French Quarter Festival / Stu's Wedding

Summer Commencement

My graduate course work at SIT concluded a couple weeks ago. With my new and sudden free time, I've been celebrating with other folks in the Brattleboro area.

We started with swimming in the West River, a pub crawl around downtown Brattleboro, the 6th annual Strolling of the Heifers, & chicken wings at my kind neighbors apartment.

Below are some pictures* and haiku** from the aforementioned events.

Swimming holes cool splash
Pub Crawls sun drops on our feet
Celebrate nonstop!



Jaeger Bomb good idea
Two Jaeger bombs bad idea
Butt Darts game, I win.





Megaphone wake up
"Welcome to Strolling Heifers!"
Interesting day begins

Moles are brown & red
The cows are coming... the cows
Big and black and round




Heifers stroll Main St.
Retreat for Pad Thai & cheese
Pet the wool and smile

I love the heifers
Because they give me much milk
My coffee tastes good.




Hot spicy, yeah boy!
Wings, Willie Country Cobbler
Wipe those fingers clean.

Wings hot, weather more
This apartment blows my ass
pit out and stinky




Salty Celery
Yucca sweetness on our tongues
Eat hummus, Brown Beer

RISK: conquer or not!
Mike & Hey play while girls sigh
Think challenging game.

*pictures by marz & shei **haiku communally written

Bugs in Mexico

I thought this would be an interesting way to show some of the things I see everyday in Veracruz on my one mile walk to work.



It takes me back to the days of Herbie (before Lindsay Lohan was born).

Geotag

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I love taking pictures, and I love looking at maps when I’m traveling. It just so happens, I realized I could link my photos to a world map with Flickr.

For those paying attention to my Photostream on the right sidebar, I learned how to “geotag” my pictures. If you click on a photo, it will take you to my Flickr page, where you will see the photo and a list of details next to the photo
If you click on the “Map” link, it will show you a satellite view of where the photo was taken, and you can zoom in or out of the map to get a better idea where in the world I went.

Hope this helps put things in perspective.

Peace by Peace.

El Tajin

Last week I learned that Mel Gibson’s new movie, Apocalypto, was filmed in the state of Veracruz. To make it even more appealing to me, I learned that Gestalt, the school I’m teaching in, was involved in the filming. The fashion students designed and made many of the costumes, jewelry, and other accessories worn by the actors and actresses, and many students were used as extras.

Unfortunately, the film is showing here with Spanish subtitles, and my Spanish isn’t quite up to snuff to understand everything being said. I’m tempted to try anyway, just for the experience.

Apocalypto or not, my interest in Mexican history was sparked, so Anna, a fellow intern, and I decided to get out of the city of Veracruz for a day and visit the ancient ruins at El Tajin.

"The city El Tajín was the capital of the Totonac state. Tajín means city or place of thunder in the Totonac language, and is believed to have been one of the names for the Totonac god of thunder, lightning and rain." -- Wikipedia

On our way into the archaeological site, we saw five men perform the Voladores Rite. Now, I thought I’d seen some crazy things in Japan, but this ranks way up there.



According to my Lonely Planet, this is packed with symbolic meanings, which I’m sure at some point in time it was, but from my perspective, it’s just a way to sucker tourists into watching something crazy while vendors sell T-shirts made in China.

Xalapa: Museo De Antropologia

Yesterday, Anna and I decided to take advantage of our day off (our work schedules don't really kick in until next week) and go to Xalapa for the day. It was an easy hour & a half bus ride north.

Below are some pictures from the amazing Anthropology Museum. Enjoy!

Veracruz: The First week in Pictures

Here are some photos, in no particular order, of my first week in Veracruz, Mexico.

I suggest playing Latin music in the background as you watch.

Vermont Fall '06

I've spent the past couple weekends playing soccer and driving around with friends taking pictures of the scenery. Check out the photo gallery here:
Vermont Fall '06

Highlights include:

* driving one hour west to Bennington College with four friends in total silence because everyone was staring out the window at the Fruit Loop Mountains

* going to an apple pie festival in Dummerston to find all the apple pies were sold out due to an influx of Harley Davidson riders, so we decided to go for a drive on a few dirt roads; got lost, found Dummerston, got lost again, found Dummerston again, got lost again!, found hot apple pie, then found Brattleboro

* having Stiles come up for a few days driving a rented PT Cruiser with a red dash board and knowing he was in Brattleboro a whole ten minutes before buying a Neil Young LP

* going to Marlboro College for a soccer game; arriving an hour early to warm up, and actually seeing people play Quidditch, from the Harry Potter books, for real!

Brattleboro is treating me well.
Come visit!

Habitat House

Family is frustrating, no doubt about it. But this isn't about that. This is about the foundation family lays and what can be built from it.

This past Saturday all members of my family volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to help construct a house for the Watson family. The money for the house was raised by Grace Episcopal Church in memory of my late Uncle Ned.

Please check out some of the pictures here: Habitat House Gallery

My cousin Harris instigated this project during Christmas '05 with a letter to all family members explaining that Grace Church and Habitat of Hall County would raise the money and get the house started, but at some point during the building process he wanted our entire family to come get our hands dirty.

Since Christmas, it took a few months to get the logistics worked out, but they broke ground the end of June, and this past Saturday morning at roughly 9am every family member & a couple close friends came straggling in for work detail: Puttin' up the roof.

The start was slow and unknowing. If anyone had asked me the day before who would be the first family member to climb on the roof, Harris would not have been the guy. But to my surprise, Harris not only got on the roof, he led the charge!



Before long, my cousins Stuart & Rob, my brother Darrell, and Harris were all up on the roof talkin' the talk and walkin' the walk. Between the four of them, they laid well over half of the ply wood sheets for the back part of the roof (in hundred degree heat no less).

Meanwhile, my father, who has always shied away from manual labor, was measuring plywood, cutting wood with a buzz saw, heaving wood up on the roof, and mixing up concrete with my cousin Meigan.

My Uncle Bill, Aunt Laura, and cousin Liz were busy nailing up the weather proof plastic sheet around the house and cutting out the windows.

My eighty-year-old grandparents even made a showing around lunchtime with homemade sandwiches and sweet tea.

All in all it was a momentous afternoon for our family. I'm sure my Uncle Ned was thoroughly entertained, laughing, and smiling the whole time.

To cap the day off, we drove into the foothills of the Appalachians and my Dad treated a group of us to dinner in Dahlonega at a place called the Oar House. We sat outside on big wooden deck next to the Chestatee River listening to a two-piece jazz band while eating prime rib and pork tenderloin.

As a family bonus, Sunday morning got started with a breakfast batch of grits and a drive to Atlanta. Darrell & I met my cousins Seth & Meigan, and they treated us to the Allman Brothers concert at Lakewood Amphitheater. Summer ain't summer until the Allmans play.

I walked out after the concert feeling physically exhausted with blisters on my fingers from playing too much air-guitar, but my conscience was clear and my heart was full.

It was a workin' man's weekend full of family.

Mass & Maine

I spent the past ten days traveling with my mother and stepfather, Stanley, through New England. It all started because I needed to go Vermont to find a place to live for school, but it became a great excuse to take a family vacation to Boston and up the coast of Maine.

Please check out some photos from the trip here: Mass & Maine Photos

I owe a great deal of thanks to my mom & Stan for their overwhelming generosity and assistance in finding an apartment and a car. As usual, their hospitality went above and beyond anything I could have anticipated. Thank you very much!

We flew into Boston, rented a car, and immediately drove over to Plymouth to eat lunch and check out Plymouth Rock. Afterwards, we drove back into Boston and checked into a hotel located in Cambridge, a couple blocks away from the Charles River and next to MIT's campus.

(If you're interested in reading more about the Pilgrims, check out this article: Puritans to Prohibition)

The first couple days we spent sightseeing around Boston. We went to the JFK Museum, which was politically inspiring, went to the famous Bull & Fitch Pub, which was the inspiration of the '80s TV show Cheers, and we braved a heat wave to do a portion of the Freedom Walk; checking out Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, where the famous "Two if by Sea" lanterns were hung.



















The next day we walked around Harvard's campus and spent some time in an outdoor cafe at Harvard Square watching a ten year old boy Chinese boy whip a line of adults in speed Chess.

We drove into Vermont listening to Willie Nelson's Whiskey River on the radio and spent an intense few days apartment shopping. There was no time to take any photos of Brattleboro, but I will say, I'm getting very excited about starting school.

SIT is a very small school, the campus consists of only a few old white columned houses renovated into classrooms and offices, located on top of a hill overlooking rolling mountains. There're maybe 300 students. I think it’s gonna be a phenomenal experience that will light a few creative sparks and get the good wheel of fortune turning.

By sheer luck, there was a Subaru dealership located next to our hotel in Brattleboro, so I bought a used Outback wagon. I'm now mobile!

With my mission accomplished in Brattleboro, we headed into Maine to travel up the rocky coast and eat lobsters! Our first stop was the small town of Ogunquit where we went to Perkins Cove to eat stuffed lobster at Barnacle Billy's.
















As we continued up the coast, driving from meal to meal, we made a sightseeing stop just north of Portland around Cape Elizabeth to see the Portland Head Light, the most photographed lighthouse in the world.

Our next meal was on Bailey's Island at place called Cook's Restaurant, which became world famous in '98 when it was featured on a string of Visa commercials. We all ate our first lobster rolls.

For dinner the same night we drove around Rockland to a small community called Camden where we ate boiled lobster at a place called Bay View Lobster. Stan made friends with a guy from Louisiana whose reason for moving to Maine was Shreveport.

Stanley's goal for the whole trip, aside from eating well, was to make it to Bar Harbor. We had an afternoon driving around Acadia National Park, where we saw some breathtaking views of the jagged coastline before checking into a B&B called Lucerne.

Last, but not least, we drove back to Boston, stopping at some outlets malls for my mother to do some shopping, and had our last supper at one of Boston's oldest family run Italian eatery called Jevelis Restaurant. Evidentially, Bill Clinton ate here a few years ago, so they styled one room after the White House and it has presidential paraphernalia everywhere.



















This was the first extended trip I've ever taken where so much emphasis was placed on food, but I must say, it was really, really, good food! My hat's off to Stanley for being a knowledgeable guide, and my belt's one notch looser in anticipation for my next trip with him.

Thank you.

Hawaii

This post is long overdue, and I just got some pictures up online. Check 'em out here:
Hawaii Picture Gallery

Originally, I wanted to write about my departure from Nagoya; the quiet drive with Fumio to the airport on the Nagoya expressway past the twin towers of the station and the new Toyota building. My last view of Nag city came from an almost aerial viewpoint with surreal qualities.

I wanted to write about arriving in Honolulu and getting whisked through immigration because a family of twenty Samoans was in front of me; only to get outside with my giant green duffle bag holding six years worth of summer clothes and be told there's no storage facility at the airport now because of 9/11.

I wanted to write about my Uncle Teddy, a guy from Macon, GA that caught the Southern Rock swell of the early '70s and rode it all the way to Waikiki. In the middle of that tumultuous tidal wave, he married a young Hawaiian woman, had a baby boy, and experienced a religious awakening which bore him again. He spent the next twenty years with a Bible and no secular music. Just last year, he had another religious experience at a church in Harlem, NY, where he was ordained, and he's now on a mission from God to start his own church in Waikiki.



Let's just say, Teddy didn't show me the light... but he did show me a home video of him meeting James Brown in 1968 at the Macon airport. Does that count?

But I digress, I wanted to write about sleeping on Waikiki and overhearing someone point out the exact place where Cameron Diaz learned to surf, and I also wanted to write about Teddy's friend Dr. Wes, a fast talking, fast thinking, fast photo taking guy who married a young Japanese girl named Tomomi in the Ilikai Penthouse suite two weeks prior to my arrival. They still had the keys and wanted to show the place off while I was there.

I still feel like I'm digressing. I wanted to write about flying to Maui and renting a small economy car and paying $125 for a room at the North Shore Hostel; the car nor the room were needed because I met my buddy Dane, an ex-English teacher from Japan who works construction and was renovating his basement apartment. He set me up in a nice condo and didn't charge me any rent.

Dane's girlfriend Yumi arrived the same day as I did (06/06/06), and he proclaimed he was her low calorie sugar daddy. I wanted to write about hanging out with them on Big Beach, going surfing in Kihei and getting a bad rash on my belly and chaffing my nipples, going to a Hawaiian house party full of Dane's host family members and unknowingly meeting Richard Chamberlain.

I wanted to write about driving at 3am to the top of Haleakala, the highest mountain on Maui, to watch the sunrise and nearly freezing me feet off because I was wearing a pair of Dane's oversized work boots and my socks somehow managed to come off my feet inside the boots.




I wanted to write about hiking through I'ao Valley and getting lost, so we tromped through the woods to the river where we stumbled on a nude photo shoot, and Dane ended up jumping off a bridge into a shallow river with some local Hawaiian guys and making new friends.




All these things would have made a great storey, but as soon I landed in ATL, I hit the ground running, and it's hard to look back. Maybe someday, I'll get around to writing all those things up, but in the meantime please take a look at the pictures:
http://web.mac.com/heyheygig/iWeb/heyhey%27s%20Site/Hawaii.html

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Tiff's Slideshow

My good friend Tiffany recently returned to Japan from France. She made a surprise appearance at the Heiwa Matsuri last week by sneaking up behind me and giving me a big hug.

Amidst all the party people, she managed to snap quite a few funny pictures; including some of embarrassing shots of me trying to cut the rug.

Click here to check out some of Tiff's pics from the past few weeks back in the land of the rising sun: Tiff's Olympus Slideshow

04.282930.06 平和

The cold of winter is officially over and the warmth of spring is emitting energies and emotions straight through the stratosphere.

My old hometown friend Brian arrived in Japan last week to move into my Heiwa-cho house and assume my English teaching responsibilities. He’s settling in really well; he even started a blog called The Fire That's In Me to write about his first impressions, and I think he’s got a great attitude towards living in Japan. He’ll do well.

At the same time, my good friend Cem left to begin a job writing for the Japan Times. He will be in Casablanca, Morocco for the next three and half months interviewing businessmen before departing for his next worldly destination. He will be deeply missed.

To celebrate this emotional changing of the guard, so to speak, we pooled our efforts to host a three-day squat party in Heiwa-cho. We had live didgeridoo performances in the living room, multiple DJs spinning dance music, fire dancers, a pot of curry to feed 50 people, a BBQ outside, a full bar that included three kegs of Tokyo Ale, another fridge full of bottled beer, and Brian’s very own liquor carousel shot dispenser. Hell, we even printed T-shirts!

Check out some of my pictures from this Peace Town blowout, please click here:
04.282930.06 Heiwa Picture Gallery

To all my friends,

We is were are Rolling Stones. Somebody call Keiff!

Rolling Stones: Bigger Bang Tour

HOLY MUTHA F$@!K!ER!

The only way I can describe the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang concert in Nagoya Dome is with a string of expletives unfit to print here. To say I'm still buzzing or walking without touching the ground would be a mild understatement.

Before the show, I met my friend Toku, his girlfriend Nami, his colleague Motoshi, and a local promoter that goes by the name Go-Low. The night before, Toku and Go-Low went drinking with some of the Stones roadies and received an offer to come backstage. I got to tag along!

Check out the photo gallery here: Rolling Stones: Bigger Bang

We met Pierre, the Stones chief sound technician, who escorted us backstage and gave us a tour of the area. He took us past Mick's dressing room, all the guitars, and up on the stage. I actually walked around on the Rolling Stones' stage!

Eventually, Pierre passed us off to Mike, Charlie's drum tech. Mike told us to bust out our cameras and he started talking pictures for us. He gave Motoshi a set of drumsticks and everyone else got guitar picks.

Check out this video of Mike showing us the drums:



The show itself was fun, but the Japanese audience was a little too conservative. Believe it or not, they didn't even serve beer in the place. Totally mind-boggling.

It took a little while for the audience to really get into it, but the latter half of the show was really fun.

Here's a short video of Honky Tonk Women:



After the show, we all went to a restaurant to chill out, get something to eat, and finally drink a beer. While we were eating, Bernard, one of the back-up singers came and sat down near us.

The whole night was surreal, as it should have been.

Powdertopia 2006

I meant to get this post up about my snowboarding trip to Hokkaido and Aomori much sooner, but last week was really busy.

Powdertopia is an annual snowboard/ski trip organized by JET teachers. This year my friend Tyler organized everything and invited me to come along. It was an offer I could not refuse.

I took a slow ferry up to Hokkaido and met everyone at the lodge. We had four tremendous days in Hirafu Village. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted some of the best pictures of the trip, but some managed to survive.

Check out the photo gallery here: Powdertopia 2006 Pt. 1: Niseko, Hokkaido

The second part of Powdertopia took place in Aomori Prefecture at Mt. Hakkoda. Our group members changed around a little bit, but it was just a continuation of the same kind of fun. We had three days on Mt. Hakkoda and stayed in a great lodge called Sansou.

Check out the photos from Aomori here: Powdertopia 2006 Pt. 2: Mt. Hakkoda

Heiwa English School: ABC's

All of my classes at Heiwa English School are named after fish. I dubbed this group of 1st Grade girls my Jellyfish Class.

They've been studying with me every Thursday afternoon since June, and they recently finished learning all the letters of the alphabet.

To commemorate the occasion, they decided they wanted to spell the entire alphabet on the floor of my school using only their bodies.

I had nothing to do with this. They orchestrated it completely by themselves, and my only role was to document it with photographs.

Please check out this adorable gallery here: Body Alphabet Gallery

It's precious.