Far Side of The World

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

WFDF World Ultmate Frisbee Championships

Due to the interest in Ultimate Frisbee from the expatriate community which has sparked the local community, Hong Kong received a bid to the WFDF world tournament. The world championships happen once every four years, this time located in Osaka, Japan. The teams must be made up of mostly local players or ones holding that countries passport with the addition of 4 players that are "WFDF Citizens" or someone who has been playing and living in the community for 4 years or the lesser, 2-3 spots for players only playing in the community for 2 years. Because August marked the two year mark in Hong Kong for me I was allowed to represent Hong Kong in the world tournament. After receiving last seed in the opens or Men's division, Hong Kong put it's first team together in history. In order to do so we picked up some Canadian players with HK passports and a few other players from around the world. The first time our entire team met was minutes before the first game against Austria. We joked about our lack of training together but after not winning a game the entire tournament we knew that this was a huge downfall for our team. Not that we didn't have the individual skills to win games but we had no rhythm or flow on the field being a by-product of never playing together before. All in all we played Austria, Japan, Mexico, Great Britain, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and Mexico again in a total of 8 games over 5 days of Ultimate. The experience was amazing playing against some of the best teams in the world (Japan #4 and Great Britain #2) and representing the nation that I have been living in was a true honor. It felt weird to be an American walking around in a Team Hong Kong jersey as we passed our American opponents. I couldn't be happier with how I improved individually and experience I gained even after having a win less tournament.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Bohol, Philippines Youth Mission Trip

These next few months will for sure be the most eventful few months of my life all leading up to my departure to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia where I will spend the remainder of the fall. For memory sake I wanted to capture a brief snapshot of each trip.

Bohol, Philippines Youth Mission Trip

June 30th - July 5th

This spring our youth group decided to raise money for a preschool in the Philippines. When I figured out that only 45,000 HKD, around 6,000 USD, could provide a teacher, a teacher's aid, school uniforms and supplies, lunch every day, and a livelihood program for 30 preschools and their parents for 1 school year- I couldn't help but get excited. Union U'th decided to take half of our funds raised at our annual 30 Hour Famine and donate to this cause. In accordance with this, we thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to then take students down to visit and tangibly experience what they raised money for. We spent the first week of July visiting our preschool and serving the island of Bohol. Our group split up into two groups; one group worked at a church, building a wall for an addition and the other worked to construct a toilet for a church (shown below). My group worked on the toilet where we arrived to a hole in the group that would serve as a septic tank which had been dug for us. This small rural church had been waiting for funding to complete the project for almost 4 months. Over the week my group completed about 3/4 of the project and had a blast. We had to ride around an hour each way to get to the church where we were working but we joyfully enjoyed the Jeepney ride where we got to journey on the top after we got out of town. The students truly seemed to experience God's grace though service and our devotion times were very powerful.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

From Thailand to Laos

Over Chinese New Year we took up the advice from a few friends in Hong Kong and adventured to Laos to partake in the Gibbon Experience. To sum up the journey in as few words as possible, we flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok, flew from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, bussed from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong, Canoed across the border into Laos, then rode in the back of a pickup truck for 2 hours to Bokeo Natural Preserve. Then zip-lined for 3 days though the Jungle and lived in tree houses. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

*To the left you see us boarding our canoes to get to Laos, below you see us hiking through the jungle on our way to the tree houses.

*If you look closely in the video you can see our tree house off in the top left hand part of the screen

Best view from a toilet yet

Friday, August 26, 2011

Mongolia

Myself, the other youth director, and our Senior Pastor had the opportunity to stay in this ger for four days. Ulaanbaatar (Pictured Below) has around a million people, 70% of which live in the ger district surrounding the main part of the city with no running water.

The odd shaped sail looking building you can see in the distance is downtown Ulaanbaatar. There is only one street that goes though the nation"s capital. The colorful topped buildings you see in the picture are all part of the ger district.

Driving to see a bunch of kids at an orphanage. The government kicks the orphans out of the city for the summer and bus them off to the middle of the country side.

This is about 5 km outside the city. In Mongolia there are no fences that claim land and all the land belongs to the people so you can't get yelled at for trespassing. We swam though this river then hiked to the top of those mountains.