a word from hilge

Hey everyone, this may be super late, but I thought I would add a little piece to this, for closing. The trip was a great expierience for me,and I am glad that we took the time to do it.At times it was pretty full on, spending so much time with my sibling, but I believe that it has proven to be well worth the while, especially now that it's all over. I think we all know each other alot better, almost too well, haha. Well I guess I will add to the "thanks" and "no thanks" lists; Thanks: God, for his protection,dad and mom for thier prayers and support, the Ellis family, James and Joel, Bruces, Luke, Volks Wagon,Frank, Mekelas, Ravi, Julies cousin for the board,Simon for the wetsuit, and not to mention, Nate Crouch, for all his help with the computer,and website. No thanks: speed cameras, bad moods, Sri Lanka airlines,Indian Train outlets, and thai tuk tuk drivers. that's all, over and out

A Look Ahead

A question we have been asked a lot is, "What comes next?" I think a lot of people are wondering what we will do to top what we have just done. I can't speak for the others but my plans for the future are a little more domestic. I'm currently staying with some friends from college at their place in Cambridge. I will be here for another two weeks and then travel up to Summit College to work as an intructor for them. They will be doing am extended river trip to Arkansas that will include classes in rock climbing and kayaking and I have been invited to join them and help with the teaching and anywhere else I can make myself useful.

Following two months with Summit I will spend the summer in Tuftonboro, New Hampshire as am employee of Camp Merrowvista. I have been hired as a trip leader for their Four Trails Wilderness Program. My days will be spent in a canoe or a kayak, on a bike, or with a backpack on my back, leading trips for high school-aged students from New England.

After Merrowvista comes the fall and there are no plans in place yet for then. I have a few ideas but nothing concrete. I would very much like to finish my degree via distance education and to continue working in the outdoor industry as an instructor or a guide. But these are just ideas, and reality may look completely different come September.

As for the immediate present, I told you about my living situation but not about how I am spending my days. The trip did a number on my level of fitness and the first order of business when I got back was to join a gym and get back in shape. Thankfully, because of the Olympics the YMCA was giving away free month-long memberships so I took them up on it and have been spending my afternoons at their Cambridge branch, on a treadmill or a weight machine. Besides my exercising I have been arranging paperwork for the summer. Working as a Canadian in the States and actually getting paid to do it is quite an undertaking and requires and appropriate amount of paperwork wrapped in red tape. But I am making headway.

I think this is the last time I will put an entry into this blog. Thanks to everyone for reading and being so supportive. Thanks for all of the letters and cards and e-mails and care packages. An adventure isn't really an adventure unless you have someone to share your journey with. Thanks for being that someone. Cheers, E

Thanks and No Thanks

Thanks to:
God; without You, this trip would not have a happy ending. Dad and Mom; this was your idea and you made it happen and supported it all the way through. Your sacrifice will not return void. Everyone who showed us kindness and mercy on our trip: Nathan, George at STA Glasgow, Toni in Stratford, Emirates (the best airline in the world), the Ellis Family, the Bruce Family (and Granny), Simon and Jodie, James and Joel, Warrnambool Baptist Church, Henna Street Video,Tim Tams,Bendigo Bank, the Pressers, Flight Centre for all the deals,Sarah Anderton, Volkswagen, Holden, caravan parks, Woolworths (and TJ Stewart for the card), Coledale Camping Reserve, Mitsubishi, Hillsong Church, the people of Thailand, Noel at AAAccommodations, our Sri Lankan driver, the Alpine Hotel, Ravi Tej, Sunil(the Godfather), the Mekala Family,the Connelly Family, Christ King of Kings Ministries, EuroHostel, CIBC, Bank One, whoever invented the credit card, Starbuck's, Mac Computers, Tom and Christin, Mark and Bianka, ATIA, and all the people without names who helped us with directions, advice, phone numbers, and any type of help big or small and anyone else that we may have forgotten. You rock.

No Thanks to:
Sri Lankan Airlines, Joe from Europcar, tuk-tuk drivers, train food vendors, inconsiderate snorers, body odour, Big Bill in Bangkok, and anyone who ripped us off. We hope your mom will teach you to be kind to strangers.

Thoughts From Erick

Now March is here and we four have returned to our respective homes and lives. We are really glad that we have been able to keep this blog and that people actually read it. The most common thing that I have heard from people that I have seen since coming home is that they read the blog and were able to stay up to speed with what we did. Some went as far as to say that they felt like they were right there with us. Special thanks (and props) to Nate Crouch, loyal friend and brilliant computer genius, for his help in getting the site up and maintaining it while we were out. Nate kept an eye out for spam and other harmful cyber-enemies that may have been the undoing of our website. Here's to you.

It's hard to properly absorb what I have just been through. A six-month, 11-country world trip isn't the sort of thing that you can process in one sit-down by the fire. It doesn't help that modern life moves along at a furious pace and that while I've only been home for two weeks plus a day, I am already in the midst of plans and preparations for my next adventures(more on that later). In the time that I have had to sit alone and mull over our trip, it comes to me that it was less than three years ago that I was in Africa, on a six-month trip there and that my Africa trip hasn't even been properly filed away in my mind. Having said that, what hope is there that I will be able to understand the depth and scope of what I have just been through? Probably not very much. But maybe that's OK, because I don't feel that the experience has been lost on me at all. Sure, maybe there are parts that I will forget or that will slip through the cracks of my mind. But what I do have is a far greater appreciation for the world and my place in it. And what does that mean? It means that I realize that the world does indeed extend far beyond Canada and the DR and even the other places that I have seen in my life so far. I have been fortunate to have parents and family that support my adventures and my travels, that actually want me to get out and do these trips in spite of the dangers that come with them. This being the case I have seen a great deal of the world for someone who is only 25. But even with all the places I have seen and people I have met, my understanding of the world is very limited. It boggles my mind, but there are people being born and living and dying without any real concept of the world around them. Sometimes you see those posters of a globe with people of every race and people group standing hand in hand in a ring around it. If only that were the case. In reality, the world is really only what I perceive it to be. The globe, the earth, is the blue and green thing I see in the atlas or on the wall at school. On its surface is not one world, but many worlds vastly different from each other and entirely self-existent. As a person from North America, I start with the same mentality that most Westerners do: that our society is better and more organized and therefore desirable to the rest of the world. After all, we are the ones sending missionaries to them and we are the ones that help when they have disasters, right? When was there ever an Ethiopian Red Cross team in Louisiana for the floods there? Or an Estonian relief team to help search for survivors of an avalanche in British Columbia? There never has been. We are the ones controlling the majority of money and resources in the world, and with that goes the assumption that we have the corner on culture and sophistication too. We couldn't be more wrong. This trip made me realize that pain and confusion and hardship is universal, and that so are things like kindness and hope and satisfaction in life. I can't tell you how many people from the West I have had coversations with you seem to think that the solution to the world's problems is financial. That if everyone had enough food and good clothing and a comfortable house that everything would be great. If that were the case, places like Canada and America would be the happiest places in the world. But of course they are not. I'm beginning to realize that money has very little to do with it. I know plenty if people with more money than they know what to do with and are perfectly miserable. I also know poor people in the same boat. But then I know rich people who are happy and carefree and people that are penniless who are cheerful and have a bright outlook on the future. Now, more than ever, I am resistant to the idea that putting money in someone's pocket is going to solve their problems. I'm beginning to see that Solomon was right when he said that the best thing a man can do is to work hard and enjoy the fruits of his labour. We met thousands of people on this trip and observed thousands more in all walks of life. Soldiers, policemen, sailors, salesmen, students, politicians, office workers, managers, on and on. The happiest people I met were the people that loved their work and the living it gave to them. Some of them made a lot of money, most of them made very little. What they had in common is that they did what they loved to do and they were content with their situation. And that gave me hope for the future, because that prospect is possible for many of the people in world, even a large majority, including me.

This understanding is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to what I have come away from this trip with. We said often that it really seemed like we spent a lifetime away from home. It reminds me a bit of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, two brothers and two sisters leaving the world they knew to spend years and years in a land far away and have adventures and experiences that they will never be able to fully relate to the people they know, and then to return to where they came from only to realize that they've been gone only a very little while. If you've seen the movie or read the book, no doubt the question enters your mind, 'How can they just go back to what they knew? Surely whatever went on in Narnia has to affect the way they deal with normal life.' I can assure you, as I'm sure the other three will, that following our life and adventures away from home, being gone a lifetime only to return and realize it's been a little while, normal life and the way we view it will never be the same.

E

A Tribute

During our trip and now following it, we have been sobered many times over by the types of danger that we co-existed with while out and are humbled and grateful that none of these things came upon us. I suppose that it would be easy for us to remember the trip as 'everything turned out fine in the end' and quickly sweeping over what an unusual thing that is. There was, in fact, danger at every turn, and our returning to where we came from unscathed is nothing short of an act of God. I'll explain what I mean so that you can appreciate our safety in the way that we do.

While on the trip we were able to keep up with news in the countries that we were in or about to visit, or just had visited. This was a great thing to do as it kept us in the know, but it led us to realize some very alarming things unfolding around us. While we living at our beach campground in Coledale, in Australia, there were riots going on at the beaches just down the road from us. Racial tension had come to a head and people had seen fit to resolve their issues by brawls and gang fights. Thankfully, none of this violence reached our area. A week later we were in Brisbane and the beach that Hilko had just recently surfed at was closed because of a shark attack that resulted in the death of a girl about our age who was swimming there. Two weeks later we were in Thailand, staying at a hotel on a beach that had seen a British girl raped and murdered only a week before we arrived. From Thailand it was off to Sri Lanka where tension between the Tamil Tigers and the existing government had begun to boil. Though we felt the unease, that was the height of things for us. While we were in the country, though, several bombs were detonated all over the country to send the powers there a message. Again, we were out of harm's way. From Sri Lanka on to India, where an American girl had been raped and murdered on the same train system that we had spent 60 hours travelling on the same week that we arrived. While we were staying in Visag we read in the paper about an abduction attempt on another American tourist in Bombay, the city we had just recently come from. Also while in Visag, we spent a day in mountains crawling with naxilite terrorists who made it a practice to kidnap foreigners to then use in negotiations with the government. Again, we walked away unharmed.

The list could go on and on. I haven't even gone into all the terrifying driving we were subject to, the strange foods we ate from even stranger sources, the diseases we were exposed to, the flights and boat rides and motorcycles,and the danger from theives and other criminals we no doubt crossed paths with. And what about the fact that we were able to keep all of our personal belongings? Never once were we without enough cash, or the right documentation, or directions, or at the very least, a friendly person to help us when we needed it the most. At the beginning of the trip there were far more jitters. By the end of the trip we began to feel far more confident that things would turn out right, and that we would be protected and provided for.

Now we sit at our homes, safe again, and we are eternally grateful. Grateful to God the most, for His protection and intervention despite all the odds. People told us that we were crazy and doubted that we would make it. They had every reason to feel that way. This trip probably shouldn't have ended the way that it did. By all indications, it could have very well ended in tragedy. But it didn't. And we attribute that not to our prowess, because we had very little, or to our ability to rise above danger (as it seems we were hot on its heels all the way around the globe), but to the kindness and mercy of the Lord. And how could we forget all the people we met along the way who extended kindness to us? Some of these people we knew well. Many of them we had only just met and others still we didn't even know. But what they had in common is that they understood that we had needs and that they had the means to meet those needs and they stepped out to make that happen. We often had nothing to give back but thanks. Sometimes we offered them money, and they refused it. Sometimes we promised to get them back, to reciprocate for their kindness, but even there we have no idea if we will ever see them again. The people that helped us out did it because they wanted to, not because they had to. They did it because it was the right thing to do and didn't ask for anything in return. Often it came up between the four of us, and I will mention it here, that one of the things that we will take away from this trip is that in the future we will do all we can to show kindness to travellers and strangers, because for the last six months, our survival depended on other people doing exactly that. Without them, it is entirely possible that we would still be out there, stranded and a long way from home. If you are reading this and you are one of those people, if you gave us food or shelter or a ride or directions, or you prayed for us or you let us use your house or your car or even your phone, thank you for what you did. It was critical and it did not go unnoticed. You've turned us into lifelong believers in the power of kindness. We hope very much to be able to make it up to you. God Bless you all.
E