Visuality

A smattering of pictures for you. Been here a while now, and I finally figured out that the bandwidth is all mine, my own, while the rest of everyone sleeps and I keep the ship safe on night shift. Because of this I can upload pictures easier.


One of my favorite shots from deck 8, port side looking forward at all the little fishing boats in the harbour.







I got a chance to go out to the agricultural site with a guy named Ken and another guy named Jean-Claude. They are teaching local farmers ways to grow more cost effectively without use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides. I enjoyed it immensely.









This is where I work: Reception, deck 5. The bright window you see is the starboard gangway.

We're still not running on a full crew yet, and the pair of fill-ins we just trained are leaving in a month or so. Sigh, I won't be going home any sooner than December it seems.






We few canucks got out to deck 7 to celebrate Canada day. No beer because it's against the rules on ship, so we went to a little place at the end of the dock to make it feel a bit more like home. I had Citron Fanta.








A second trip to the Ag site, this time with just Jean-Claude. If Africa is this much of an etemologists dream I can't imagine how many cool bugs would be in South America.

Interesting note, there is a tree that's leaves act as a natural insect repellant. We crushed it up and mulched with it around the corn and beans, and made a spray with water too. I wonder if it grows back home?


Ok, that's it for tonight, I am now busy. Too busy to continue, I hope you non-facebookers enjoyed it. Maybe tomorrow night I'll try a video, wouldn't that be cool?

Normality (It's a word, see HHGttG)

With some of the most lovely assistance I was able to figure what was the matter with me. Steps are being taken, at this very moment in fact, to remedy that.

The "cabin fever" I was experiencing was not so much a result of a claustrophobic closeness of my actual cabin, it was more rooted in the perpetual closeness of people. Even when I had moved back home for a couple months prior to this trip there was not so much forced social interaction as there is here. Now, I had been complaining/lamenting my lack of social regularity a while ago, but that situation has changed, due to a unique Mercy Ships quirk that I will analyze in another post. Still, had it not changed this fever would have struck me regardless, just at a later date. But now I do have to retreat a little bit, trying my hardest not to give up my few quality gains in the process, but my sanity, and thus the safety of everyone on board, is at stake.

Aigui chincha

I guess this a good enough time to let everyone who didn't know it already, know it. I'm coming home ( ) a couple months early, in December, the earlier part of December, like the 1st or 2nd. I can't wait!!!

I guess it's also a good time for me to thank all of you who are supporting me both financially and prayerfully. I really feel it here, the prayer that is, things could be bad I think and I feel really good. I've only been sick a couple of times in the first few weeks, I'm having a pretty good time, and there is nothing in general that He and I together cannot handle.

I'm trying to get a update letter out too, really I am, even postcards are difficult to set aside time for, but I will try.

Insanity

Night shift, bite shift, site biff, plight skiff, SARLACC!!!! Tentacle, tentacle, Bow.....Ba!


Hi, yes, you may ask. Yes, I may answer.

Indeed.

Is some sort of rotational or circular, even ovoid, or -if-the-case-may-be- semi-circular movement (or thought) required for one to participate in the act of going "stir-crazy"?

I live in a cabin, and oh, how I wish it was in the woods. Surrounded by cozy little trees and cute little critters, I could find peace there I have never known. Sadly, if one would account this sad, my cabin is nestled in amongst steel and pipe, and is actually beneath the water. The dirty stinky pinky water. Obviously there is no view, no grand vista spread before me, no window to crack and admit the scent of pine or rain (but not lavender). A bed, a door, a hall, a stair, and another stair. Windows exist, and the air can be scented (not at all like lavender) from the decks. One exit, at least legit, and a town without names or familiar faces. No favorite haunts, by my ghosts at least.

I am not disenjoying my time here, I just have cabin fever.

My brain is not stimulated enough, or has been tampered with while I slept, either way, I am acting strange. Strange, yes, I am using that term to describe new behaviour, beware. For starts there is my walk, a kind of mixed head-bobbing velociraptor meets captain Jack Sparrow. And I'm laughing a lot more than usual, finding the most unusual things humourous, like the word itself ('humourous', not 'itself'). Of course writing this I am as straight faced as can be. Hmmm maybe I'm allergic to daytime, like a mentally affected vampire. I'd rather be a lycan.

This post is going nowhere fast. I'll post, and I'll post my continuing symptoms if they develop.
Ciao