Riding the wires

One thing that Andrea really wanted to do while she was still here was to go to Apaneca and do the canopy tour that is found out there. There are 14 cables that go back and forth and down a nice biggish mountain, and so if you have the courage and $30, you can go and have a really good time. Last Tuesday Arlynn, Andrea and I went, and we had a GREAT time.

There are 14 cables that go from tree to tree, or mountain to mountain. The short cables are 10-15 meters long, and the longest one is 280 meters long, with 125 meters of air underneath.

Here I am, on one of the longer runs.

Here is a map of the different cable runs.

After we were done we went back to the office, where they gave us pan dulce and sold us coffee. It was starting to rain, and its cool up there in the mountains, so coffee was very ideal right then. I bought a t-shirt there, to add to my already very large stack of shirts that I have acquired at the various places that I’ve visited.

It’s now time for me to get to work. I’m going to take the van over to Aguilares to get Samuel Amaya to do some welding on it.

- Aaron

A second visit to Chorros de la Calera

Here are a few pictures that I took last Tuesday. Andrea and Arlynn and I took off and went to some canopy tours, and then went to Juayúa to see the waterfalls at Chorros de la Calera. We were able to spend more time at some falls that were really crowded the last time I was down there. We were the only ones there this time. It was nice and empty and quiet. Gorgeous scenery.

BTW these pictures were taken with a Canon 1Ds, and my 28-105mm lens. The camera is Caleb Masts, and so I borrowed it from him for awhile. It’s a fun camera to use; nice and big and heavy. Its a full frame camera, and so it gives me a lot wider field of view then with my Rebel XT. Its noisier then my camera though.

- Aaron

School children….on the way home

- Aaron

Plans/Future

Well, the main news that I have to talk about right now is that our family is moving to the states on July 1st. This decision hasn’t been easy to make, and the reasons for it are numerous. If you want to find out more about why this move is happening, then please send me an email and I will be happy to explain in fuller detail.

So anyways… things have been somewhat crazier than normal around here in the past few days. Much packing is being done, and there is still much packing to do. Having to pack everything into 50 pound suitcases really complicates things. Fortunately, there are numerous visitors to El Salvador this month, and so it won’t be a big problem to get these suitcases up to the US. My Grandpa Gingerich’s are also planning on coming down to help with stuff. They had bought tickets to come later this year, so changed their tickets to be able to come help us with this move.

Our plans are to live in Kansas. We have a house in Arkansas, but my Grandpa Mast’s are living in it right now, so due to that, and a few other reasons we have decided to live in Kansas for the time being. We will probably move to AR toward the end of the year. We have found a furnished house that we will be able to live in for very cheap rent, which is a good thing.

My plans right now are to go up with the rest of the family, help get settled in, and then a week later come back down to El Salvador to train somebody else in to do the Lamp and Light Bible course work that I have been doing for the past year. I figure it will be interesting to have to take care of myself for a few weeks, but hopefully I will be able to manage. I’m glad that I’ll have more time to do stuff with friends before I leave for good.

A few evenings ago we took the family picture that is at the top of this post. We are planning to hand it out to friends and neighbors. It is going to be hard to leave this place, and this country. This has been my home for the past 8.5 years. However, I want to look forward to the future. It currently looks somewhat scary, but I’m sure God will help us get through it alright.

Here is a brief rundown of how the next few weeks look like. Sun, the 21st, grandpa Gingerich’s come. The next day, Mon, a group from Mountain View Nursing Home come, and they will be doing some building projects at the Lamp and Light house, and so I will be somewhat involved with that throughout the week. Mon. afternoon, Andrea and Arlynn will bus over to Guatemala to then fly to the states Tuesday morning. That week is probably going to be fairly busy with work, packing, etc, etc. Saturday, the 27th, all the youth that want to are planning to climb the volcano Izalco. I’d like to go. I’ve climbed it eight times already. On July 1st, I fly to KS on a morning flight. Mom and Dad leave on a noon flight. 50 minutes after Mom and Dad leave then Grandpa’s will fly out. For some reason with my round trip ticket it was considerably cheaper for me to go on the morning flight instead of the same one that Mom and Dad went on.

I suppose I should mention some technical details about our family picture. I used my 50mm prime lens, set to an aperture of 2.8. The shutter speed was 1/200s, at ISO 100. At camera right I used an off camera flash with a 1/4 CTO gel, shooting through my homemade umbrella. I experimented  a bit until stuff looked “about right,” and then shot numerous frames while experimenting with various poses.

I am now tired, and ready for bed. Goodnight!

- Aaron

An afternoon in Juayúa

Last Saturday we as a family went to the town of Juayúa for lunch and most of the afternoon. This town is up in the mountains, and is near the falls that I photographed a few months ago. Every Saturday they have a food festival. They close off several streets, set up a bunch of stands and have a good old jolly time. The food that they sell is really good. I got a plate with steak, pork, ribs, plus rice and beans, some vegetables, and tortillas. The food stands are set up around one side of the park, and then around the rest of the park there are vendors selling “touristy” stuff. It was a good relaxing afternoon. Loncho’s family came and joined us then toward the last.

Here is a painter that was working on the sidewalk.

This little guy cheesed real big at me — and then wanted to see the picture.

There was live entertainment. This guy was definitely the best dressed one.

And as for the food, it was prepared fresh. I didn’t wander around too much sampling from different stalls. They did a good job of convincing me at the first place that I went to that I wanted to eat their food.

While we were eating Andrea bought a scarf from this girl.

This old man was sitting close to us. He was fun to watch. He kept throwing bits of food to his dog. Once, an older lady walked past and started scolding him about something. The two of them were really going back and forth for awhile, and then another old man came along and the two guys sat and cackled at the old lady for awhile. I wish I could have understood what the story was…

This cute little girl was selling orchids. Mom wanted to buy some, but orchids don’t grow very good here where we live, so…

Andrea, and her scarf that she got from the Indian girl.

We were all sitting around trying to decide what to do and where to go. I think the general decision ended up being just staying there and sitting and resting. Sitting is good!

Arlynn. We were looking at a table of wire creations. The guy was/is an artist with wire. He has some amazing stuff!

We were walking back to the van to leave when I saw these guys serenading whoever was in the little shack.

Its 10:45pm, and that means that I should really be getting to bed. Good night.

- Aaron

Random ocean pictures

The week before last Arlynn and I went to the ocean with a bunch of guys. Caleb Mast’s cousin was down to visit, so Caleb wanted to go, and needed a ride, and then it ended up that several other guys were around visiting right over that time, so we had a decent sized group. I got sunburnt pretty bad and hurt for a few days, but that’s all past now.

Anyways, here are several random landscapish photos.

This next one isn’t exactly landscape. I guess I could classify it as a wildlife photo.

And last, but not least, is my with my good old boat that is still sitting out there on the beach. The Chentia. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of that old boat in the past few years. BTW, I took the picture at around 2:00 pm. I like photoshop! All the important stuff  was done in-camera though.

I worked about seven hours today at grading tests. Arlynn helped me, and we got a lot done. I figure I will be able to finish the stack of tests tomorrow without too much trouble.

The electricity was off for an hour or so this afternoon/evening. It had rained real nice, and then when it was about done raining the electricity went off. I sat out on the porch and read till time for supper, then during supper it came back one. That was the fourth time in two weeks that its been off.

Good night,

- Aaron

some pictures taken while the Spanish class was here

I was sitting here for about an hour now working on a nice long boring post with lots of stories and pictures that I took while the spanish class was here. Unfortunantly, Firefox choose to freeze up on me and shut down and so I lost some work. I did open up my keylogger program and was able to see the stuff that I wrote, but since it saves all keystrokes, including the delete key (my favorite), it makes recovering anything usefull as dificult as retyping everything. So, I will just put the pictures back in, and let them speak for themselves.

The great ride on the back of Abel’s truck.

Jared, the awesome skateboarder in flip-flops. David was a great voice-activated lightstand.

Here are a few pictures from the day shopping in downtown San Salvador.

Jared, Jacob and I went into an Catholic cathedral and looked around some. It was nice and peaceful in there. 50 feet away on the street, there was caos; people hollering, trying to sell stuff, but yet inside it was all quiet.

That evening we went to eat pupusas up at Los Planes, where there is a nice lookout of San Salvador. This was the first time that I was up there with a camera and a tripod.

I figured I should stick in a picture of Tim. He got into some amazing places with his determination and crutches.

Last Monday we climbed the volcano Izalco. I had a hard time of it for some reason. I guess I’m getting old. Emily, the youngest in the group, did pretty good, although she did get tired out.

We bought a bunch of water bottles and gatorade to take along. It ended up that not as many did the hike as originally planned, and it was cool and overcast, so we had a lot of water left over.

The hike back up Cerro Verde was very nice, if you stopped to enjoy the view. I choose to stop often, and rest, and just live in the present, and not thinking about the rest of the hike before me yet.

The living room here at home was nearly always full of people.

The last evening that they were here we went to Pizza Hut. Dad got the Pizza Hut people to sing an ‘early Happy Birthday’ for Andrea.

Here is the whole group.

And their luggage.

And lastly, here is Jared dressed like a….something…

Anyways, I’ll probably put these pictures, and a lot more, on facebook. I’ll post the link here if I ever get that done.

- Aaron

A very late post

I wrote the following paragraph nearly two weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. I forget what the deal was that I forgot to post this back then when I wrote it.

BTW, while I’m on the subject of “older stuff,” here is a picture that I took toward the end of March of last year.

I’m sitting at the bus station here in Santa Ana, waiting for the bus to come. Arlynn and I are bussing over to Guatemala this afternoon to meet my good sister Andrea, and here spanish class that is coming to visit. I’m getting quite excited about having Andrea around again; it will be great to have our whole family here together at home. The last we were all together was August of last year, and that was after being in the states for about six weeks. Dad is coming home tomorrow. It hasn’t been too bad having him gone, but I’m ready to have him back anyways. It sounds like he is sleeping much better now that he has the CPAP machine. We’re pretty excited too about having Andrea’s spanish class here. This trip of theirs has been talked about for months now, and its hard to believe that its actually going to happen now. I’m predicting that we will have a good time. So yeah, Arlynn and I are bussing over to Guatemala city this afternoon, meeting the group at the airport, will spend the night at the mission there in Guate. city, and then tomorrow morning we will bus back here to ES. Its been a good amount of work to get ready. I had to round up a bunch of bedding stuff. Foams, sheets, pillows, and stuff like that for 19 people. Well anyways, that is what I’m up to right now. I’ll probably not be able to post this until I get to Guatemala.

- Aaron

Home alone

Due to a bunch of different reasons, I’m sitting at home by myself right now. All the rest of my family is scattered all over the place. Arlynn is at the deaf school in Aguilares, Andrea is (of course) in KS, and Mom and Dad are also in KS.

Arlynn has been in Aguilares all week. They were/are needing some more help there, and he is good at learning sign language, and also needed something to do to keep him out of trouble, so he is over there to see what he can do to help with stuff. I’m going to go over sometime before too long to bring him back for the weekend.

Mom and Dad flew up to the states yesterday morning. Daddy has been very tired for the last while, and sleeps a lot, but even with all the sleeping he does, he never gets rested up. Dr. Jana Nisly is suspecting that he has sleep apnea, so they went up to the states to see a doctor up there about it, and he will probably be set up with a CPAP (whatever that is) to help him sleep better. They had an appointment with the doctor today, so I’m hoping I’ll hear more tonight about whats going to to be happening with that.

I’ve been managing pretty well here by myself. So far I haven’t starved at least. Mom didn’t have much time to fix a bunch of food for me, so the fridge is pretty empty. I can fix eggs in several ways though, so I don’t think I’ll go hungry.

Anyways…

Here is a picture I took back in January, when I was Guatemala for Byron and Karen’s wedding.

Have a good ‘un everybody,

– Aaron

My old processor

Last week I finally tore apart my old non-working desktop computer. It had been sitting around for over a year, while I occasionally robbed parts off of it. I decided it was time to go through it and decide what was worth keeping, and then throw the rest away.

The processor is one of the parts that I decided needs to be thrown away. It has two bent pins, and I don’t think its worth the effort to try to straighten it back up. It is/was an AMD 64 3000 processor. A 64 bit CPU running at 2 ghz, with a 512kb L2 cache. Quite a good little processor in its day, but its day is now past. My current laptop can run circles around it.

This isn’t the only time it had bent pins. One time I was cleaning my case out, and I decided to get thorough, so I pulled the heatsink off so I could clean all the dust out of it. For some reason, the processor came out too. That was not good. The CPU is locked into the socket, and it was forced out with being released, and about half a dozen pins in the one corner got bent. I think the thermal paste “glued” it to the heat sink. I really didn’t want to buy a new processor, so I got a magnifying glass, a tweezers, and a small pliers, and got to work. I actually managed to straighten the pins up, and it kept on working for a long time after that.

So anyways… I took some pictures of it. It has been awhile since I got my camera out and shot anything; I felt a bit rusty.

For the above picture I used a flash with a CTO (color temperature orange) gel, and a snoot, on it. The two bent pins are right in the front corner For this next picture I used the snooted-orange-gelled flash from the one side, and then had a CTB (color temperature blue) gel on a flash with a small softbox up above.

By the way, the processor measures 4×4 cm. I bought it in December of 2004, and paid $148.00 for it. Most of the components of that computer are still in use. The hard drive, CD drives, and monitor are all in Dad’s computer. I was 16 when I built that computer. It was a great machine for me back then. I learned a lot from it.

Goodnight,

- Aaron