2011 Book Challenge

In a follow up to my last blog post (the one about books I read in 2010), I’d like to write about books I plan to read in 2011.

I don’t have a list of specific books, but I am going to present myself with a challenge. I took this idea from a friend, Tessa, who is going to read 52 books in the next 52 weeks.  I read 36 last year (if my math is right), and I’m up for a challenge this year.

To keep track of my progress I’m using goodreads It’s a virtual bookshelf that lets you keep track of the books you’ve read, are currently reading, and want to read. You can create custom bookshelves, and they have a 2011 book reading challenge. I’ve gone in and set my goal to 52. You can follow my reading progress by clicking here, and if you’re a member of the site be sure to add me as a friend.

What’s your reading goal for 2011?

How many books do you want to read?

Are there any specific books you really want to knock out this year?

-एरिक 

A Year in Books

Check out my reading list from 2010 at EricRowell.net

-एरिक 

Chasing Snow

It doesn't snow in my city. We're at about 2100 ft elevation, and although the low temperature will occasionally dip just below the freezing mark the most we get is really cold rain. Just above us, however, are the foothills of the Himalayas. During the summer it's easy to become accustomed to their size and think they're not that big, (they're over 8000 ft) but when they get a little snow on them they begin to resemble their gigantic brothers and sisters that are just a little farther north. It snowed up in the mountains New Year's Eve, and this is the view I was given from my balcony:

We had some friends over for lunch on New Years Day and they decided it would be a good idea if we went up into the mountains to play in the snow. We called Prem to take us up there, we all ate lunch, and then headed out.

It was a long way. Usually it takes about 2 hours to get there, but because everyone else in Northern India had the same idea the roads were packed! It ended up taking over 3 hours to get there. The guys in the backseat took advantage of the time by napping.

On the way we got a great view of the big Himalayas. They're the ones that are covered with snow year round. It's still about an 8 or 9 hour drive get there from where I took this picture:

 

When we finally made it up to where the snow was it was crowded.

 

 

Really, really crowded.

 

And the crowd stretched on wrapping all the way around the mountain.

 

We got out of the car to explore right as the sun was beginning to go down  behind the mountains, and the snow was deceivingly sparse

 

We got out to explore and find some snow of our own:

And eventually we did.

 

There may not have been a lot of snow, but we were blessed with a really pretty sunset.

 

We made it back to the taxi after dark, and we headed home. On the way we stopped in a village that didn't have electricity to get chai (hot, sweet milkly tea) and the Indian equivalent of ramen noodles.

I've never seen as many stars as I saw last night in that little mountain village. With no lights at to hide them the stars were absolutely uncountable. We couldn't even find any constellations because there were too many other stars that are usually hidden. It was beautiful.

We went looking for snow and found some, but we were also surprised by a few more of nature's gifts.

-एरिक 

looking back on 2010

2010 didn’t turn out the way I planned. If you had asked me on Dec 31, 2009 to write out 2010 for you the story would have been pretty different from the one that played out. Not that different is a bad thing. It still amazes me how God can take my plans, shake them around and make them something new. Something better. And so today I give you my unexpected blessings of 2010:

•  I started the year of celebrating my first Holidays overseas with friends in the mountains a few hours from here. What a gift it was to spend that first season with a group of people who have become my family away from home.

•  January and part of February were spent in full-time language class. It was a challenge, but it has paid off so much this year. I’ve also been blessed with some great friendships with several of the married couples who study or have studied there this year.
• I made a lot of new friends as I began to explore this city and meet lots and lots of college students. It’s funny how we can be so much the same and so different at the same time.
• THE Josh Zylks came to visit in April and May. What a blessing to have a friend from my “old world” come experience a part of my new one.
•  I went trekking in the Himalayas and hiked to the top of the Ganges River’s glacier. Who gets to do that?!?!
• I experienced a real life monsoon for the first time… and lasted 2 ½ months! Okay, so this one was unexpected (it was the worst monsoon in 40 years), but I don’t know that I’d call it a blessing.
• EasyDay, the Indian Walmart opened up just down the road from my house.
• We got a KFC and a Subway.
•  I spent almost 2 months in Thailand. Who would have thought that’d happen?
• I got to meet up with old friends and make new ones. It amazes how living overseas can be such a connecting bond.
• I held a white tiger (and I have a picture to prove it).
• I went “flying” through the rain forest on a zip line.

Talk about an improvement over my plans. I think it’s easy for me to get discouraged sometimes when things don’t go the way I think they should, but if they had I wouldn’t have experienced a lot of things on this list.

I’ve got big plans for 2011, but I’m willing to bet that God shows me one more time that my plans are little compared to what He has in store.

- एरिक

John: St. Andrew's Expostional Commentary

To read my review of RC Sproul's commentary on John visit it's new location over at EricRowell.net

There's No Place Like Home

Sometimes it’s not as easy as clicking your heels together to get back home. And even if it was, I don’t think I’d wear those glittery, red shoes that make it happen.

T and I were at “our apartment” in Thailand where we’d been living for a couple weeks while we waited on our passports and visas to come back. They’d arrived on Monday, so we emailed our travel agent that afternoon and asked him to book tickets for us to head to India. He said he’d do it.

Tuesday afternoon Travis emailed him again asking for an update on when we might be leaving, and we got a response a few minutes later. It was short and read something like this “Ticket information is on the way. You leave today!!”

It was 1:30 pm. I was thinking maybe a 5 or 6 pm flight. Nope. An email came a few minutes later – our flight was leaving at 2:55! We just started grabbing things as quickly as possible, stuffing it in our bags. I even had wet clothes that had just come out of the washing machine that I had to stuff in plastic bags so that we could get out as quickly as possible. Within 15 minutes we had packed our stuff, so we grabbed our bags and headed to the street to find a taxi. We got in a tuk-tuk that took us on the 20 minute ride to the airport, but I’m pretty sure he sensed the urgency because we made it there a little faster than I would have expected. Along the way I was making calls to friends, asking them to get out apartment keys to the right people and letting them know we were leaving in a rush.

At the airport we quickly made it through check-in and security before realizing that yes, we were on our way to India, but we didn’t have a place to stay when we arrived in Delhi. Using the last of my Thai coins, I got on a public computer and sent a facebook message to a friend there asking if we could spend the night with them. And then we got on the plane. All within an hour and a half.

After a layover and a rather uneventful trip through immigrations and customs we finally made it to Delhi where we headed over too my friend’s house. We spent two nights there (and were able to dry the clothes we’d washed in Thailand)before leaving early Thursday morning on the train to come home. I called my good friend who is a taxi driver to pick us up that afternoon, and he said he’d be there “big smile ke sat (with a big smile)” And sure enough he was, big smile and all. There’s no place like home.

-एरिक 

the story of my passport

 

Chiang Mai - After 44 days of being held hostage by various organizations such as DHL, the foreign embassy, and even for a brief time by my own mother, My Passport has finally been returned to me in good condition this afternoon – with only an extra entry visa to show for its trouble.

My Passport and I arrived in Thailand on Halloween, but it was taken from me by DHL on Nov. 1 with demands that a new visa be placed inside it before it could be released to its rightful owner. My Passport was transported by various methods including planes and mail trucks across several continents before reaching the deserts of El Paso. “The package,” as it was referred to, was given to my mother who was apparently in on the entire plan (the more hands involved in a complex situation the better). She was merely a middle(wo)man though, passing on the package to the foreign embassy’s outsourcing company which delivered it to its final destination – the embassy.

Now this is where the story gets tricky. The demands of the embassy were simple: a couple hundred dollars and allowing them to permanently mark the passport with a new visa. After some consideration and signing the right legal documents I agreed to the terms set forth by the captors, but things didn’t progress as quickly as expected. The original terms of the agreement were three weeks, but I’d heard from people in similar situations that the captors would occasionally set the hostages free early. That was not the case this time. Three weeks came and passed, but there was no word from the captors… uhm, I mean embassy.

Four weeks passed, and it seemed that they had forgotten about the hostage all together. An interview with My Passport immediately after release revealed that it is very likely that they did forget about it. Reports show that My Passport spent 99.99998% of its time on a desk lying with a stack of other hostages labeled “Not Yet.”

How the embassy came to remember My Passport and the other hostages is still unclear, but they did eventually follow through with their end of the agreement, completing a 27 second process before boxing “the package” back up and sending it to my mother who was able to successfully arrange for the release of the hostage in a matter of days.

My Passport was handed over unhurt this afternoon, and after a day or two of recovery we are planning to head to put My Passport's new “scar” to use.

- एरिक

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

To read my review of Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years visit EricRowell.net by clicking here.

Where all have you lived?

Hank Hill once said with more than a little sarcasm, “sure, everyone’s a Texan. Change planes in Dallas, and you’re a Texan.” Not that I blame them for wanting to claim the Lone Star state as home, but now I’ve got a question for you along the same lines. How long do you have to live somewhere before you can claim to “have lived there?”

Is it a certain amount of time? Maybe it’s a year or 6 months, or does it just take a night in a hotel or a layover in the airport? Maybe it’s not about the time you spend somewhere but about the experiences you have while there.

So, how long does it take until you can say you’ve lived somewhere?

-एरिक 

Blue Sky Christmas Holidays

I didn’t grow up in the land of White Christmases. East Texas winters might get a little chilly, but for the most part it’s pretty mild (except last year which was exceptionally cold, but I wasn’t there to experience it). Even though my past has been filled with warmer winters it’s a little strange to be kicking off the Holiday season with temperatures in the high 80s and upper 90s.

Welcome to Thailand: more specifically Chiang Mai. This Southeast Asian getaway has been my home for the last month. Living in a hotel in a land where I can only say “hello” and “thank you” has been quite an adjustment from the life I’ve become accustomed to in India over the last year, but it’s been a great experience. Part holiday, part waiting game I’ve been able to catch a small glimpse of what it’s like to live in yet another country.

When I first landed in the Chiang Mai airport I was amazed at the cleanness. Everything was so sterile in comparison to where I’d just come from. Then we got on the roads, and I was amazed at how calm the traffic seemed (although it’s still a fair bit more exciting than American traffic). People drive so fast. The stores are stocked with aisles of goodies, and I’ve even eaten a hamburger (or two or three or four). There’s even Starbucks and 7-11. And so I rode around with my head in the clouds for a few days.

I went and did some super touristy things. I went zip-lining through the jungle, played in waterfalls and even held a baby white tiger. I visited temples and ate at some great restaurants. Chiang Mai actually has great Mexican food. Oh, did I mention I got to eat hamburgers?

One of the best things though has been the opportunity to hang out with old friends and make some new ones. They’ve definitely made a month on a small budget more enjoyable. In my city back in India there aren’t a lot of foreigners. I’ve got some great friends there, but it’s such a refreshing experience to be in the company of a half dozen young, like-minded English speakers. It’s been a while, and I can see that I needed it.

As I kick off this Holiday season in the tropics I’m reminded of just how blessed I am. I’m on a fantastic journey that has led me places I never would have imagined just a couple of years ago. A little time to sit back and reflect on the last year has been just what I needed. So, even though I may get a little bored lying around the hotel some afternoons I know that this past month has been a great time of refreshment for me. Believe it or not, I’ve even come to realize there are some things about that crazy place called India I’ll be looking forward to getting back to.

The sun is shining. Maybe I should go for a swim.