We are OK - Update

Tsunami Update
Kara and I have made it back to Qatar safely. We left Sri Lanka two days early because the rest of our trip was on the beach and as the news indicated it wasn't the best place to stay. In a way I felt like I was leaving a sinking ship but then I figured having our driver showing us the sites of Sri Lanka would be the best use of anybody's time. He told us this morning that he lost 10 friends so far that he knows of. It's hard to describe the swing in emotion I saw in the past few days. He's working today simply because there are a thousand other people ready to take his job if he doesn't do what his boss asks of him.

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In case you heard about the sunami that hit Sri Lanka and wondered if we were there the answer is yes an no. Yes we are in Sri Lanka and no we did not see it. It is a huge thing and so far I have been told over 4,000 people have died. Please pray for these people in this time. I have witnessed a huge transformation in the way everybody acts in a matter of hours. Imagine how you felt on 9/11 and they are feeling something similar.

I'll write more when I get back I just wanted eveybody to know that we are OK.

Love,
Russell and Kara

A quick note for Christmas

Well this will be our first Christmas in Qatar. Actually it won’t be because we are getting on a plane to go to Sri Lanka in about 4 hours. You know Sri Lanka, everybody has heard of it. Well maybe not everybody but it’s a cool place that is just south of India. Prior to this trip my only exposure to it was through my friend Shaun whose family is from there. I talk about that later just like I finished the road trip series … or plan to at least.

Since getting back from the US things really haven’t slowed down at all. If they have I haven’t noticed because I haven’t exactly been the most energetic lately. Blah. I have had a lot of thoughts going on in my head so please forgive me when everybody gets their Christmas cards in February. It’s been a little tougher then I expected but thanks to my emotionless personality it’s easy for me to handle. It has definitely been tougher for Kara who had done a great job looking on the brighter side of things.

We are hoping this trip will help us spend some actual time together and we will be able to forget about all those retched lists that fill your head and make you mad. It will be a time where we can think about one another and how lucky we are right now. Even though we are 8000 miles from the people we truly love we have found a family here that helps us get through this stuff.

I’m going to cut this blog short because I shouldn’t miss my plane and I don’t want to drone on about life being tough. We are lucky, blessed and where we have always wanted to be. I give praise to God this season and thank him for all these gifts. For forgiveness for all my wrongs and the love he shows us all.

Merry Christmas Everybody
Love Russell and Kara

Talking with Al Jazeera

Things happen here in day to day activities that seem normal but remind me that I’m not in Texas anymore. One such occurrence happened last Thursday. A documentary was done about a reporter from Al Jazeera during the start of the Gulf war and what was considered major conflict. One of the English professors was showing it with a Q&A from the reporter afterwards.

My brief thoughts

Just on a side note I’ve made my position on the war very clear to people around me so why not to the world. I believe we owed it to the Iraqi people to go in there and remove Saddam. It was either keep the sanctions, have Saddam unleashed or something along the lines of what we did. The sanctions were killing thousands and not stopping big boy, leaving Saddam there without any regulations meant something even worse so in my mind the war was the least of the three evils. It was in our interest to help because we did put him in power at least gave him the guns we complained he was using. Check your history books it’s there. More realistically it was in our interest because the current situation needed to change and it works better for the US if we control how this is done. Right or wrong it’s what keeps us strong and safe.

Back to my story

So as I was saying we were watching this movie that was slanted. It wasn’t slanted like Rush Limbaugh slants the evils of a teacher union who doesn’t want janitorial staff to be part of their job description. It’s the type of slant you have when describing something you care about. You try to be balanced but your personal views will come out and it’s part of the story. The reporter even admitted to it. He said this is my story and I’m telling it. I do my best to be objective but we are going to see things different ways and that’s how I’m going to report it.

During the video it showed the reports interaction with Cent Com’s press officer who over the course of the film became good friends with the reporter. A few things stood out. One was when a reporter in the field died because a US airplane dropped a bomb on his building where he was shooting live footage from. The way it was presented you could tell their conclusion. That was the only Michael Moore like bit in the film though. The rest of it was honest reactions from the Al Jazeera staff which many times included praise for the American people and their way of life. Whether it was for the country as a whole, or the desire to trade the Arab nightmare for the American dream, you could tell they were not the perceived car bombing friends of Osama Bin Laden that most people see them as.

Some Questions

After the documentary was shown the floor was opened up to questions. Just so you don’t mistake this for Cinemark, I’ll describe the room. It’s a typical lecture hall with stadium seating. There are about 50 students and faculty in the room. Most of them Arab and most in traditional dress. The reporter was introduced and asked for questions. I was a little hesitant at first because I figured my views were really different from the people in the room and I didn’t want to say anything unless I could fully explain myself. Well finally I got the nerve to ask my questions. The first seemed loaded so I prefaced it by saying this is not a loaded question. I asked “Do you think Iraq should have been left in its current state, before the invasion?” He said “No”. So not to look stupid I asked “In an ideal world what would you have done?” He expanded talking about using locals who were already there. This is where I yielded and said thanks. I wanted to discuss how we did the in Afghanistan and produced Osama Bin Laden but my argument would have boiled down to that it’s not good for the US unless they have control of the situation. Given the current setting I backed off.

I did get another question in. I asked where the line was being journalism and giving a voice to Osama Bin Laden that could cause more attacks. I don’t think I agitated him but he did go on to say how foolish that common misperception was given the age of the Internet we were in. He talked a lot about how complex the code was to find the next website which will post information etc. The argument made sense and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.

In the end I thought it was a great documentary and would suggest buying it if you can. A complete synopsis is at IMDB.com http://imdb.com/title/tt0391024/

What we really did in the states

Well I realized that my last post was a little abstract and really didn't talk to much about our time in Denver and DC. I do that sometimes but there were actually some cool things that happened in the real world. As apposed to the abstract confusing one that I refer to as my gray matter.

Denver

We got into the airport and nothing unusual happened except being picked to get our bags x-rayed again when we flashed where we were coming from. The looks we get are interesting but as long as we were patient in explaining our story of where we were from and what we were doing the customs guys played nice. I got taken pretty bad at the rental car place. The people were so nice but after I realized how much they lied / deceived me and after talking to my coworker the next day I returned the car. From now on Hertz = Bad Enterprise = Good. Part of it was me not knowing the options and part of it was them phrasing things in a way were misleading. My biggest gripe was when they said how about you agree to pay for us to fill up your car here so you don't have to before you drop it off. We are also a dime cheaper then the gas station down the road. If you don't agree to, we will charge you $5.90 a gallon for anything you missed. Huh, well I guess it would make sense. The trade off was I agreed to purchase a full tank, not whatever was left to be filled. Well live and learn. I still wanted to burn the place down.

I had my first taste of American food at Jason's Deli with a fresh Rubin. I guess it's the German blood in me but that's my favorite sandwich when it is prepared right. We got to the hotel where we slept all the way to 2:00 in the morning. We spent the next day wondering around these neat places that they call malls and making sure that we got all of our "We'll wait until we get back to that states" stuff done. I got to see my “Old Lady” from A&M and his new wife of two years. He’s been doing ministry with the Navigators since he graduated A&M and decided to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves just for fun. It reminded me how far away I was from my friends and family while living over here.

I didn't get to see my best good friend Dave on Sunday because he was delayed by a winter storm. Yeah, a winter storm by CO's terms. Easy transition from the Middle East. The first day of class I was met with a car that had a foot of snow on it and roads that were more white then anything else. I was glad to see that even natives took it slow. The first class was pretty interesting. It was an in-depth look at XML schemas which basically a new way to describe data.

I picked up Dave that evening and we did what good guy friends do who haven’t seen each other in a while. Yeah that’s right, fart on and punch each other. It’s hard to describe Dave but I’ll try. I’ve known him since my freshman year in high school and we ran cross country together for three years. At about the same speed as well. We both worked at Macaroni Grill, helped to start BCA at A&M and he was the best man at my wedding. After graduating and doing a tour with Kelloggs through all the Wal-Marts in the Southern United States he took off to CO with nothing more then a desire to do something. I was incredibly envious but in a way that I wanted him to succeed. He’s done all the jobs that people usually just talk about and his next one is to be a ski instructor. He’s the type of guy who you call when you want to Trek South America for a couple of weeks. It was good to see him.

Coming home from dinner one night we saw a bunch of water coming off the roof. I logically came to the conclusion that it was snow melting, actually a lot of snow melting. I realized I was wrong and found out that the top floor where our room happened to be was flooded. Luckily we were on the dry side of the hallway. Not so luckily we still had to move all of our stuff to the hotel next door.

Before leaving I got to see Drew one more time. His reserve unit was training in Denver and he had the first night off. We basically talked about the future and it was a lot like being in college except we had wives and actual jobs now. Our goals were for the most part the same we just have a better picture of the landscape now.

Washington D.C.

After a flight on Frontier Airlines which sounds sketchy but is a great value we landed in DC. Unfortunately it was at the wrong airport from a friend of Danna’s. No big deal we just went to pick him up. We were staying in Reston VA next to our training facility. It’s close enough to get to DC but you’ll have to drive for about 1/2 to 2 hours depending on the time of day. The first night we went to eat some real Tex Mex food with some more college friends Shane and Desi Porter. They did a great job of showing us around the different areas of town. Another travel tip from me is when you go somewhere define a couple of places that you want to really see and enjoy them. It’s a lot better then running around snapping pictures of everything but never seeing anything. We spent the most time at the museum of American History and the new Aerospace Museum. I got to see the Anola Gay and several other planes that I can’t remember right now. That night we saw all the memorials and the White House at night. It was hard to be impressed by it because it was so far away from the fence but I guess I wouldn’t want to have people looking through my windows while I was trying to sleep either.

After our weekend of touring I spent another week doing some insightful training that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the week before. Kara and I got to see some more friends of ours before we left. We knew Rollin and Mary from College. Rollin was in my Corps Outfit and Mary was in the girlfriend support group with Kara. They took us to another Mexican food restaurant but you can never get enough of that while you are back in the states. The last night there we went to a Christmas concert that kind of drove home the fact that we were not going to be home for Christmas. It was tougher for Kara seeing that I don’t have any emotions to worry about. Then it was off to Doha.

After piling about 30% above the maximum in luggage on the plane we were on our way. I was in business class the first leg and Kara told me to take it for the second one as well. I appreciated her being practical about me needing the rest seeing I had to be at work the next morning. She luckily got bumped up to economy plus and we were all happy shiny people. When we got to Doha the first thing we saw was a really smashed up car and both a the police and an ambulance outside of our building. Two separate incidents from what I could tell. The first was usual Doha driving while the second was some fight where one guy was going to the hospital and the other was being arrested. At least they both had a ride. Welcome home :)

Visiting home away from home

There will be a slight interruption in the "Road Trip" series to blog a little bit about my current visit to Denver and Washington DC. I have to admit that even though I wouldn't call it culture shock I can definitely say that I have had to squeeze a couple of things through my head that would have been normal to me about four months ago. I have also realized a couple of things about both myself and my country in these couple of days. Good or bad I have taken a more critical look at the land of the free and home of the brave since I have moved outside of its borders. I don’t know if it is the constant negative feedback that I hear from other people, or if I simply had a different perspective. Coming back has given me yet another point of view.

There are a lot of things that jump out. Commercialism and the amount of effort and energy we put into acquiring “things”. The idea that we will be happy if we can purchase enough stuff and pay for it in a year. Logic, things work here. People think things through for the most part. You might get mad at the guy who cut you off on the way to work but at least society as a whole acknowledges that is stupid. Power, we don’t sing it too much, but this country could kick anybody’s butt on the planet. Safety and comfort. Most people live their life to be as safe and comfortable as possible. Live free or die. The idea of freedom is a wonderful thing. Americans have the mentality that we have the right to live our lives as we please and there are no predetermined limits to where we can go. Even if in reality this isn’t true it’s a nice thought.

I’ve also concluded something else about the US. We are not a group of war mongers but we are just a country that looks after itself first. We have a conscious but that is usually second to the stability of our nation. I don’t think we act any differently then any other country does, we are just better at it. Even among the criticism I am told that we are fortunate that the states are the ones with the excess of power, who knows how any other country would act with this much power.

Why Denver

Kara and I left for Denver on Thanksgiving night so that I could go to training to learn about XML and how it was going to save the world. We then flew to DC where I am currently learning about Tamino which is an XML server that aids in said saving of the world. Initially I looked at it like it was some burden but I'm starting to understand why it is so nifty therefore costing the entire GDP of some 3rd world countries.

So we get to Denver where Kara and I are like "Huh, so we’re in the states again. Lets go get some bacon" (pork products are illegal in our current place of residence). So we did and then checked into our hotel where we had a weird sleep schedule for a while. What was strange was we did not have the reaction of "Finally, we are on US soil. No kissing the tarmac when we got off the plain."

Missing family and friends not the soil

After getting to visit with several friends I felt like it wasn't the physical location that I missed at times it was the people there. We could have a BBQ in Thailand with all of our family and friends and it would be just as good as meeting in Texas. It was the conversations of past stories and things that we have done. Laughing about three legged dogs and our old ways of life. How does anybody ever survive adolescence and subsequently college?

I said that I don't miss the soil but that's not completely true. We turned on some country music and some relatively new songs were playing that I heard before I left. I didn't see them as the most poetic pieces of work but they still struck a chord with me. I guess it's unlikely the desire for twangy good ol boy music will ever be fully removed from me. "It's a cultural thing" - Robert Earl Keen

It's also amazing to actually be in our nation’s capital. Seeing that I have been in five others I felt that it was time to see my own. The first adjective that comes to mind is power. This isn't some port city where the government is located out of convenience. This is the Government and everything that has to do with the government. It's big and not going anywhere. Flags are everywhere, the flag that I can't wear where I live is waving from every place that is possible.

Thoughts on traveling

Just one more thought. When traveling don’t kill yourself. If you go to lets say Washington DC don’t try to see everything. Read a little bit about the place, pick what you want to see and enjoy your time seeing it. Save something for next time. If you don’t ever plan on coming back at least you remember what you saw. What’s better, 100 pictures of the outside of all these awesome buildings or actually learning / experiencing something that you will remember. Just a small bit of advice that I have come up over that past couple of months.

Road Trip: Part 3

RTT

After our exciting introduction to border crossings we made it to Dubai where we were fortunate enough to have a free place to stay. It was the house of Bill and Cordilia. Bill works in Doha during the week while Cordilia stays in Dubai with their beautiful four year old daughter Moray.

The next day we went to the RTT (Regional Training Time) which is a three day conference on how to work in churches in the Middle East. It was very different to me because it was geared towards the leadership of the church but I showed up anyways. Zach and I missed the first day because of work but the next two were pretty interesting. The speakers talked a lot about leadership and putting the right people in the right place. From the two days that I was there, that is all I can really remember. But it was still interesting I promise.

I’m Healed

There was also a message on healing. It was really interesting in a “take you out of your comfort zone” kind of way. There was this one guy who called a woman out of the crowd who had back pain and he said that her legs were not the same length. So they had her in a chair and the camera was fixed on her feet on the big screen. Then all of a sudden they were the same length. At least that’s what he said. Now I do not doubt this can happen but I watched those two feet like a hawk and I would be lying if I said that I saw anything happen, so I won’t. Several people around me said they saw it but I didn’t share their same experience.

In ninth grade I read a book about an aboriginal medicine man and how he was able to pull a snake out of his mouth. All the people in the village swore by it. So this anthropologist wanted to see the medicine man do his thing. He asked the guy to pull the snake out of his mouth. To the disappointment of the anthropologist the medicine man pulled a line of saliva out of his mouth instead. At the same time the other villagers saw the snake pop out. What does this have to do with our healing lesson? Maybe nothing because there were a lot of real life testimonies from these people that were healed but I’m just saying I didn’t see any snakes.

No Really I’m Healed

Well after the first demonstration for healing people were invited to go to the front to be prayed for. I decided that despite my cynicism that I would go up and ask for prayer about some stressful struggles I was having. Kara went up at the same time and asked for some ladies from our church to pray for her neck that was still sporting a soft brace from the car accident. Well I had a feeling that true healing was happening that I couldn’t describe. At the same time the pain in Kara’s neck completely went away. She took off her neck brace and has not needed to put it on since then.

When telling this story I have felt like I needed to explain each time that I’m a rational human being and that this is out of my comfort zone. Almost like an apology for telling them this story because it may make them feel uncomfortable. It might make them feel like they have to acknowledge or agree with something that they think is crazy. The logical side of me does this but luckily my faith is larger then anything the left hemisphere of my gray matter can throw at me.

New Friends

At this meeting we also met some cool “Brews” (friends) from South Africa. We also learned a couple of new slang words like “Dodgy” (Shady, low class or poor quality) and “Tuning” (To tease or mess with). These guys were about our age and doing the expat thing in the UAE. They showed us the souques (markets) in Dubai and were pretty cool to hang out with.

One thing about living over here is you meet a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds. Everyone has a different story and it all adds to your perspective of the world and your own little circle. My paradigm on how life works has changed countless times since my time here and I hope that is one thing that continues. Some people say ignorance is bliss, but I’d rather know what is going on around me.