Lessons in endurance

As most of you reading this know, I've been training for a marathon the last few months--the race is only 3 weeks from tomorrow. Today I ran 20 miles, the most I plan to do before the actual marathon. I made the decision (mistake?) to play some soccer yesterday, so I was already sore. I don't think that made the run any easier today :).

Thankfully, the weather was nice, and I ran in the evening cool, so in that regard things were peachy. Still, though, by mile 16 or 17 things were starting to get pretty rough. When I passed by any little store selling fruit or sweet drinks, I started just imagining what it would be like to stop the race and partake. Finally, I stopped and grabbed a pastry and a liter of juice. I sat down next to a nearby intersection, scarfed down the food and guzzled the juice, and got back up and kept running, this time with a half-full glass bottle of juice in my hands instead of the two mostly spent water bottles I carried before.

My time was 2:58, two minutes within the 3 hour goal that I had set for myself. I was pretty happy, but also pretty dead. I managed to walk to the park next door and lay in the grass for awhile, trying not to think of doing this again in three weeks.

Here's a little picture of what happens when you have a toenail that doesn't keep to itself. I hope you're not eating right now. :S


And finally, a picture of how beautiful I looked in the aftermath--thankfully for you, after I showered.


Now it's to bed, to bed for this sleepyhead. Good night :)

The Earthquake

It's been almost two weeks since the historic earthquake devastated much of Chile. However, while things are mostly back to normal here in Santiago, the tragedy is still playing out in full force in many of the places that were hit hardest. Also, today we have had a string of quite strong tremors, so a post on the earthquake is still very relevant.

Most of you have probably seen, heard, or read something of the massive quake here, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining about that (in fact, most of you have even heard from me what my experience was like). I will just show a few of the pictures I took detailing the effects here at my home.

Here's my brother's bedroom:


The pastor's office:


The dining room:


The kitchen:




And finally, the only real structural damage, a crumbled wall outside:



I'm thankful to be safe and in good health--God definitely protected me. However, I want to be able to help in whatever ways I can in the rebuilding and recovery effort. Even if this stops making the news, the effects of this quake will not be over for a long, long time.

Back at it

Well, it's been awhile since I've written--I have internet again, and I have to start settling into a more regular schedule, as school starts on Monday. I hope to blog more consistently, but time will tell.

I suppose to be chronologically logical, I'll show a bit of my stay in Boston. It was wonderful to stay with David and Kelsea, and to get a taste of their daily life. Some of the highlights were eating at John Harvard's and Regina's Pizzeria and visiting the Gardner museum. And--how could I neglect to say--the meals we had every night were quite exquisite. Kelsea is quite the cook, and I certainly availed myself of that fact.

As I review the photos of the week and a half out east, I see that we had a little trouble behaving ourselves. I think the first two speak for themselves.



This last one is of Kelsea scratching off a lotto card.


David and I had some fun in CVS too. Note the name of the item I'm holding in the first two photos.





It was also really fun to be able to hang out with Dave Rojas for a day, who drove all the out from New Haven, Connecticut.



And finally, we have a nice shot of Kelsea and David at the aforementioned museum,


and the bros about to devour some killer floats.


Overall, it was an excellent finish to my wonderful few months spent back in the US, and I'm grateful to God for all the opportunities I had to spend time with family and friends during that time.