More Climbing Pics

Hello family:

I am in Sierra Leone. Travel was looonggg but pretty uneventful. I did a training today of interviewers who will interview wheelchair recipients. We met at the rehabilitation center. It is fascinating the facilities in which people work and how they make do with the resources available to them. Tomorrow, I will be back at the rehab center and should have a chance to take some photos that I will then post.

Love all of you--and really miss Mom. Send your hugs and good thoughts her way.

Love,

Dad

Rock Climbing in Yosemite

Day 1 warm up climb with Cathedral Peak (Yosemite), the big climb scheduled for day 2, in the background


Scott on top of the day one warm-up climb


View from the approach

Our destination. Still far away!

Getting closer

Scott at the first belay station reading the topo.

View of Budd lake from the second belay station.

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Day 1 warm up climb with Cathedral Peak (Yosemite), the big climb, in the background

Scott at the summit. 10,911 ft.


Rachel at the summit


View from the summit. If you look closely, you can see Half Dome looking very small in the distance

The summit (and Scott) as viewed from the descent

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Day 1 warm up climb with Cathedral Peak (Yosemite), the big climb, in the background

I rocked someone's world today

The set up:

Lunch with the usual suspects: Alex, Sam, Rob, and Jeff (all guys)
Trying out a new restaurant. It is a small traditional Afghan restaurant.
I drive because I'm the only one with a vehicle that will fit 5 people (the rest brought bikes or have baby seats).

During lunch: We all heap a spicy sauce onto our plates. However, the owner/waiter is concerned about me (not about any of the guys). He offers to bring me yogurt to cool things off. When I refuse, he offers it to me for free because he wants me to enjoy my meal. I refuse again (nicely...I tell him I like spice) but he brings it out anyway.

The bill: I'm out of cash, so I take the cash from everyone else and pay with my card. The owner doesn't see the guys give me money, so he is visibly startled when the lone woman in the group pays for all of the men.

Driving back to work: He watches us leave the restaurant. I get a good chuckle as he observes 4 men pile into my car and watches me drive away.

kudos to Mom

Your Mom rocks--but you all knew that. While some may mistake her mild mannered nature as passive, they are wrong. So here is the story.

Mom gets an e-mail from the ward RS Pres. asking for 'sisters' to have service activity to make quiet bags for the Marshallese children in our ward. Of course, these would be the Caucasian sisters giving service. So, mom seeing the inherent racism (my words) writes back a nice e-mail very diplomatically pointing out the inherent racism in the request and offering an alternative in which women of all races can get together to make bags for families with children of all races. Might even help these women to make friendships (in spite of the language barriers).

The "service project" approach that is also the Colonialist approach often used in Africa--or the ableist approach non-disabled folks use who want to "serve" disabled folk.

Dad

Who knew a BYU student could be (intentionally) funny?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs&feature=player_embedded

Mom and Becky, this post is especially for you--thank you for introducing me to the Old Spice commercials :)

How does this pine tree look in my garden?

So, this pine tree in the southeast corner of the yard had long ago bifurcated, then one of those trunks bifurcated again, so we had 3 major trunks. One blew down in May. It landed standing up across the fence in the neighbors yard without hitting the fence or damaging anything. Amazing! Dad and I were still debating on whether to have the tree taken down or seeing if it could be salvaged. A gust of wind made that decision for us this morning. This time it was not without damage. Where is that lilac tree? Which of my plants has been squashed beyond repair? Can the fence be fixed or does it need to be replaced?

blog

I'm going to try to keep a blog during my time in the gulf. Here's the link. I'm going to share this with work people, so if you comment, behave yourselves ;)

Gulf of Mexico

Hi All,

I am leaving for the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning. I will be on a BP boat for 10+ days collecting samples of microbial communities that are breaking down the oil and determining the impact of the spill on microbial communities throughout the gulf. I don't know much more than this, but I will keep you updated.

Watch This, We Did It!

The name of this climb is "Bear's Reach." The climb is located at Lover's Leap, California. This weekend Rachel and I went to Lover's Leap and climbed Bear's Reach! This is a 400+ feet, three pitch climb rated at 5.7. In the video, Dan ascended the route in 0:4:26. It took us about 1:45:00. The route is named for the crux of the second pitch, a long reach between two large holds. In order to finish the climb we had to channel our inner Osman, and we did it!

Everybody Draw Mohammad Day

Some notes to a few students...

As I bravely made my way through 70 undergrad extra credit assignments yesterday, I was inspired to write a few short notes to several. Names have been changed, of course, to protect their identity.

Spelling-impaired Sharon: I gave you full points on that small extra credit assignment without reading most of it, just because seeing you spell neuroimaging as "Nero imaging" five times in the first paragraph was about to push me over the edge--however, it's not as bad as Terrible Tanya, who spelled neuroscience as "neourscine." Thank you both for making me want to run to the nearest marijuana dealer.

Rude Rhoda: Sending an extremely rude, entitled email asking if 1.) grades have been posted and then letting me know that 2.) if they have, and you actually got a 0, you really don't think you deserve one and 3.) you demand an explanation---is not the best way to play it, considering grades have NOT yet been posted (the papers haven't even been graded yet), nor are you in any position to make demands. But guess whose paper is going to fall under the most intense scrutiny when it IS graded?

Inane Irene: This sentence fragment was taken from one of your essays: "I am spectacle on how reliably it is." No possible excuse could justify this excerpt. God help you. (P.S. No, this was not an ESL student)

Duh Dora: It's "whether or not", NOT "weather or not."

Asinine Annie, Slothful Sam, Lackadaisical Luke, and Inattentive Ichabod: It is listed in the syllabus that the final is non-cumulative. It's states on the course website that the final is non-cumulative. The professor stated in class the first day that the final is non-cumulative. The professor stated the last day of class that the final is non-cumulative. My fellow TA's and I stated in our review session that the final is non-cumulative. But guess what question each one of you desperately emailed me to ask? Yeah, f&%$ all y'all.

Copying Cal: Yes, copying and pasting fully 90% of your paper directly from the article does not count as "your" work, but guess what?! It DOES count as a 0 in the gradebook. And no, the fact that you cited the article as a source in your bibliography doesn't change a damn thing.

Apathetic Ahab: Your writing is so incredibly nonsensical, you might as well have just taken a piece of paper, squatted over it, taken a dump, and handed that in. I'm honestly not sure I could have told the difference.

Rock climbing find

Found these guys whilst rock climbing yesterday.  Had my iphone with me so I took a picture.  Made the route a little more difficult as the nest was taking up a nice hold.

A new schedule

I think most everyone is the family is aware of my ability to sleep. I never go to a movie that starts after 730, because I don't want to pay eight dollars to sleep in an uncomfy chair. I occasionally need a good diet coke to make it through an afternoon class. I have even been known to fall asleep during the occasional JAZZ GAME!!! How is that I will make it through 6PM to 630AM work shifts three nights a week? I just don't know, but I am trying to switch my sleep schedule a bit. So here I am, at 11:50 PM, wanting to go to bed quite badly upon returning from an awesome Muse concert, but knowing that the longer I stay up tonight and tomorrow (and later I sleep in tomorrow and Wed), the easier Wednesday night will be. I guess I'm writing this more for my own benefit than anyone elses. I just want to make it until 130 tonight! Wish me luck!

oops

I've been banging my head against a wall this morning, trying to figure out why a very simple bit of computer code that I wrote was not working. My brain was going in a bad direction. "If you can't even write a piece of code this simple, why do you think you can do that really sophisticated thing you've been trying to do?"

Then I found the mistake. I named one of my variables cum instead of sum. Oops.

How about some Kenyan cows...

We went to Crater lake near Lake Naivasha and thought we'd catch a Matatu back (a small bus-like minivan). We started walking along the old dusty road and thought would just wave down the Matatu as it passed---the matatu never passed. It was approaching sun down and we still had about 6 miles to go when we saw an SUV coming our way and I stuck my thumb out.......Luckily it was a group of French tourists and not something else....and they gave us a ride. Funny, I would never hitch hike in the States but I've done it in Kenya and El Salvador.

Anyways, along that old dusty road we ran into these cows (along with some giraffes). They were not scared of us at all but I was a little scared that their Masaai owners might not like us being so close.

Can't take a picture of a cow and not post it to the family blog

At first I tried to approach the cow, but that just spooked it. As soon as I kneeled down, though, it got all curious. It was like "Hey, who are ya and whatcha doin'? Would you like some cow snot on your lens? I thought so."

Sassy Gay Friend

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnvgq8STMGM

Awesome site you all must check out...

rateyourstudents.blogspot.com

Whenever I have an annoying student or classmate (or sometimes even professor), this site makes me happy.

Introducing Marlo

Boston Marathon/Accelerated Cure

Hey family,

I'm not sure what bits of this story you all have heard so here's how it goes. In June I qualified for the Boston Marathon. For my age and gender, I have to run another marathon in under 3 hours and 40 minutes just in order to be allowed into the Boston Marathon.
However, in a stroke of unintelligence, I did not register in time, and all 25,000 spots filled up before I registered.
So, I decided to join a Charity Team. I joined the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis charity team. I have to raise $5,000 dollars by April 19, and I'm scared. That is a lot of money!
I hate asking family for money, but I would really appreciate anything you all can afford toward this cause. I have a website at http://www.firstgiving.com/rebeccamackelprang

I'd really appreciate your help. Also, corporate sponsors who donate $750 or more get their company logo on the team shirt. Know of any companies interested?
Accelerated Cure Project is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt, nonprofit public charity. Its federal employer ID number is 04-3555864.

Thanks family, I love you all very much, anything and everything helps!

XOXO,
Becky

Baby blanket for a friend