New Stuff Stories and Photos

Click here to read out latest stories from August and - oddly enough - October 2004. Fun photos too.

Cherry Picking

This is what Annette what did when she got bored with both picking the capulines and taking flower photos (all the while i valiantly kept on eating/picking the capuline cherries). She would be reading her book - Connecting by Larry Crabb - and I'd take a few little fruit-laden branches over to her to keep her content.

Capuline Season

(click photo for larger version)
Eating 500 to 700 wild cherries in an afternoon has left my stomach feeling and gurgling oddly... but they sure were tasty!

After living in Toluca for 8� years we've become familiar with the area and had been eyeing a few particularly robust looking capulin (wild cherry) trees during our hikes over that past few months. We like to hike up around the foot of the volcano - click here for the panoramic view - and today we drove the labyrinth of dirt roads and cow paths up toward our favorite stand of these fruit trees.

Now, i'm an adult (legally) and should have been more even-headed, but when I saw those trees - branches bowed with the weight of those shiny red-black berries - i skipped happily up to it and began stuffing my mouth with them. Annette daintily picked them and put them in her little plastic bag to save for later or share with neighbors and friends. Oh sure, every once in a while she'd plop one into her mouth, close her eyes, and enjoy the fruit of her labor.

After about an hour she looked at my bag and said, "Are those all your capulines?" I spit out the 17 pits that had collected in my cheeks and replied, "Uh... yeah, i'm gonna fill my bag later, i'm just eating a few right now."

Forty-five minutes later she took this photo of me and my pathetic collection of about 25 wild cherries. Lucky for me, Annette got bored with the cherry-picking and went off taking photos of wildflowers, which gave me a chance to catch up. In the end we returned with 3 plastic bags full of capulines... one of which, i am proud to say, i filled all by myself!

Babel Fish Translation

Babel Fish Translations - those automated online translations of foreign language texts or webpages - are just good enough to get you into trouble.

For example - and you're gonna like this one - Annette was reviewing an online version of some Christian book...the guy who translated it obviously leaned heavily on an automatic translator because wherever the name "Holy Spirit" showed up it had been translated into Spanish as "Holy Liquor" (spirits = liquor... see the problem!?) Just imagine when John the Baptist baptized Jesus and the holy liquor decended on him.... or when the disciples were filled with the holy liquor during Pentacost.

If you'd like to see a personal example of bad BabelFishing results, click on the image above (or here) to see how our Spanish language youth leaders website was parsed.

Slideshows from Peru

If you have a few minutes and are interested in multimedia slideshows of someone elses travels, click on over to this page=> Slideshows from Peru.

Annette spent a good 8 hours on her day off working on these slideshows which include photos, commentary and music which we recorded live in Peru. Besides the 4 days we spent training youth leaders from lot's of places in Latin America, we also got to go to Machu Pichu... which was surpassed all of our expectations.

Only one wish!?

Annette just published one of her poinent reflections. This one is titled Just in Case and, as always, she impresses me with her insite. If you haven't taken a look at her private blog, click here to go there. If you like to think, you'll like her stuff.

In Mexico, the torta battles burger, pizza

Globalization makes for interesting cultural news. This Indianapolis Star article, In Mexico, the torta battles burger, pizza shows how Mexico's traditional fast foods are battling McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC and other foreign chains that have taken a bite out of sales of tortillas, tacos and tortas. Tortas are overstuffed sandwiches made of crusty bread, avocado, tomato, chili and bean paste, together with meat and cheese or whatever else you might put in a sandwich... however, this never includes peanut butter and jelly.

While they're eating more burgers and pizza down here, the funny thing is that Mexican favorites like salso and tortillas are making inroads in the U.S. For example, consumption of tortillas is up in the United States but down in Mexico. What mixed-up, interesting time we live in.

Rivers & Roads

"Speed and efficiency are values to us... I believe this is so due to the limitations of our resources: time, energy, money, etc. Since God has no limitations, He doesn't need to be in a hurry, so if we are working on His timetable we can afford to wait on Him."

This quote comes from Annette's personal blog "Gaudi's Cross" which you can read more of by clicking HERE.

Talking books used to help improve health care in Afghanistan - Computerworld

LeapPad talking books helping improve health care in Afghanistan <=this article is the kind of good news that i wish we heard about more often. Those of you who know me, know that i'm a technophile... it's not that I love the machines and their inner-workings, but I love it when technology allows us to communicate more effectively or improve life in some significant or fun way. And this project in Afghanistan is all of the above. Here's a blurb to pique your interest:

The US Department of Health and Human Services has teamed up with LeapFrog -- makers of the children's learning toy, the LeapPad -- to use the talking books as teaching aids for illiterate Afghan people, especially women. In a country where almost 80% of women cannot read, the 42-page interactive books provide health information about diet, pregnancy, sanitation, and other important topics [Click here to read more]