Rookie Thanksgiving

So this Thursday was my first ever real american thanksgiving. I anticipating a lot of food for the day and so didn't eat breakfast. We then started out the day at 9.30 in the morning by playing American football in the morning, like a legitimate game with rules and everything (obviously because I was playing with Americans). It was nothing like the few times we tried to play it at lunchtime at school. All I remember at school was you can pass the ball forward and can tackle people even if they don't have the ball. I recall people standing around confused and then getting hit it the back by someone tackling them. So back to my thanksgiving day game, within the first 20 minutes I was getting told off by my American friends, apparently you can't push someone over when they're about to catch the ball. After a while I got the hang of it, its actually pretty fun.

What happened latter in the day was obviously an extreme rookie mistake. So we have this massive lunch, turkey, cranberry sauce (which apparently is just jam). Side note; who puts jam on meat? Mashed potatoes, while we watch some football highlights on the big screen. Then.. we decided to go surfing straight afterwards. I was pretty reserved about the whole idea, tired and my legs were pretty stiff from football. So I paddle out with the boys, just paddling is making me feel sick already, and my head is starting to pound (think I hadn't drunk enough water that day). Then I get this sick wave, its absolutely pumping and I do a huge gouge in the pocket, and half way through my legs from my hips to my toes completely lock up and cramp. The surf was so pumping so I try paddle back out, but I couldn't pull my toes back round. The end.

Rob Machado + DOG CALENDAR IS READY

First of all I'm excited to say the Sri Lanka Dog Calendar 2012 is finished and nearly on the printers. Soooo, if any of you would like one, please get in early and email me or fb me. I cannot actually think of a better Christmas present for your mum. My email is ad.keeffe@gmail.com. Donations of $10 or more would be awesome. Donations of less than $10 is not that awesome. All proceeds will go to getting me back there next year, possibly even make a 2013 calendar.

Aside from spending time designing calendars I've actually been doing other things. Like today, Saturday, I went surfing at Lani's and I'm pretty sure I saw Rob Machado out in the water. Surf was pumping bout 4 foot offshore. He was sort of sitting on the inside. So I'm waiting out a bit further than him and can't quite make out if its him or just someone else with a dirty little beard and big hair. Then this punchy little left comes through (I haven't been surfing in a week so I was absolutely frothing) and I'm getting closer to where he's sitting and then this thing starts to pitch and I'm thinking, froth, I'm gonna get barrelled right in front of Rob Machado. I pull in and can hear a few people hooting, but realise I'm not gonna make it out and decide to punch through the wave. Next thing I know I pop my head up and my board comes flying back toward me and one of my fins hit me right in the eye. I instantly realise this is bad, cause I've seen what fins can do to people, so I decide to go in as fast as possible. Now I couldn't even open get my right eye open, was feeling pretty groggy and could see a little bit out of my left. So I will never actually be sure if it was Rob Machado hooting me in a barrel. As soon as I get to the beach I race to the lifeguard tower. No need for ambo's but I got a lift with a tourist back to Wahiawa and then to the hospital. What a nice dude. He'd only been in Hawaii 10 hours, but was kind enough to give me a lift. After a little bit of super glue and a sore head, all I'm left with now is a dirty big bruise.

Hiking, missing boats and sick tourists

As part of the staff training, I recently went over to the island of Kauai on a leadership adventure trip. It was the most challenging, but also amazing hike of my life. We had to do a 11 mile hike along the rugged Napali coastline, carrying supplies on our back enough for 5 days. I mean we were carrying bare necessities. Now I'm exaggerating when I say this but there were several parts along the hike where if you slip you're either dead or very very bruised. It was an amazing trip in that people pushed themselves further than they thought they could go.

Taylor, one of my very good friends in the team nearly died a few years ago when he fell off a 30 foot cliff and took him over 2 years to rehabilitate in which time he got fully addicted to the painkillers and had to go through rehab for drugs too. Now here we were just about to embark on this hike almost 3 years exactly to the date, which as you can imagine was a little bit spooky, especially cause his knee was still pretty dodgy. Anyway we set off along the trail and got to one sketchy part when his right foot fell off the side of the path/cliff but he just regathered himself. I was amazed to see him get back up and keep going. After camping a couple of days in the Kalalau Valley, the plan was to get a boat ride out of the valley by our friend rather than hike back. By the time the final day came we were waiting on the beach praying and hoping that the boat would come. Taylor was probably praying the hardest cause his knee was know very inflamed from the hike over. I wasn't going to vocalise what I was thinking, but I was like, “that boat better come because there is no way Taylor's gonna be able to hike back on that knee”. One hour went by, two hours went by. By the time it got to 10'oclock we came to the conclusion that something must have happened, Larry and his boat aint coming, and we started preparations to hike out cause we needed to get to the other end of the trail before night fall. We were probably a little too confident of maybe hopeful that the boat was coming cause most of us had eaten all our food and had nothing left for the hike back. As we gathered our bags together we saw another boat coming nearer on the horizon. There'd been boats coming all morning but we thought just we'll wait and see, one last boat, this could be it. As the boat drew near the anticipation was killing us, I couldn't wait any more and started swimming out to the boat thinking that even if its not Larry maybe I could schmooze them boyish charm and convince them to take us. But it was Larry. I've never been so happy to see a man in my life. I'm not sure I've ever had a happier moment. Looking back on the shore, one of the girls was some overcome by emotion that she feel to the ground crying. Two and a half hours late, but we were saved. YEWL!

When we all finally swum our bags out to the boat we were greeted by about 10 extremely sick tourists who had paid a bucket load of money for this catamaran tour. We tried to contain our excitement and cheering which probably didn't help the situation. It got even better when we got to eat all their food cause the tourists were so sick. If I learned one thing from this trip, its that we can push ourselves way further than we originally think if we are forced to.

Cougar Bait

I recently tried my hand at a life long dream of mine to street perform on the sidewalk of a busy city with a good friend of mine. Me and Zack set out with the highest of ambitions as we made our journey across the streets of Honolulu to find the most bustling corner of the city. Honestly I don't know what Zack was thinking but I was honestly thinking we'd make at least $100 possibly $200. I'm mean the whole way there we were locating restaurants we were gonna eat at afterwards. Zack was even left his wallet at home having faith that we'd make at least enough money to catch the bus home. Maybe I should've too. After a long walk we finally set up in front of the duke statue in Waikiki with literally hundreds probably thousands of people walking by. After a few songs a couple of attractive young ladies approached us half way through a song. Our first fans! As they came closer they casually continued to walk straight past us and cuttingly remarked that we needed to “start playing already”. I'm not gonna lie that was a kick to the balls. After that I continued to play, maybe more out of spite than anything. We changed our strategy a little and pulled out the slide guitar which made a solid dollar or two, one of which started blowing away down the street. I still kept playing as I watched Zack chased a dollar bill down the street. After about an hour we'd made about three dollars and 5 cents, but then a homeless lady came up midway through a song and asked us if we had a dollar to spare. What could we do, but tell the lady to take her pick out of the two dollar bills that lay in my case. This is not a complaint, like we were both extremely happy to help that old lady, but seriously who comes up to a street performer and asks them for money. Finally we took our $2.05 and made our way to the bus stop. Determined not to let the night discourage me I pulled out my guitar as we waited for the bus to come. Within a few seconds there were a couple of peeps who were quite impressed with out music and came over to listen. One happy middle aged lady came over and repositioned herself right next to Zack. When we'd finished the song all she did was smile and kept repeating that we were “cougar bait”. She then went on to ask us if we knew what cougar bait meant and started stroking Zack's hair while pulling out a beer coloured beverage disguised in a mineral water bottle. After a small amount of dialogue we switched instruments and Zack started busting out an impromptu worship slash prayer song for the people at the bus stop. If nothing else that night, we at least got to give a dollar to a homeless lady and pray for a promiscuous mid-aged alcoholic.

Burnt muffins, pushups, and neighbourhood watch

After a short two week break back in Australia, the storey of Mr Keeffe continues back in the heart of Wahiawa Hawaii. For those who have never been to the beautiful town of Wahiawa I will describe it a little for you. Wahiawa is a small town in the middle of Hawaii on the way to the north shore notoriously known for its bad fashion sense and lack of ethics. Most tourists never stop there, they just drive on through. In fact some people were on a holiday at Wikiki and they were coming to visit STN, but the hotel manager did everything they could to convince this young couple not come Wahiawa. Would sort of be like someone on holidays going to Nambour. As many of you know I'm currently involved with STN and I can tell even in the one year I've been away, that the whole town is improving as violence, drugs and general dodginess decreases.

As you all guessed because of my exceptional cooking skills, my new role at STN is hospitality and campus life. One of my first tasks was to bake a fika (swedish morning tea) for the staff meeting. So the first photo is of me scrapping a burnt muffin from the pan, and the second photo you'll see the muffin tops on top of the muffins. This was because the bottoms got burnt beyond recovery. So the good news is I get to encourage a campus of about 60 staff and students, make sure everyone is doing alright, and organise a man night. The bad part is that until my cooking skills get better everyone's gonna have to pretend like they enjoy burnt muffins. Some of my friends are quite old fashioned and seem to think that its funny that a male like me is doing laundry and baking. However twice a week my masculinity draws strength when I help repair and organise an old storage house. Its just nice to hit things with a hammer sometimes.

After getting back into the swing of things, I'm absolutely stoked to be here. People's lives are getting changed everyday. Literally. I love that on a Saturday night at Surfer's Church we share a meal with the community and you get all sorts of people coming. Just this last Saturday night a few of us who are doing staff training baked some brownies and stuff to raise money for our upcoming trip to Kauai (and then I went and did some pushups). Our goal was $200, and at the end of the night all the notes and coins were counted and it came to $200 exactly (down to the last penny). The funny thing is we only had about $90 worth of brownies to sell. I'm pretty sure God hears prayers.

In my spare time we've been surfing quite a bit. We went surfing the other day at rockies and these guys came back from just checking the surf, like they parked and then walked down the alley to check the waves for 5 mins, but when they came back we were in their parking spot. I'm guessing someone flogged the truck (ute) while they were doing a surf check. Spew, they could even go surfing cause their boards were in the truck! The ironic thing was that it was parked below a neighbour hood watch sign. I'm just wondering what neighbours were watching for? Possibly an unlocked vehicle.

The Survivors

My time in Arugam Bay is over. I have to say that the people of Arugam Bay are probably the most welcoming friendly people that I've met anywhere in the world. So thankyou Arugam Bay for an amazing couple of months and I would definitely love to come back one day.

Now is the moment you've all been waiting for. After 10 weeks of life in Arugam Bay not only was I wowed by the spectacular landscape, amazed at the amount of sugar the locals consumed, and bewildered by their driving methods, but mostly importantly I was totally impressed by the quality of dogs that roamed the streets. Hereby I have carefully put together the first 2011 Arugam Bay dog calender. The photos seen are a small teaser. I was going to make actual calenders and use them to raise money for my future endeavours however I'm leaving the country again in 3 days to go Hawaii so this is not really possible. But if anyone really would like to get their hands on one of these limited edition calenders please contact me and we can try organise something. Most of the photos were taken on an Olympus fe with 4.65 optical zoom, 12 megapixels and a half broken screen.

Waterline

The more I stay in Sri Lanka the more I see a need here and more opportunity everyday. Yesterday was completely rad, me, Nate, and Andy helped connect a water line to a family's house. We dug, laid pipe, put fittings in the kitchen, toilet and made an outdoor shower and now for the first time the family has running water. It was so good to see, because for someone like the mother who stays there 24/7, it made a world of difference. I think she was pretty moved by the fact that we would help them and not want anything in return, cause her daughter came up and said, “Andy good but bad thing because mother is crying, but good thing because she is so happy”.