Friday morning we went blueberry picking – there’s this place just five minutes’ drive from where I’m staying where you can pick your own blueberries for around US$0.95 a pound. So I suppose you could therefore say that we had a blueberry morning of sorts haha – except that this time these were fresh-off-the-bush blueberries rather than the dehydrated and shrunk variety found in the box of post cereal. It was great fun – and at least it felt more legal than the previous day when we just happily picked raspberries growing off an abandoned lot. And have I mentioned that these wild berries literally are everywhere? Almost any abandoned fence or roadside that you chance upon will have a cluster of berry bushes growing there. Apple trees are another common sight – and there are so many of them, and so much fruit on them, that you can see trees full of fruit with the ground below them similarly carpeted with fallen and unwanted apples…
Oh but as usual I digress, basically it appears that Oregon in general is a very fruitful state – over at the farm there was such an abundance of berries – with clumsy picking meaning that hundreds of them littered the ground below as well. The whole experience was definitely something off the beaten track methinks – and at the end of the day something tells me that by the time I leave Oregon I won’t want to eat another blueberry for a very long time coming… My blueberry morning will become blueberry mourning =p
And there's tons more where that came from...
In the afternoon Mark (who looks vastly different from the last time we all saw him) drove down to the house from Eugene – was great to see him after so long – and I always think that it’s so cool when two people from place A somehow cross paths in place B halfway across the world. He’s now officially my biggest single supplier of winter clothing, which makes things that much less ma fan for me =) Hmm I really dunno how I’ll take to the cold when it comes though – I love cold weather but for a prolonged period of time I’m not sure – but at least I know now that I won’t be suffering from hypothermia…
But I digress again – anyway, he took me around Portland crashing a birthday party of a friend’s friend (or in my case a friend’s friend’s friend), driving around Reed College and visiting some church/cell thingy – it was great to catch up and get a better idea from him of what my time in UNC may be like ministry wise at least. After that we watched Talladega Nights in town with some of his friends and some of their friends – but not before some car trouble which I shall get back to later – anyway it’s a Will Ferrell movie about Nascar – with some laughs but generally too crude for my tastes – the scene where he said grace was a big turn-off for me – and I am saying so much about it because I figure it won’t be shown in Singapore due to the heavy American references (how many people in Singapore know about Nascar anyway?) so I guess I can spoil it somewhat for you…
The car trouble was quite freaky – but anyway to cut a long story short I ended up having to spend the night in his friend’s house (I only first met her that very afternoon – but she was very hospitable thankfully) and in the morning we went to rectify the problem which turned out to be spark plug trouble – and suddenly all my memories of boat maintenance came flooding back too me about twelve hours too late… God was very gracious in seeing us through the whole thing =)
Matthew, Mark and our friend (neither Luke nor John)(i am not sure how to spell her name so i shall refrain from doing so)
Somewhat abruptly, I was soon whisked off to Seattle, WA with the folks and the people we’re staying with. Was quite looking forward to going there initially (have been there before, but it was only a short transit at the airport) – I had visions of sipping a coffee under the cool shade of the Space Needle while using the café computer with a Microsoft operating system, watching Boeing planes zip across the sky, and imagining a scene of Frasier happening right in front of me. Instead I was stuck with close to 90°F (32°C) weather under an intense sun shying away from the numerous fresh seafood stalls in the Pike Place Market (i was especially grossed out by a stack of giant dismembered crab legs as long as some people are tall). Was basically like San Francisco only hotter and sunnier… Oh well, at least I can say been there, done that =)
- there's one with me in it but my face is all black
This morning I went to the church with our host family – my first church experience in the States for a long time now – took some getting used to (my father had a lot of comments =p) but all in all a very interesting experience for me – at least after meeting some IV people with Mark and church today I have a better idea of what things may be like for the next few months…
Just now we stopped by an Asian supermarket – was confronted by strange things like pigs’ organs laid out in the meat display looking like a Jack the Ripper murder scene and frozen whole durians and rambutans – the latter looked particularly gross – they were a uniform dirty brown colour and all suffered a very bad hair day…
So that’s in a nutshell how things have been going so far – overall I’m glad for the whole experience – so many new things, and meeting up with Mark was great too – at the same time issues to work through have already developed exponentially since I’ve arrived – that’s like only four days - and think that I’ll have quite a bit to deal with throughout the rest of my time in the States – to elaborate would take too long – but suffice to say it’s gonna be a bumpy yet positively eventful road ahead – maybe like a funky rollercoaster ride…
Oh and btw, now that my baggage and hence my mic is back - i should be able to use all of skype's functions now - so no more of that shouting into the plug socket business =p
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