Tripping with G and Y

So I just finished my first week of Indonesian class and I am very excited. I’ve always wanted to learn another language, and spending seven hours a day in class I think I’ll get a little bit further in my comprehension then I did in high school French. Indonesian wasn’t exactly my first choice but it’s certainly better than getting Pashtu or Farsi or Arabic. I’ve discovered that learning another language can be frustrating at times, especially early on. Our teacher is a native Indonesian; her English is good, but sometimes she’s a little hard to understand. She’ll try to explain something and not infrequently I’ll look at the other guys in my class and see that the bewildered look on my face matches the one on theirs. Usually the light bulb will go off in someone’s head and they’ll explain it back to her in English we can all understand and she’ll get excited and say “ya, ya, bagus (good). I relieve the tension by coming up with phrases that make me laugh.
Teacher: Halo James, Apa kabar (hi how are you)
Me: Saya sangat persajarah (I am very hysterical)
Teacher: Oh Mengapa? (Why?)
Me: Saya minum susu bisa (I drank poison milk)
She always gives me this look like don’t be stupid. She’ll ask us to make up our own sentences so I write,
Raket-raket itu adalah reproduksi (Those racquets are reproducing)
Or
Mereka makan sepeda merah (They ate the red bicycle)

As I mentioned our teacher is a native of Indonesia, Jawa to be exact. She goes off on tangents a lot which leaves us all scratching our heads. She thinks I look like Sean Penn which is a new one for me. I think she wants me to go dancing with her; there is a zero percent chance that this will happen.

Indonesian is actually a pretty easy language to learn. Unlike English its words are actually pronounced phonetically. For instance it has five vowels, and they all have one pronunciation. “o” will always be pronounced like the o in “boat.” In English we have long and short vowel pronunciations and about a million variations of these. “Bad” “ball” “a” are all short but they are pronounced differently. If you’re trying to learn English you’d be like
“How do I know which inflection to use?”
“I don’t know you just do.”
“???” (???=bewilderment)
Studying Indonesian this past week has shown me just how jacked up our own language is. It’s kind of like Chinese: if you didn’t grow up speaking it good luck trying to learn it later in life.

Take the letter C for example. Why do we have this letter? What exactly does C have to offer that isn’t already covered by K and S. Car would be the same as kar, city would be the same as sity. It only looks weird because we’re not used to it. How do I know if C is a K or S sound? Well there’s more rules, but there’s also exceptions to those rules you just kind of have to know.

G is another flagrant offender. It has two different sounds and sometimes it’s silent ???
Game, gym; totally different. Why don’t we just use J? What is so wrong with J? Gym; there’s a phonetic phelony. How did we get this word? I think G and Y were hopped up on crack cocaine and capped J and I. “G.Y.M. it’s pronounced Jim, what are you looking at?” No one had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say “No, this is wrong; G.Y.M. does not say Jim.” And silent G ??? If it’s silent why is it in there? Sign: it’s like G snuck in the backdoor and posed for the family picture. Two months later the family gets there portrait back and there’s some stranger standing in the back.
“Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know I thought he was one of your relatives?”
“I don’t know him?”
“How’d he get in there?”
It becomes a family legend, the stranger in the back of the photo who isn’t supposed to be there.
Oh and let’s not forget when G sounds like F. Rough ??? We just accept this because it’s what we were taught. This was probably a practical joke gone horribly wrong, probably perpetrated by the French.
“Hey let’s throw some random letters together and tell the English it’s pronounced “Ruf.”
We believed them, and they’re still laughing at us.

Y is another good example of how jacked up our language is. It’s like the catch all letter.
“Hey we don’t really have any other letters to use?”
“Uh just throw a Y in there.”
How else do you explain syrup, why, whey, way (pronounced the same as whey ???), gym, yellow, many, eye, etc.

Anyway all that to say Indonesian in comparison is a very easy language to learn, of course with any language it takes time and practice. Even still I think the world would be a lot less complicated if everyone just spoke English.

Ali's Wedding

“This guy isn’t going to cry.” These were words I had spoken the night before with thumbs pointed back at myself for added effect. I’m not sure if I was trying to be confident, be funny, or be macho; but apparently I was just being stupid. Cue Saturday afternoon, cue Canon in D, cue beautiful little sister walking the aisle, and cue me standing in front of a whole bunch of people in my military uniform with tears streaming down my face. I knew it was coming and I just didn’t care. I haven’t cried like that in a long time and it felt pretty good. When I finally gained my composure my dad had just handed Alison to Mike and they both turned and faced the pastor. “Time for the devotion” I think. Only the pastor doesn’t say anything; in fact no one says anything. Awkward silence. Like everyone else in the building I’m thinking, “someone needs to be doing something; someone forgot their job, someone is dropping the ball.” It came to me in a progressive revelation. “Isn’t someone supposed to be reading scripture? Wasn’t there something I was supposed to do” Light Bulb! “Oh crap I’m supposed to be reading scripture.” No one said anything to me afterward so I guess the pause wasn’t as long as I had thought; when it’s your head on the chopping block seconds turn into hours. I wonder what the physics behind this look like. It’s kind of like an e=mc squared type formula; number of people who will witness your failure times how many people will talk about your screw up after the incident, factor in the actual elapsed time and the number of shades of red you turn, and that should equal your perception of how much time elapsed, which is exponentially higher than the actual time.




So my little sister got married and it was a joyous occasion. It was hard to believe it was happening at first (my little sister, married?!) Sure enough. Fortunately her husband (my brother in law) is a really good guy, worthy of the Chally name. I suggested to him that he should take our name; I told him there was no shame in that. They stuck with Heinold. I really enjoy weddings, especially when I’m in them. You don’t have to wait in a seat until everyone enters, you don’t have to wait for everyone to leave, you don’t have to wait for the wedding party at the reception, and you’re the first ones to eat (yes!). But I think the thing I love most about weddings is the bachelor party. I enjoy bachelor parties so much sometimes I even show up when I’m not in the wedding.

Mike’s bachelor party sort of began on Friday morning; you could kind of call it a pre-game. Mike, Joe, Aaron and I all woke up at the crack of dawn and drove out to the El Paso golf club for an early morning round of 18. The air was cool and the sky was blue as we walked out to the first tee. There was quite a disparity in level of play between the four of us. Joe played golf in college and once finished second in an NAIA national tournament. Aaron played in high school and was one of the better players on the team. I duffed the ball around a lot in high school and somehow managed to secure the last spot on the varsity team my junior and senior year. Mike, well he had once gone out to a golf course and tried to hit some balls. The course was in great shape, the greens were spectacular. Mike and myself were clearly out of our league. We played three holes of excellent golf before I pulled out my secret weapon; a Macanudo Gold Label. I lit it up and immediately felt the aura of Fuzzy Zoeller descend upon me. I played just as poorly as I had done before, but I enjoyed it more. (Thank you Fuzzy!) On the 14th hole Mike’s tee shot failed to pass the ladies tees which were a considerable 10 feet in front of the men’s.



Aaron spoke up first “when your ball doesn’t go past the ladies tee you have to hit your next shot with your pants around your ankles.”
Joe concurred “This situation demands we uphold the sacred tradition.”
I also offered my blessing.
Mike grabbed his ball, re-teed, dropped his shorts to his ankles and hit another poor shot.
The final scores for the morning: Joe 76, Aaron 87, James 99, Mike Other.

The actual bachelor party kicked off immediately following the rehearsal dinner. It is not a simple thing to be allowed into the Chally clan; there must be a trial by fire. My brothers and I were prepared; so was Mike. We arrived at our house and Mike made a profound and intelligent statement.
“I’m ready to take this like a man.”
I knew then that he was worthy to enter the brotherhood.
“Alright Mike you will be given a series of tasks to perform tonight” I told him “failure to accomplish any of these tasks will result in consequences. Your first mission is to go into the bathroom and come out wearing only what we give you. I handed him a pair of combat boots and a paper bag. Five minutes later he emerged wearing the boots, daisy dukes that were too tight to zip or button in the front, a fish net midriff shirt and one of those trucker hats with Barbie hair taped in the back to look like a dirty mullet.

9 guys piled into my parents freestyle and we drove out to super Wal-Mart which, much to my delight, was packed.
“Alright Mike” I handed him a crisp twenty, “your next mission is to enter Wal-Mart and purchase the following items: Jockstrap, Vaseline, lighter, and a box of condoms. While you are in the store you may not speak to us nor acknowledge our presence, this will result in failure of the mission.”
Watching Mike walk into Wal-Mart was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long time. He walked with a little hop in his step; he held himself with dignity, he maintained an air that said “what are you looking at.” I was very proud of him. We tailed him through the store; every where he went people were doing double takes. I saw several girls doubled over laughing out loud. He had to ask for help in finding the jock-strap, it turned out the guy knew him from somewhere. The best reaction we saw was the cashier who batted not an eye as Mike purchased in cash the items aforementioned.


Mike’s next stop was McDonalds where he had to purchase a filet o’ fish sandwich and consume the entire thing. He was greeted with similar reactions as in Wal-Mart, including a girl who curiously asked where we were from. Our final stop was the supermarket where he had to purchase hot dogs. After that we had him put the jockstrap on, this was more to scare him into thinking he would have to streak somewhere than anything else. We took him to the house my dad had rented for us for the night (which turned out to be a haunted house; more on that later) and told him he had done well. His final mission was to take two shots of homemade plum brandy; we toasted his marriage, I offered up a blessing on his quiver and officially welcomed him into the family. For me this was when he really became our brother.

The House

Back to the house. Earlier that day Aaron and I had stopped by the house to check it out and make sure we knew where it was. The house is the Eureka College presidential guest house, and my dad had described it as a beautiful old house with plenty of room. What he failed to mention was that it was the fabled Lida house. The story goes that back in the 1880’s the house burned down and this little girl named Lida died in the fire. They rebuilt the house and put this framed picture of her up over the fireplace. Many a brave man has sworn that her eyes followed them as they walked through the room. In the picture she’s pointing at the fireplace as if that was the cause of her death. Stories have been floating around for years of irons being unplugged and different strange things happening in the house.

So we pull up to the house and as soon as I stepped out of the car I got chills. I looked up at the attic windows and immediately had to look away. I knew that if I looked long enough I would see a little girl looking back at me. I walked up to the door with the key and the light flicked on “ah motion sensor I thought.” Then the light flicked off. More chills. It flicked on again after several seconds, then flicked off. All nine of us are standing there looking at each other. It’s 11:00 pm. Suddenly we see on the sidewalk a woman wearing a long black skirt and a little house and the prairie style blouse; she was speedwalking. Everyone is stunned. I opened the door and immediately had this feeling like I was walking into a cheap 80’s horror movie. It had all the key components. Bunch of guys having a bachelor party: check. 100 year old house: check. Old black and white picture of little girl who died in the house: check. Flickering lights: check. Strange woman speedwalking: check. Creepy basement and locked attic: check.

We entered the house and immediately took all the guys to the fireplace to introduce them to Lida and tell them her story. From then on nobody went anywhere by themselves. My brother Joe said what everyone was thinking but no one would admit.
“Look at my goosebumps” He had them bad. “I keep thinking I’m going to walk around a corner and see a little girl standing there with her finger to her lips.” We settled down into the kitchen and talked for a while. We were probably there for about an hour and half or so. It was during this time that we toasted Mike’s marriage, we also drank two bottles of wine; this of course did not promote rational thinking. We had been in the house long enough to start exploring so we started with the basement.

It was classic creepy old house basement. Dirty cement floor, windows that don’t lead outside, random dust covered junk built up over 100 years. We walked back through a couple rooms and ended up in what looked like an old woodworking shop. Someone gave out a startled gasp which of course promoted more goosebumps. To the right was another room. The room was bare, no cement floor, nothing in the room at all except for a single old chair set up in the middle. That was about all I could take, fortunately everyone else was of the same opinion. We went back upstairs and moved our stuff up to the second floor. The second floor had five rooms one of which was the Lida room. We all looked at each other then one of the guys unlocked the door with the key and pushed it open. Chills ran through me. Everything about the room was small. The room itself, the bed, there was a small nightstand next to it with a cage that had a little stuffed bear in it, and next to the nightstand an old baby stroller. Again I had that feeling like I was in a horror movie. We shut the door and locked it. There were five rooms upstairs; five guys piled into one room; Aaron, Joe, Mike and I piled into the other. We all crawled into the queen sized bed and snuggled together. Fortunately it was pretty late and we were all pretty tired. I woke at like four something incredibly uncomfortable and decided I would brave the floor.

It wasn’t till the morning that the absolute freakiest thing occurred which, had it happened that night I would have ran out of the house. One of the guys was watching TV by himself in one of the other rooms we didn’t sleep in; it was about 8:30. He got up turned the TV off and started walking out of the room. Just as he was about to walk out the door the TV flicked back on.

Kansas

Recently I was given the good fortune of some unplanned vacation, and I took advantage of this opportunity to go visit some very good friends of mine down in Arkansas. There's certainly a lot I could write about here, but I primarily want to talk about three days we spent in the great state of Kansas. Kansas is a very strange yet wonderful place. It's almost as if it is about ten years behind everywhere else in the US. I first realized this when we stopped to fill up for gas and I noticed there was no card reader at the pump. This vexed me for a brief moment until I realized that these people actually trust you to pay for the gas that you pump. What a novel idea! After pumping my gas I went inside, picked up a couple of items to munch on, and then walked up to the counter. My friends had already paid for the gas I had pumped, so I was left with the cost of my items which came to $2.78. As I started to pull out my debit card the lady behind the counter breathed a deep annoyed sigh and said in an almost southern drawl:
" It's gotta be three dollars to use a card."
Stunned silence
"Uh okay."
In a panic I turned around and grabbed an expired, un-refrigerated juice off a sale rack and set it on the counter.
This satisfied the three dollar requirement and I was able to walk off with my purchases.
People are more laid back in Kansas; life moves a little slower, and maybe that's what is so nice about it. The second day we were there we decided to walk to the grocery store. There's no traffic, it's just pleasant. People are nicer. They wave to you as you walk on the sidewalk. At the grocery store the clerks didn't seem to mind if we played Frisbee down the aisles (although they will ask that you don't knock anything off the shelves). On the way back I stopped at a coffee shop and deli to get a cup of coffee. It was self serve so I poured my coffee and walked up to the counter and started to pull out my debit card when I saw the sign that read "no credit/debit cards". I was once again stunned. I have three cards in my wallet with about 4,500 dollars of purchasing power, and I had no way to pay for this $1.27 cup of Java Jazz coffee. I felt absolutely helpless. Fortunately there was a kind Kansas woman who saw my plight and motioned to put the coffee on her tab. It's this kind of neighborly behavior that makes Kansas feel so, oh I don't know, homely I guess.

On a Saturday afternoon you are almost guaranteed to find a guy outside wearing no shirt and a pair of jean shorts working on his truck. There's also a possibility this person will be sporting a mullet. If you are really lucky you might even see a guy wearing bib overalls with no shirt on. (it is rumored that when the planets align you can see a guy working on his truck wearing bib overalls with no shirt and sporting a raging mullet)

I listened to quite a few conversations of the local people while I was there, and I determined that people in Kansas talk about three things: the weather (particularly tornados), whatever crop is in season and the price of this crop (while we were there wheat was the topic of discussion), and the latest gossip about other Kansans, like "how old man Whithers' combine broke down", or "how Elmyra tripped over some chickens and broke her hip." It amazed me that everyone in Kansas seems to have a connection with everyone else. I could just see myself pointing at random people on the street:
"How do you know him?"
"Well his 2nd cousin fixed the plumbing in my house."
"What about her?"
"Her husband's brother married my wife's second cousin" (for some reason it's always second cousins).
"What about that guy?"
"I ran over his dog with a tractor."

After three days it was time for me to leave. My plane left at 10:15 am out of Kansas City. The plan was for Emmett, Caleb and I to leave at 4:15 am so we could get to Kansas City in time to stop at Waffle House, eat greasy food, receive bad service from disgruntled waitresses, and then arrive at the airport about an hour early. We left at around 4:15 am and quickly realized that nobody had any idea about how to get to Kansas City, and we didn't have a map. So we stopped at a gas station at a nearby town to fill up and get a map. Inside the gas station sat a very large disgruntled looking man staring at the wall. Apparently these are all requirements needed to obtain a job working the graveyard shift at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I imagine his job interview went something like this:
"Let's see according to your resume, you are skilled at staring at walls, being entirely unhelpful, and you like to eat lots of donuts."
"Yes, and I also bathe infrequently."
"When can you start?"
We found the map rack and were quite surprised to discover that this gas station in the middle of Kansas had maps of Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wichita and Topeka, it did not however have any maps of Kansas.
"Uh excuse me sir do you have any maps of Kansas?"
"Are there any on the shelf?"
"Uh no."
"Then nope."
Stunned silence
Now I can almost guarantee there is a stack of 100 Kansas maps in a back room somewhere. This would, however, require him to actually get out of his chair and lose the spot on the wall he has been staring at, after performing this feat of athleticism he would have to eat a jelly donut. His other option is to remain in his chair, maintain his spot on the wall, and eat a jelly donut anyway. He opted for option two. Fortunately for us there was a fifty state atlas, which Caleb used to write the directions down on his hand.

After driving all morning we finally arrived at the outskirts of Kansas City, where we quickly located a waffle house. Waffle house is the kind of place where you're liable to see a sign that reads "you may be asked to pay before you eat." There are few things that are certain anymore in this world. The sun is going to come up in the morning, and you will get disgruntled waitresses and greasy food at waffle house, particularly if you go in the middle of the night. It's actually somewhat comforting in a way, knowing that some things are certain. I was delighted to discover as we walked in that the night waitresses were still on duty. They mumbled a few unkind words to us, brought us bitter coffee without bothering to bring any creamer and then left us alone. We sipped our coffee and enjoyed the $2.19 atmosphere. Shortly thereafter we continued our drive and soon passed the sign that read "welcome to Missouri." Overall I enjoyed Kansas. Anywhere I go that I can walk away with some good memories is a good experience.