Tony’s Guatemala

After my relatively late rising, Rachel, Mary and I snacked a little bit, and then went and visited with their Grandmother, also known as “Gan.” I suppose at some point I should find out why they call her that, but I don’t know right now. We visited for some time, and then left about 2:30.

The 3 of us went for a walk, and ended up going down to the French quarter, and had sushi at a place that had very good prices on the lunch menu, but not nearly such good prices by the time we got there, since it was after 3. Afterwards, we walked a little further down Decatur street, and eventually ran into the French market, which looked exactly like what the rest of the country calls a flea market. I’d never been, so we walked through it.

After Rachel and I walked through, we looked for Mary, only to realize that neither one of us had our cell phones with us, so we couldn’t call her. We tried walking through the market several times, but to no avail, there was no sign of her, we where about 1 1/2 miles from the hotel, and we weren’t sure if she knew her way back, so we sought out a plan to find Mary. We looked for a pay-phone, but no-one was exactly sure where to find one, but a nice guy at a place called New Orleans Madness Masks offered to let us borrow his cell phone. Now the dilemma was, neither of us knew her cell number off the top of our heads, so Rachel planned to call her parents and get the number from them, after she called the her parents house a few times and got no answer, I reminded her that they where probably in another state trying to do some fund-raising.

Well, Rachel couldn’t remember either of her parent’s cell numbers, but eventually Rachel recommended that I call my brother and ask him for their numbers, since I’d sent him an Email a few days earlier with their numbers in it so that they could hang out while they where in the same city. Bingo! We got the numbers and on the second call got through to Rachel’s Mom, and got Mary’s number, a few minutes later, we where all happily re-united, and we started walking back to the Hotel

Well, I’m writing this from New Orleans, and I’m tired.

My Girlfriend Rachel’s Grandmother lives here, and while Rachel’s sister Mary is in town, we thought we’d all come over and visit.

Friday morning I got up, and went and got an oil change on my poor little car, then I got a new (used) tire on the passenger side front, since there was a bulge in the tire, and anytime you got over 15mph you got a free back massage. After that, I picked up Gavin, and drove to Jacksonville from Tallahassee, normally  a 2 1/2 hour drive, but since there was a bad storm blowing for about 95% of the drive, it turned into more like 3 1/2 hours. I dropped Gavin off, and drove back, another 3 1/2 hours, then when I got to Tallahassee, I went to Rachel’s apartment, and picked up Rachel and her sister.

Then the drive to New Orleans began, of course, by the time we hit the road, it was 9:30 at night, and with the light traffic, but heavy wind, we ended up in New Orleans at about 3:30 in the morning. We Checked into the Lafayette Hotel on St. Charles Ave, and carried everything up to the 5th floor.

I have a room facing east(ish) out over the park (I don’t remember the name of the park, and as much as I’m tempted to call it Lafayette park, I don’t think that’s right) Of Course, it was about 2:30 local time, which is still pretty late really. I went to sleep and woke up about 4 hours later, since the sun was shining in through the windows, over which I’d forgotten to draw the curtains. I got up, brushed my teeth, since I’d overlooked doing that due to my exhaustion, I also drew the curtains. (After laying back down and realizing I’d forgotten to do the thing I’d initially climbed out of bed to do.) Then I returned to my slumber, and slept for another 3 hours or so.

Alright, so another thing I’ve been working on figuring out is all of the computer related stuff that I’ll need in Guate’ and I’ve gotta say, it’s kinda overwhelming to realize the technology available today that wasn’t even heard of when my family was going to Latin America 18-20 years ago!

I’m typing this up on one of my 4 laptops… yup, 4 of ‘em!

I’m sure that I only want to bring one or at the most two with me, but I’m hit with a few dilema’s, first off, I use multiple platforms for the work that I do, And so I NEED more than one operating system available to me, specifically, I need to be able to run windows XP and Mac OS-X.

Herin lies the problem, while I can currently run windows XP and Linux on my old IBM (Lenova?) Thinkpad, that leaves me without OS-X. I can also run OS-X and Linux on either of my Powerbooks (I’ve got the famous 12″ Al-book, and the 15″ wide-screen Al-book) But since they’re built around the power-pc processors, I can’t really run windows very well. I mean, I could buy a windows Emulator, but they’re notoriously slow running, and I’m not just checking Web-functionality, I have to run video editing and heavy graphical software through windows, or I have to get a different video Camera. Either way, it looks like I’m gonna be out a few grand to get to the point that I only need one or two computers with me instead of 3 or 4.

I’ve looked at the new Mac-Book Pro’s, and I admit, they look really nice, but since a top end model starts at north of $2,500, and that’s over the total budget, I don’t think it’ll happen. Other options include buying a new video Camera, since the one I have now is NOT compatible with Mac OS-X. How disappointing is that? My current Camera is the Sony DCR-ip-220, which is a great small camera, but since it uses the little tiny tapes called “Micro-MV” and has a whole new format, (which flopped BTW) I can’t find any software that will allow my mac’s to talk to the camera! I’ve got Final Cut Pro ver 5.0 which would be up to task for editing for a good long while for my needs, but since I can’t import the video, I use my windows software. If the format had taken off, there would be plenty of support for it, but alas, there was a reason I could afford the camera in the first place.

So far it’s not looking good for being able to pare down the computers to minimalistic numbers.

Anybody got any Idea’s? I’m certainly open to suggestion!

Alright, so I’ve been with the same carrier for like 5 years or something, and I have to admit, their service is pretty good, but my rates have gotten out of hand.

Since my contract is up this month anyways, I’m getting a new service, but since I’ll be leaving in about 2 months, I’ve really been looking at prepaid service.

What I’ve discovered:

According to a T-mobile rep on the phone, they have a “gold plan” on their prepaid service, and supposedly, after 3 months, you can use that phone anywhere in the world for the same rates as if you where in the US. I haven’t been able to find any such mention of this on their website, even though I did find their “gold plan”, and haven’t seen anything about it in their literature, so I’m not sure I buy it personally, but I might try it anyways, since that would give me a US phone number to use so people could contact me. If all else fails, it would leave me with a phone to use in the US when I’m back home, one thing that is clear about the “gold plan” is that the minutes don’t expire for a year, so that’s good at least.

Trumpet mobile, a cell phone service pushed by Radioshack, is designed to be a cheap way to call internationally, and according to the sales rep at the store, “it’s designed for international travelers, you can use it anywhere.” A quick check of their website looked pretty good, but then in the terms and conditions, “this service is ONLY available in the US” (My emphasis)

Cingular has a good cell plan for their prepaid, which is somehow still cingular, even after AT&T bought them out… weird. Their international rates in Guatemala are right at $3 a minute, um, no thanks!

And the last option, which is probably what I’ll do, I’ve got a Sony Ericsson 525i which is a quad band phone, and should work in Guatemala with a Guatemala sim-card and Guate’ prepaid phone service, which is something like US $0.15 per minute calling locally in Guate’ or calling back to the US.

I’m pretty bad about keeping a journal in real life, always have been, but since I have to go online everyday to take care of all kinds of other things, this whole “blogging” thing might work for me, we’ll see!

Well, since I’d be doing a lot of different things in Guatemala when I get there, I’ve got  lot of stuff to get ready before I can leave!

A short list:

Figure out my cell phone situation

Prepare my photo equipment

Prepare my video equipment

Computer stuff

Sell investments

Fill all my outstanding orders

Raise support

Figure out everything else I need to do…

I think I’ll start out with figuring out all my cell phone stuff.

I’ll try to keep these posts fairly short, and in edible chunks, ’cause I know how hard it is to scroll through huge posts just to find what you’re looking for.

I’ve been thinking about going to Guatemala for some time, I’d be going there as a part of the porch de salomon ministry in Panajachel Guatemala. They’ve got a cool slogan, it reads “For the lost, the least, and the last” which are exactly the types of people I want to help the most.

I started talking to Lloyd Monroe last summer, and we’ve Emailed back and forth since then a little bit, with me getting serious about heading down there as a volunteer in February.

Turns out they still need volunteers, and Everything seems to be lining up for me to head down there sometime in May, which means I’ve got about 8 weeks to get a LOT done!

I don’t know if I ever told my Dad how proud I was of him, he’d always done his best to do the right thing in life, and as such, had gotten the short end of the stick more times than I’d care to mention, but he never stopped trying to do the right thing, and that made me proud.

When my Dad died unexpectedly on thanksgiving of ‘07 the whole family came together and comforted each other, and did everything we could for my Mom. They’d been married for 39 years, and together for 3 years before that, for a total of 42 years together. I expected my mother to fall apart without my Dad, but she didn’t.

You see, my Mom and Dad had a good relationship, and she does miss him terribly, but she doesn’t have many regrets, and so she doesn’t have a lot of those “what ifs?” that we always hear about people having. But why should she have any what ifs? After all, my parent’s had never been very rich, but they always had love, and above that, they always had the Lord.

My Dad had done lots of things in life, and was met with mixed successes and failures, but one thing you could always say about him, he never gave up. I remember when I was 5 years old, we moved for the summer to Missouri to go to candidate school for the missions board my parents where going to work with. I have fond memories that where made that summer, my 13 year old brother and 3 year old sister where there too, and we didn’t have any schoolwork, so we got into all kinds of mischief.

I remember being on the fund raising trips, with the seemingly endless hours in the car, then the truck camper, then the motorhome, but I really didn’t mind, I secretly loved all the time together, and I not-so-secretly loved all the traveling and time away from school.

I remember going to Belize, and seeing the poverty and disease, and I remember seeing all the heart that the people had. And of course, us kids got into lots of mischief, but that goes without saying.

I also remember the heartache that my Dad had when they weren’t able to raise the support they needed to remain in missions.

Yet, my Dad never gave up, he was always working on some idea, some plan to help the family, or make the world a better place, sometimes both things at once.

My Dad was my role model more than he ever knew. I can’t tell him anymore, So I’ll tell you.