Life in Townsville
Hey Y'all!
I'm into the swing of things here around the base. We are in lecture 4 hours per day, although the hours vary. On top of that I try to study every day out of my anatomy & physiology book and my Primary Child Care manual. A couple weeks ago, we had an Obstetric nurse come in for a week and lecture on mother and child health. We studied how to keep mothers healthy during pregnancy. There is heaps of important physiological changes in pregnancy I found out... And there are critical complications that can arise in child-birth because of something even so simple as iron-deficiency in the mother. Then we learned how to deliver babies! I hope i never deliver a baby, heck I never even want to see it, but I'm glad I know about it.
Remember, tie/clamp both sides of the umbilical cord before you cut!
So what do you do with a child after the umbilical cord is cut? You feed it. Lots. For a long time. And that's why we had a good overview of nutrition for a few days. It was really helpful for me because I had always known the importance of getting the right amounts of protein, fats, carbs, vitamins and minerals. But what does that REALLY mean? How many peanuts, apples, eggs, and chocolate bars does it mean to have proper nutrition? Now I know. You want to know an important concept? eat lots of "Glow" foods. Eat lots of brightly colored fresh foods and you'll get a good amount of your vitamins & minerals. Simple as that. The most recent medical lecture we've had was on malaria. We that live in developed countries are so blessed that we don't have to deal with malaria. Our team is equipping extra careful so that we won't have problems with malaria or dengue fever. We will be leaving for Papua New Guinea on December 26th. I'll tell you guys all about that trip as it comes closer. I came across a terrible statistic the other day in lecture. 80% of the world's disease is found in the 10/40 window. This section of latitudes also contains a majority of the world's population.
This what happens to sick people, according to some of the photos in our child care book(this is also currently the center piece on our dinner table):
I'm loving my living situation. I share my flat with three other guys. They are all solid chaps, each one passionate about their faith and passionate to see change in the world. It's easy to get along with guys like that. Our flat has become the party pad. At most times of the day we have from 2 to 8 friends over just hanging out in our living room or in the hammocks we've setup in our carpark. We don't have a car, so we hung two hammocks from the rafters of the parking shelter in our parking space and it's now a designated chill-out area. Monday night we have a bible study, in which now we are going over the sermon on the mount. Thursday night is sweets night. I ride my bike down to the store and buy a gallon of ice cream, and a bunch of female friends come over and bake a cake. We turn up the music, have dance parties in the kitchen while the cake is baking, then relax the rest of the night away eating hot chocolate cake and cold chocolate ice cream. It's actually been really hard to get any homework done because of all the fun people around.
But occasionally, I get some of my coursework done. Here is a picture of a common occurence. Each week we have to take vital signs on 3 people. I learned how to do it on my roommate matt.
There is a farmers market across the street on sundays. A couple weeks ago I bought my bike - Stella - and my buddy sam and I replaced the pedals and tightened up the rear wheel bearing. It drove like a dream until I took it down the hiker trails of castle hill and bent the front rim and the rear derailer came apart. And that's my favorite way to waste time. I love to ride a bike around the area. There is a outdoor skate park and dirt track about 1.5 miles away that some of us boys head over to periodically. I'm trying to learn how to ride in a park on a mountain bike. Stella has too long of a wheelbase though, so sometimes I hit my sprocket when I drop into any ramps or half-pipe. Here is a photo taken at the top of castle hill:
Speaking of bikes! I've become a bike maintenance guy around here. I've put some new tubes in, tightened up some brakes, and lubed some chains, and now the base has 8 or 9 bikes that all of the students use. And they all sit outside my apartment. What a mess. Also I've become the sun-burn maintenance man. I was passing by some aloe plants one day and noticed that they were all dying from heat exhaustion. So I dug 'em all up, watered them for a few days, and saved them. At one time I had eight of them. I gave most away as gifts, but kept 2 of them outside my front window. And then the leaves started disappearing. I laugh every time I walk into my flat and notice another aloe leaf missing, because it means that someone else on base burnt themselves so bad that they stole some of my aloe plant :).
This was the day when I saved my first group of 6 aloe plants:
Here is a picture of my beloved children sitting outside my window. There's a glint in their eyes because they love me for fixing them.
The coffee here is TERRIBLE. To any australians that are reading this: please don't take offense. Sometimes you can find nice coffee here at cafe's. But for the most part, all of the mainstream coffee is horrible. And there is a lot of instant coffee. A friend of mine told me that this is because they are not big coffee drinkers. To this i responded: "That doesn't make any sense." How is it that something so beautiful as a fine cup of coffee has not graced this continent? I have a savior in this struggle however. Stephen, living in an apartment upstairs, buys costa rican, indian, and african green coffee beans from Brisbane and has them shipped up here, then he roasts them in his apartment. So I buy my beans from him. Thus I still have access to a good cup of coffee, but no thanks to the australian markets. No bitterness here. A while ago we had a coffee party, where we all drank large amounts of brew until the wee hours in the morning:
Every day each person on base has to participate in the maintenance of the base, it's called "work duties". For the first three weeks, I was on the "vehicle maintenance" crew. This means I washed cars six hours a week until all of the callouses on my hands had been soaked away in soapy water. Now I've been put to work doing construction, as we are building some new classrooms in the warehouse. But that's to come later. Here is my biggest accomplishement. I washed and detailed this OKA all by myself.
IT IS SO HOT HERE. Every day I go through a couple of T-shirts, and at the mid-day shirt switch I am taking off a shirt that is fully soaked with sweat. We have resorted to cutting off the sleeves of my shirts and using them for sweat-bands on our heads:
And this is vern when he over-heats:
And one more thing. I was getting a little too warm, so I figured I could cool down if I cut off some of my hair.
This one's for you mom.
Ok so that's some of what goes on around here where I live in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Keep checking in! Ultimate revolutionary free give-away next entry!
Catch ya 'round,
-Mark
"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are -- no more, no less. that's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought." Matthew 5:5 (The Message: The bible in contemporary language)
I'm into the swing of things here around the base. We are in lecture 4 hours per day, although the hours vary. On top of that I try to study every day out of my anatomy & physiology book and my Primary Child Care manual. A couple weeks ago, we had an Obstetric nurse come in for a week and lecture on mother and child health. We studied how to keep mothers healthy during pregnancy. There is heaps of important physiological changes in pregnancy I found out... And there are critical complications that can arise in child-birth because of something even so simple as iron-deficiency in the mother. Then we learned how to deliver babies! I hope i never deliver a baby, heck I never even want to see it, but I'm glad I know about it.
Remember, tie/clamp both sides of the umbilical cord before you cut!
So what do you do with a child after the umbilical cord is cut? You feed it. Lots. For a long time. And that's why we had a good overview of nutrition for a few days. It was really helpful for me because I had always known the importance of getting the right amounts of protein, fats, carbs, vitamins and minerals. But what does that REALLY mean? How many peanuts, apples, eggs, and chocolate bars does it mean to have proper nutrition? Now I know. You want to know an important concept? eat lots of "Glow" foods. Eat lots of brightly colored fresh foods and you'll get a good amount of your vitamins & minerals. Simple as that. The most recent medical lecture we've had was on malaria. We that live in developed countries are so blessed that we don't have to deal with malaria. Our team is equipping extra careful so that we won't have problems with malaria or dengue fever. We will be leaving for Papua New Guinea on December 26th. I'll tell you guys all about that trip as it comes closer. I came across a terrible statistic the other day in lecture. 80% of the world's disease is found in the 10/40 window. This section of latitudes also contains a majority of the world's population.
This what happens to sick people, according to some of the photos in our child care book(this is also currently the center piece on our dinner table):
I'm loving my living situation. I share my flat with three other guys. They are all solid chaps, each one passionate about their faith and passionate to see change in the world. It's easy to get along with guys like that. Our flat has become the party pad. At most times of the day we have from 2 to 8 friends over just hanging out in our living room or in the hammocks we've setup in our carpark. We don't have a car, so we hung two hammocks from the rafters of the parking shelter in our parking space and it's now a designated chill-out area. Monday night we have a bible study, in which now we are going over the sermon on the mount. Thursday night is sweets night. I ride my bike down to the store and buy a gallon of ice cream, and a bunch of female friends come over and bake a cake. We turn up the music, have dance parties in the kitchen while the cake is baking, then relax the rest of the night away eating hot chocolate cake and cold chocolate ice cream. It's actually been really hard to get any homework done because of all the fun people around.
But occasionally, I get some of my coursework done. Here is a picture of a common occurence. Each week we have to take vital signs on 3 people. I learned how to do it on my roommate matt.
There is a farmers market across the street on sundays. A couple weeks ago I bought my bike - Stella - and my buddy sam and I replaced the pedals and tightened up the rear wheel bearing. It drove like a dream until I took it down the hiker trails of castle hill and bent the front rim and the rear derailer came apart. And that's my favorite way to waste time. I love to ride a bike around the area. There is a outdoor skate park and dirt track about 1.5 miles away that some of us boys head over to periodically. I'm trying to learn how to ride in a park on a mountain bike. Stella has too long of a wheelbase though, so sometimes I hit my sprocket when I drop into any ramps or half-pipe. Here is a photo taken at the top of castle hill:
Speaking of bikes! I've become a bike maintenance guy around here. I've put some new tubes in, tightened up some brakes, and lubed some chains, and now the base has 8 or 9 bikes that all of the students use. And they all sit outside my apartment. What a mess. Also I've become the sun-burn maintenance man. I was passing by some aloe plants one day and noticed that they were all dying from heat exhaustion. So I dug 'em all up, watered them for a few days, and saved them. At one time I had eight of them. I gave most away as gifts, but kept 2 of them outside my front window. And then the leaves started disappearing. I laugh every time I walk into my flat and notice another aloe leaf missing, because it means that someone else on base burnt themselves so bad that they stole some of my aloe plant :).
This was the day when I saved my first group of 6 aloe plants:
Here is a picture of my beloved children sitting outside my window. There's a glint in their eyes because they love me for fixing them.
The coffee here is TERRIBLE. To any australians that are reading this: please don't take offense. Sometimes you can find nice coffee here at cafe's. But for the most part, all of the mainstream coffee is horrible. And there is a lot of instant coffee. A friend of mine told me that this is because they are not big coffee drinkers. To this i responded: "That doesn't make any sense." How is it that something so beautiful as a fine cup of coffee has not graced this continent? I have a savior in this struggle however. Stephen, living in an apartment upstairs, buys costa rican, indian, and african green coffee beans from Brisbane and has them shipped up here, then he roasts them in his apartment. So I buy my beans from him. Thus I still have access to a good cup of coffee, but no thanks to the australian markets. No bitterness here. A while ago we had a coffee party, where we all drank large amounts of brew until the wee hours in the morning:
Every day each person on base has to participate in the maintenance of the base, it's called "work duties". For the first three weeks, I was on the "vehicle maintenance" crew. This means I washed cars six hours a week until all of the callouses on my hands had been soaked away in soapy water. Now I've been put to work doing construction, as we are building some new classrooms in the warehouse. But that's to come later. Here is my biggest accomplishement. I washed and detailed this OKA all by myself.
IT IS SO HOT HERE. Every day I go through a couple of T-shirts, and at the mid-day shirt switch I am taking off a shirt that is fully soaked with sweat. We have resorted to cutting off the sleeves of my shirts and using them for sweat-bands on our heads:
And this is vern when he over-heats:
And one more thing. I was getting a little too warm, so I figured I could cool down if I cut off some of my hair.
This one's for you mom.
Ok so that's some of what goes on around here where I live in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Keep checking in! Ultimate revolutionary free give-away next entry!
Catch ya 'round,
-Mark
"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are -- no more, no less. that's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought." Matthew 5:5 (The Message: The bible in contemporary language)