Alas, meleeman finally gets around to typing up a behemoth blog post that only gets longer the longer I put it off. So here it is in a very very condensed version...but either way it could easily end up as the single largest blog post ever...that I've typed or that you've read. Or I might get lazy and leave everything out. Or perhaps I'll just forget about EVERYTHING and resort to talking about very little. We'll find out...
First off, when I left off last time I was on my way to Guatemala. The trip was actually really really good, and I'll give you the skinny, although this could very well constitute it's own blog, and it would still be massive. However, here's the gist.
We went down (about 50 students and leaders from my school) to a school in Guatemala called Shalom school. It's a Christian school but they are very aware of the Jewish heritage of Christianity, as seen later on. But basically, we have sort of a thing going with the school there and send a missions team down every year. I'm the third and final kid in my family to go on the third trip, so there were people there who knew my other two brothers from last year or the year before that.
At any rate, we went down to help them build a plaza. The plaza will serve as a mingle area for before and after church and school services there. Before, two years ago, our team built a playground. Due to the gov't extending the highway though, it had to be moved to another location (which is a relief becuz we all had assumed it just got destroyed and trashed). Anyways, now they were left with all this dirt and free space and decided to build a two level structure. The bottom is a parking garage and also has a few rooms for who knows what, and the top level is the aforementioned plaza. The plaza at the start consisted of countless cells that were maybe 9 feet by 9 feet (so like 3 meters for you foreign guys). The cells were divided up by cement "walls" and all needed to be filled with dirt and later cement so begin making it a beautiful plaza. So we got the dirt from the bottom! We were shoveling dirt into buckets by the dozens and carrying them all up top to fill in these crazy holes. Most of the construction work centered around all that, with trucks filled with dirt coming later on to provide more dirt, along with cement and cinder block moving. There were other odd jobs like taking wooden support beams and removing the nails from them for reuse, for which me and four other worked for maybe 2 days of the construction. Lemme tell you guys...I am in love with crowbars after having to do that all day for two days. It was fantastic....hehehe. Anyways, the place was drastically, DRASTICALLY different when we left as it had been when we showed up...hundreds of wooden beams all ready for reuse, what could only be tons worth of dirt moved, and the equivalent of two weeks' work for the construction workers down there done in five days.
The trip was a week long, and the first five days were made up of constuction for a lot of the day, then serving the children lunch, and then splitting up to do vacation bible school, run a basketball clinic, or continue on doing construction. Only 8 of us did the latter, myself included. Oddly enough, working tirelessly for no rewards at all was the best part of the trip for me.
Saturday was a sight seeing day. One group went to Antigua to barter and buy things, (I got two more necklaces for my collection of necklaces from other places), but they were actually bought buy my dad and a friend. I went to a volcano, one which is active (a term not used loosely) and very arduous to climb. It's called Pacaya, and lemme tell you...that was an experience. For starters, the thing is active. That doesn't mean, "Zomg it erupted ten years ago and killed a TV crew" this is, "Holy crap every minute the thing rumbled and spat stuff out the top". It goes without saying that in prissy little America, they would never ever let you climb a volcano that erupted a month prior and killed 7 people. Pacaya had.
So let's do it.
The climb started with a hike of sorts up through a jungley forest thing. The soil had the consistency of sand, and I dunno if you know this, but hiking upwards for an hour through sand is not as easy as it sounds. The problem is, your feet slide down with every step up you take. This both makes it take longer than it would on solid ground and it also wears your feet out from moving more than you would think you have to. Ergo (hahaha I can't believe I just said ergo...someone smack me please), when you finally get to the climbing part, my feet already hurt and were not up to the task.
Too bad.
I'll try to describe what it's like for those of you who haven't already an idea. Imagine large, graspable chunks of black, porous rock. They essentially carpet the actual ground to the point where the 8 feet of volcanic rock is the ground. So you slap on some work gloves (handy, we were wearing them all week, fancy I should be needing them for a trek up a volcano) and begin using all fours to scale the biggest rock climbing wall you've ever born wittness to. This journey takes about two hours up, and it gets more difficult the farther up you go becuz rocks start getting smaller and no longer connected to the ground, or heavy enough to support you. Imagine climbing up a freaking wall of baseballs. Doable, but not necessarily easy. That...and the only other thing you can grab is sandy soil. If you fall, it's a long, painful tumble down thousands of rocks until you get a concussion as you build up speed and eventually hit a rock hard enough to knock you out or kill you.
Pleasant.
So you can imagine that by the two hour mark climbing this mountain, you're prolly scared out of your mind. I wasn't scared of the height or the view, but I was sure as hell scared of having nothing to grab onto when I inevitably slip. It almost happened to me in a few spots before I really got the hang of (no pun intended) climbing. I ended up looking like Spiderman, hunched down low, all fours. Worked like a charm.
Well anyways, once you get up top, it's basically what you'd expect. There were rocks flying out, but no lava. Our translater/guide for the week, Ivan, who has climbed it four times, got hit in the arm with a piping hot rock. He looks down and goes, "What bit me...OH!" Hilarious...But if you're wondering, no I didn't get to look into the crater, but it was too smokey to see any lava down below, although one guy said the lava that he caught a glimpse of was like 200 feet down, not anywhere near the top like you'd imagine. Or maybe you wouldn't imagine. Perhaps you're smarter than I. Oh well.
The climb down was even harder. Sure, you got to stare out at the most breathtaking view of anything I've ever seen first hand, but one slip and you're done for...and when you're going down, you fall head first.
Lemme tell you, there was nothing easy or comofrting about climbing down a volcano. I didn't cry, have an anxiety attack, or anything like that, but it's more or less nervewrecking. But as with the climb up, I developed a useful talent that could undoubtedly stem from any number of action movie/game sequences. Dig one heel in, bring the other heel up, and slide, slide, slide. I built up speed pretty high at points, actually, and it's exhileratingly fun. It makes no logical sense that it's how I eventually became comfortable climbing down, but all you gotta do is reach and and grab something on your side to slow you down or adjust course quickly and you're all set. Really cool.
Before I babble on and on, I'll wrap up the volcano by saying that I never got to see the lava. There were rivers of it, weaving in and out of the rock piles, and it's dangerous to go wandering over cuz all you do is step on a rock, flip it over, and bam, lava exposed. So initially Ivan didn't let us go, and when we finally gave up, he eventually sent a group of people to get a closer look without telling a few people, myself included. A shame, really.
GOODNESS so much about the volcano...I seriously could go on and on...my skit, talking in Spanish, really good food, quality time with awesome people, our freaking AMAZING bus driver whom I very much hope to see again, and of course all the nice guns we saw. Oh man, and the medical clinic the church has established...and the completed houses that the team last year worked on...ooh jeez I have NO room for all of this. I must move on.
In terms of current stuff, there's a few things worth mentioning. Report cards came in, and I did very well. All A's, save an 88 in math of which I personally was relieved. Dad...might not be as much, but I haven't asked him about getting games back for weekdays yet. That's becuz he went to NAB, an annual radio conference in Vegas of which he goes *almost* every year (cancer year with mom was the exception) and got back friday, and I can play games friday afternoon through sunday, so I haven't had a need to ask him about weekday gaming yet.
As far as weekend gaming goes, it's still all Vegas, I haven't Brawled in weeks. As I think about it though, I did Ace Combat 6 a little bit lately, just to kill some time (and fighter pilots). I've been reading Hellboy comics lately, and boy are those things good. I never finished Catch 22 and had to return it to the library, and I finally got around to starting the novel about Endwar which so far is delightfully good. Movies lately have been Lord of the Rings extended edition movies, The Departed, I caught Shoot 'Em Up a weekend or two ago...and that's about it. Airsoft has been especially awesome in recent time since my return from Guatemala.
I got a reflex sight, aka a red dot sight, for my gun, and anyone who's played CoD 4 or Rainbow Six prolly knows what I'm talking about. I finally got to test it the other night, and boy is is something.
See, what happened was, I took my gun to Matt's new house to show it to him and it died. So I came back home and realized I had left my charger at Ben's house a while back, and upon finally getting it to me, it had been destroyed in his backpack. So, no big deal, six bucks online, order it, shows up in time for another weekend get together...
...and it's the wrong size plug. Didn't work. SO I ordered another, making sure before we ordered it that it would work, and it finally shows up maybe a week later. All the while, I've been waiting another week AFTER returning from Guatemala, which was two weeks after I had ordered it, for the sight to show up in the first place. After all these crazy unfortunate events, I finally got the stars aligned so I could try out my shiny new toy, and boy is it. I haven't calibrated it yet, it was night time out the first time I used it, so I couldn't see how my shots were doing, and I still consistently hit a torso sized target from 150 feet away. It's amazing, even at the minimum hop up setting. Then there's also my sling I got, which is very useful, keeps the gun on my back or slung across my chest while freeing up my hands. Excellent.
For future purchases, I'm looking at a pack of five clips, a vest, a pistol, extra clips for that pistol, a speedloader, and a few other things. That'll all get bought prolly tomorrow, as my dad unfortunately got sick on his trip and still is. So he hasn't been up to doing anything, even ordering his son some stuff off teh intarwebz :( I AM paying you know, dad...:D
On that note, my job filming sports games has resurfaced this and last weekend as I filmed a basketball camp that my employer (ex-NBA player) runs. 20 and 25 bucks, respectively. Over the summer, he's also doing a lacrosse tournament every weekend in June, 12 games a tourny, 10 bucks a game, four tournies....lot's of cash for ol' meleeman. Which may or may not go towards that fancy sniper rifle I linked you to in the last blog :D
Jeez...I think I still have things to cover. Will this fit in the word limit for posts? Will I regret spending more than an hour writing this blog? Is it ALL FOR NOTHING?
Well...would I even know if it was?
....Right, that's what I thought too.
And oh yeah, same thing about typos/overall lack of proofreading that I mentioned from my last blog holds true of this as well...I am not. Reading. This. Of course, I'll read it later and edit it to fix three errors here and there and...well yeah.
Until next time, I've been a.......a......I've been irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!