blow up mattress since the movers won't come for a couple of weeks). Jen and the kids will head up there in a couple of weeks after the move is finalized.

Mike also has a suggestion for our next poll based on his preliminary research of the Paris dining scene. I'll launch that poll and tell you more about that after we wrap up the current poll on shopaholism.

Okay, so Teri is just back from a surprise scouting trip to Paris last week. She reports that Paris was a little hotter than she expected and that fashions in the vicinity of Paris have taken a turn for the worse.

Don't believe me? Well, I've got proof. Here are a couple of pictures of Teri in front of the Arc de Triumphe and the Eiffel Tower. They're a little blurry because they were taken with her cell phone, but I promise they're genuine.

Okay, okay. It's not that Paris. Teri was actually in Las Vegas for a couple of days for a gathering of advertising professors and had these pictures taken in front of the Paris Casino. It was 107 degrees while Teri was in Vegas last week, so it couldn't have felt much like the real Paris, and Teri says that the fashion sensiblilities of Vegas are also pretty much incompatible with those of the fashion obsessed French.

Petanque Anyone?

Before I get to today's topic, a few odds and ends.

Have you been to the blog site and voted on this week's poll yet? It looks to be a runaway election, but you still have time to exercise your franchise

Teri visited Paris yesterday on a scouting trip for our upcoming adventure. I may have proof for you in a few days (if we can figure out how to get a picture from her cell phone to my computer).

Unless one or more of my co-authors write some guest posts in my absence, the blog is going to be pretty quiet over the next few weeks. On Thursday I fly to Belize for a one week church mission trip. Wish me luck. I'll be painting a church building and playing "Uncle Zeke" in a series of VBS skits among other things. We'll also be visiting a prison, going to a couple of Belizian church services and who knows what all. My understanding is that we'll be working in a pretty slummy part of Belize City, which should be interesting

After I get back, I'll be home for all of one day before flying to Florida for a five day sales meeting (Steve will also be there for that one), so Teri isn't going to see much of me for a couple of weeks and I won't be very blogarific for a while.

Okay, on to today's subject.

The game of Pentanque (also known as Boules), is sort of a French national pastime. Go to any park in any French city on a nice day and you'll find a bunch of older French men (and French folks of all ages) playing the game. You'll see--this game really is a kind of national pastime, particularly for the aforementioned older men. Boules is similar to the Italian game Bocci and is played with metal balls.

It's kind of like a cross between bowling, marbles and horseshoes. I don't know the rules, but it's apparently a really simple game to learn and a very difficult game to master.

So I propose the following:

On our trip I'll try to acquire a Pentanque set (shouldn't be much of a challenge). And then one afternoon, lets find a park in whatever town we're parked in that day and hold a BYSAPC Pentanque Tournament. It should be hilarious and if my plan unfolds the way I imagine, we should draw a crowd of very amused native "coaches" to laugh at us and show us the proper way to play.

Here's a website that has a nice basic explanation of the game.

http://www.petanque.net.nz/Learning_to_play.html

So how about it. Who's up for a game of Petanque?

How Different Are the French?

Here's how different . . .

Imagine, if you will, Laura Bush putting out a music album this week with lyrics like these . . . "You are my drug, more deadly than Afghan heroin, more dangerous than Colombian white."

Imagine if Laura Bush used to date Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger before marrying George.

Imagine (I dare you) that prior to becoming First Lady, Laura Bush had a modeling career and posed nude for a photo shoot. Imagine also that Christie's recently auctioned one of those photos for $91,000.

Finally, imagine Laura Bush being totally hot.

Well, that's exactly the situation in France, where all of this and more is true of the French First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

And, other than critics trashing her new album (after it's gotten over half a million listens on her website), the French seem pretty cool with most of this.

Here's a link to that infamous photo of the French First Lady with the naughty bits covered by digital duct tape and a link to the uncovered version if you like your art fig leaf free.

http://www.digitalalchemy.tv/2008/03/carla-bruni-sarkozy-nude-photo.html

When former French President Francois Mitterand died in 1996, he left behind both a widow (to whom he had been married 50 years) and a long-time mistress and illegitimate daughter (age 21 at the time of his death). Both the mistress and daughter were seated prominently with the rest of the family at Mitterand's funeral and nobody was shocked.

I ask once again, gentle reader, are the French different? Oh yeah, you bet they are. Vivre la difference!

SO, in closing, here are a couple more of Carla's album covers. I'm including these only so that you'll be able to so that you'll be able to recognize her if we run into her while we're in France and for no other reason. Click on either of the covers and they'll expand on your screen for your viewing pleasure.