What is the Balboa Challenge?

My family is having a family reunion - summer 2009. To motivate myself and to promote good health in my family, I challenged the whole brood to a fitness contest. It's simple. Whoever can do the most number of push ups, pull ups, sit ups, and complete a 1 mile run the fastest, wins. I also made equalizers for the women and certain members who are rather out of shape to motivate them to participate. Right now I have 5 brothers and my dad competing. My brother Tom requested a second challenge based on weight and body fat. We will both weigh in and check our body fat and whoever has the best body fat to weight ratio wins. I decided to post this to help motivate me further. In addition, everyone can see the slow and humiliating defeat of my brothers.
Starting number:
Pull ups: 5
Push ups: 15
Sit ups: 35
These numbers are not a joke they are that low because I hurt my shoulder last September and it has taken a year to get better. It is finally in decent enough shape, so I can start working out again. I also set up the challenge like this, because the gym out here is a joke and these are about the only exercises I can do.
1 mile run: 8:00 minutes This is also for real. I have done little running in the last year as well. I am also like a German Shepard with bad hips due to flat feet.
These following numbers are embarrassing, but they are accurate.
Weight: 171 Goal: 190 I would have put 200 but I don't have the right equipment here
Body Fat: 29% (According to a cheap scale. It might be lower but not much) Goal: 8%

Clean up, Clean up

I have been using the Clean Up song from Barney to encourage Calvin to clean up after he makes a mess. This was really working well. When it was time for Calvin to clean his toys up or if he spilled somehting on the floor I would start to sing Clean up clean up everybody every where clean up...he would then join in singing clean up clean (It sound more like keen up keen up) and then he would start to help clean. I thought this was so cute until...
I was feeding Calvin dinner and he ate a little, but then started to throw food all over the floor. I then told him that was not how we eat our dinner. I then got down on my hands and knees and started to pick up his food and then I heard keen up keen up. I tilted my head up at him and saw him smiling odwn at me singing. I don't think the clean up song is all that cute anymore.

The Mystery of the Innards

While I was in Eastern Anatolia, I got up early in Saturday and went for a hike in the nearby mountain. I planned out a hike for the next morning to try to reach the top. I got up the next morning at 7am and walked through the town that had endless turns, stairs, and corners. Once above the town, I walked around a graveyard and then up a goat trail that brought me half way up they mountain. After that, I blazed a trail the rest of the way up the mountain to where it met the rock face. When I got there, I noticed a blood spot on the ground. I thought this blood looked fresh...I thought, should I follow it? I thought it could be a predator that just killed an animal or it could be a hurt animal, and I had to find out. I followed the trail for some distance, but the trail ended, and I could not find anything. Frustrated, I thought maybe I should follow it the other way. I went back to my original starting point, looked around and found the trail, so I followed it further up the mountain and into a crevice. When I got closer to the rock wall in the crevice, I saw a lot of rock piled up and blood dripping down front of the rock. This is the point where I thought I should really turn around. That if there is an animal up here it could attack and if it did I might lose my footing which would cause me to start a tumble that I wouldn't be able to stop or I would be attacked and eaten alive like Grizzly man. The choice was obvious, I went. But, I went around the rock pile of blood and went to the end of the crevice where there was a network of caves. I went close to the caves and looked in, but couldn't see an animal, so I went back down to the bloody rock where I discovered a pile of innards covered by 2 rocks. I pushed the rocks off with a stick and tried to figure out what it was. I then decided it was time to leave this killing field and went along the rock surface until I found a way up the mountain. I climbed up another crevice that brought me within 20 feet of the top. I looked at it and realized that I could get to the top, but would have a hard time getting down or would have to find another way down. So, I turned around and went back to town to get on the bus for the next trip. When I got back, I showed the tour guide the pictures, who then showed the owner of the hotel, who then asked if I could show him were it was at lunch. Then at lunch, two officials came up and asked me where it was, which is when I learned what they were. I showed him from the lunch spot as best I could. It turns out, that deer and wild goats will come down from the mountains at night to eat the crops in the gardens and drink form the town’s water. The kids will climb up and kill the animals, which is an 8,000 YTL fine. I never did find a wild animal like I had hoped, but I did find the remnants of a killer which I guess is just as exciting.

Malatya and Beyond

This past weekend I took a trip to eastern Anatolia. I traveled with 8 members of our school, and we flew from Istanbul to Malatya which took and hour and then took a 2 hour bus ride to a small town on the Euphrates. This town was centered in a sparsely populated valley that the Euphrates ran through. The town was an interesting mix of modern and ancient. The town slowly crept up the edges of the mountains that close in the river. The area once had a population in the tens of thousands, but in recent years it ahs shrunk to thousands. The people of the town and nearby villages have small businesses and keep themselves going by using local resources. There are gardens and fruit trees everywhere in the town. Grape vines grow throughout the town, even in the tiny square. There is also a relatively famous blacksmith there who specializes in door knockers. These door knockers are specially made, so the person knocking can use one knocker if they are a male and another if they are female. This is so the person in the house can answer according to their gender. I did not get one since the price was 110 YTL for a cheap one and since I do not have a door. In addition to the blacksmith they also have a mill that is run by water and grinds mulberries and local herbs. The miller then uses the ingredients to great deliciousness like Lök (A pasty candy like spread). People also use this term to describe a lazy slob referring to them as Lök, because the food sits to heavy in you stomach. On Saturday, we traveled along a dirt road that that was barely enough room to hold our van. Occasionally along the route, there were tunnels that we passed through. When the valley was more populated, they constructed this road and tunnel to try to open up trade north of the Euphrates. We went along this road and then into another valley a couple hours away to a large town. In the town we saw a famous mosque and castle. Up until the 19th century the village was within the castle walls. After we saw the mosque, we drove and then climbed up a hill to see the castle and a smaller but even older mosque. The next day we traveled around to other villages and then took a boat trip down the Euphrates. We were on the boats for about 5 hours and saw deer (That's what they called them, but they were tiny) and an Armenian church. Our driver got lost trying to find the landing where the bus was supposed to meet us. Usually this wouldn't be a problem on a river, but they put a dam up and this created a kind of lake, so we had to travel the coast until we saw the bus. We made it back to the airport with a cool 10 minutes to spare.

The Desk Conflict

Many of you have heard word of this already: After I got my desks, one for each office I am in, there has been a conflict over the use of it. In each office there is at least one enemy that is putting objects on my desks. There is a clear difference between the way I organize my desk (Nothing is on it) and the way others organize theirs (Full of stuff). While I am out of the office, someone will put things on my desk or they will work at my desk. Working at my desk is not a big deal, but there is an enemy out there that wants to muck up my desk. I will take whatever is on my desk off and put it away and when I come back after a day or so there will be more stuff at my desk again. I need to do some recon and espionage and get to the bottom of this. I smell a rat.

The Battle Of The Hallway.

My second duty is on Thursday. My job is to make sure that no students pass through the first grade hallway. This is a serious issue, because the hallway is between the lunch room and a short cut out to the playground. What often happens is that the students will run out of the cafeteria and out of the doors at the end of the hall that lead to the playground. This is a problem for 2 reasons: one - it is dangerous for the older kids to run around the hall that first graders are in. And two - the older kids are too loud and disrupt the first grader’s lessons. My mission is to stop all the kids from using the first grade hall during lunch. My first battle went very well. As the kids came pouring out of the cafeteria, a fellow soldier directed them to the correct exit to the playground. I was able to hang back in front of the hallway and pick off any students that were sneaky enough to get around the first line. The students then sent Special Forces to the second floor and down the back stairs, but I anticipated this move and quickly covered my rear by blocking the students from exiting or disrupting the first grade teacher. The first wave was a victory, but when it came time for the students to come back inside, they try to cut through the hall again. I countered this by hiding by the door on the inside and when the students came up to the door did a surprise attack and jumped out. They would be startled and I sent them to the right entrance. Mission accomplished…today.

The Push For The Playground

Twice a week I have duty at school. On Wednesday, I have to sit at the playground and watch the students. I have no real job except to make sure they don't kill each other, or, a better way to put it, to make sure they get to the infirmary in time. At the end of the period I have to then round up the students and herd them back into the school, which is what I do -- herding cattle – no metaphor here. Everyday, the battle starts around high noon at 12:10. The kids come running out of a double period and fight their way to the toys they want. There is one toy that is highly prized and is fought over by two groups, which ends up being mostly boys versus girls. While this is going on, the teachers have to make sure the kids will make it out OK. The kids play very hard here which is obvious, because there are about 2o kids with casts on their arms. The infirmary is always full of kids with head injuries, and I have a minimum of one student per day who is injured. The injuries so far have included a cut on the head and a sprained ankle. I will let you know more as the situation progresses. The teachers seem to be more of a NATO peace keeping force on the playground.