Of Self Discovery

It started in Argentina a couple of years ago. Actually, it started in Toronto. Here I was at the airport about to head on a 14 hour flight to Buenos Aires with 11 others who I met a few months earlier and knew very little about. 21 years of living had me thinking that I wanted to be famous and although the feelings of wanting to become famous are still very alive inside of me, it was for a thousand different reasons. Money. Attention. Possessions. At the age of three, I had dreams of becoming a professional wrestler. Being 8 brought us a World Series which in turn brought me the dream of wanting to become a Major League Baseball player. Turning 16 ushered in a dream of wanting to become a famous actor. Looking back, had I actually done something about these aspirations, such as joining a baseball team or taking acting lessons, who knows what may have happened. So life continued and I turned 18. The undeniable pressures of University were creeping up on me and like many kids at that age, I felt like I had to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So in hopes of becoming famous and with the recommendation of a friend, I decided to go to Wilfrid Laurier University and join their Communications program, for these moves all marked the first steps in realizing my new and exciting dream: to become a famous TV or radio personality. In what form? Who knew! Just as long as it meant I'd become famous. So I went through the motions and it took me just over two years of being a University student to discover that something wasn't adding up here. I'm paying all this money and I haven't touched a camera yet! I'm going into debt but I don't even know what a soundboard looks like. Imagine a monkey scratching its head, but only that the monkey is me and I'm scratching for a year. Here I was in my third year, completely turned off of higher education. I had no idea where I was going, I had no idea what brought me there, and worst off, I felt lost. Lost in every way.

So as reality was jabbing me in the head, I met this girl at school and she told me about her plans to go to the Amazon for one month with this organization I had never heard of, Global Youth Network. From what I gathered, she was going there to learn about the culture and do some humanitarian work. As I was completely interested in her and completely uninterested in what she was saying, I did what most young male adults do: I pretended to be interested in what she was saying. I told her that I had the same aspirations and dreams and I asked her for more information. Now, if she had access to a movie which showed the past 21 years of my life, she would have uncovered me for the fraud I was because as my track record showed, I never did anything to actually turn my dreams into everyday life. Regardless, I got all the details and in hopes of trying to impress her as much as I could, I called them and inquired about any available trips.

Well, I sort of called them. I hung up after one ring and went on with my day. "Are you nuts? Why are you calling them?", I would ask. "Because I like this girl and this is the only way it's going to happen!", I would answer. A week went by and for whatever reason that day, I decided to pick up the phone and call again, but this time, I would let the phone ring until I got an answering machine because at least this was a way to convince myself that I was really trying. Two rings and a friendly lady picked up the phone. I got an interview the next day which I nailed and now I was going to Argentina. But more importantly, who cared?! This girl was going to be totally impressed!

Now, when you're living with six male roommates who are all typically "University," explaining a "cross-cultural, educational and transformative volunteer trip to the South" is not an easy thing to do. Being a male, this demonstrated that I had some sort of passion or emotion for something or someone that wasn't me and this was a big no no in the man field. Regardless, I went through with it.

So I guess the prelude started in Toronto, but what really started really started in Argentina. Somewhere in Argentina. Now, I'm not going to lie and provide you with a scene where I'm standing in a dewey field at sunrise with a bunch of disabled orphans holding hands and kumbaya'ing together with the presence of God hovering over us and smiling warmly. To be honest, I can't do much in terms of pinpointing a day, time or moment that brought me to the realization and truth of what I wanted to do with my life, but I can tell you it was somewhere in Argentina. And so here I was in South America understanding that I was an able-bodied, healthy individual with an education and a knack for socialization, a healthy and growing network, a good group of friends and perhaps most importantly - I not only realized that I was lucky to have this opportunity to travel abroad and 'discover myself,' but that I was even luckier to be an educated and sociable individual with good friends and a growing network because for the first time in my life, I had met people, family, neighbourhoods and others who weren't fortunate enough to be given the same opportunities to grow into the situations I had grown into. Sorry for putting you through the longest sentence of your life just now but that's how it came tumbling out of my mind. And so it wasn't the comforts of home, school or friendship that helped me come to this epiphany, but it was the opposite. In the presence of strangers in a strange land, I figured out just who I wanted to become.

Each 'Global' trip that I've done has been unique and beneficial to my growth in its own way. California the following year taught me the importance of relationships and being equal in the face of those who society tells you are lower than you. Venezuela the next year taught me a lot about my leadership abilities. And Kenya, most recently, has taught me about the remarkable strength and hope that others may deem as weak and hopeless. The beauty is that people are people no matter where you go. A happy moment calls for a smile and a sad one can call for a cry. I've been fortunate enough to be able to go to different places and realize that we are mostly all the same and that we are all in this together. Brothers and sisters.

And so three trips were enough to convince that girl in University to marry me and four trips were enough to convince Global to hire me. And although it's been 22 years since I interpreted that voice inside me screaming "GET FAMOUS!", I think I've finally learned in which way that voice was craving for me to get attention: by using my education, knack for socialization and healthy and growing network to educate others and at least for now, assist them in helping the local community or traveling abroad so they can all say something along the lines of, "It all started in Argentina" too.


- Gilad

Camp Awesome was awesome!

We survived the Road of Death!

Hey all,
checking in from Bolivia! We are having a phenomenal time with such varied experiences in the last couple of weeks.. here´s a bit of an update

to get from la paz to the amazon we took the road of death.. SUCH a thrilling and incredible experience.. (check out photos on google) .. there were times when we were passing transport trucks on a road barely wide enough for us!! the wheel would still be on the road but the back part of the bus would be hanging over the edge.... every pore in my body was sweating from fear!! haha but now its a great experience and i would totally do it again.

the place we worked at is this incredible community called san miguel and they have an eco lodge/eco tourism enterprise called san miguel del bala... it is located in THE most beautiful picturesque location, right on the river (which eventuallly becomes the amazon river) nestled in majestic mountains covered in lush greens (so lush, and damp that our clothes never really dried and developed some seriously rank stenches after long days of work.. haha). The lodge was amazing.. we all stayed in a screened in common area with a bed for each of us.. we ate about 100 metres up from the river, learned some amazing and delicious recipes from the cooks we cooked with (we ground up rice to make rice flour for pan de arroz, got to make this delicious banana cream dessert (which Vicky says she is serving at her wedding) we had fresh grapefruit everyday right from the tree (SO SO SO delicious!!)). the food was amazing and plenty.. so much food every day!

we did some really awesome work with them too... hauled bags of rocks from the beach up about 100 stairs to our cabins for walkways they were building, also foraged in the forest for rocks for a wall near their water reserve, cleared paths through the rain forest (with machetes, of course!), carried dirt.. well more clay (doesn´t sound impressive but, boy, were we sweating) with the women in the village for the floor of the communal kitchen which they are building. We also spent lots of time playing with the kids in the community --- so wonderful.. they are just so adorable and its such an incredible and tight community. We got to pick lots of grapefruit, juice sugar cane, swim in the river (couple times), take some great boat rides, climb to a waterfall and through an incredible rock canyon (really narrow and curved from years of water flowing through) in bare feet! we saw a capybara, snake up close and personal (in the wild) lots of spiders (big and small "toxico" and not), saw a jaguar footprint(!!) heard and kind of saw 2 herds of wild amazonian boars, and saw some beautiful parrots and other birds (incredible and exotic songs as well).

So we are in Cochabamba right now... its a lovely and beautiful city. long and carsick bus ride to get here (took a sketchy plane from the amazon to la paz (no death road on the way back) and then took a 8 hour bus ride through the mountains.. so windey) we are working with an Australian couple who have taken in 30 + kids and have this incredible orphanage. so beautiful and the kids are great! The team has enjoyed having an english speaking contact and it´s great to be able to connect with the kids in a different way as most of them have learned some basic english too!

Lots of adventures, stories and photos with each day... looking forward to sharing them when we get home. So glad to hear of the other team´s exciting adventures and hope they are all finishing well.

That´s all for now.. hope to update again before we´re home.

elise

Ghana is a sauna.

A quick update from SFU Ghana...

The team has been staying in Apam, a small town on the coast a couple of hours west of the capital city, Accra. We have been keeping busy working at the local hospital doing administrative-type work and teaching in the nearby schools. Teaching in particular has been a lot of fun - the kids here are so much more well-behaved than back home!

Everyone on the team is doing really well. There have been few minor illnesses but overall we couldn't have asked for better fortune. This weekend we had a chance to tour a couple of the very first fortifications built by colonialists in Cape Coast. Really interesting stuff. It's hard to believe we only have just over a week left in our stay. We'll be heading west to relax at a lodge for our last few days before returning to Vancouver via Amsterdam.

It's been great reading the updates from all the other teams. Keep up the good work!

Greg

Another one already!?!?!

Hey All!!!!
I'm aware that Team Cambodia here is probably the most enthusiastic bloggers at the moment, but we don't really have a choice in the matter since as of sunday we won't have internet for the rest of the month, so I feel we need to cram in some updated goodness while we can.

Updates on all our little misfortunes:
-the bag = still lost
-the airlines = not being very helpful
-everything else is better, but we do have a bit of a sore throat going around...

As for new stuff...
On saturday we got to tour the city. We got to see such spectacles as the National Palace, the National Gallery, a Buddhist Temple, and a monument on a hill that had tons of wild monkeys running around (still not exactly sure where we were for that one... I was distracted by a rather fat monkey when we were getting the explanation)
Thought for the day: If you're gonna see a city, travel in style. Get a Buddhist monk to show you around (one of our contacts... he was conveniently in the city that day)

Sunday was the Killing Fields and S21 prison... Difficult to describe the effect of those places, but suffice to say it was a heavy day.
Thought for the day: Genocide sucks... (please don't hate me for oversimplifying that one)

Yesterday and today we were back in the schools. It's really great to work with those kids, but we were all very sad to have to end that part of our saga today... we were slated to be doing that the whole week, but the King has decided to have a 3 day birthday party starting tomorrow... national holidays = no school. It really sucked to have to blaze right out of some of their lives just as fast as we came into them.
Thought for the day: Royalty really knows how to throw a party... and ruin the fun of aid workers.

That's about all I've got for now (just got in from the school, and it's about dinnertime... FYI all other global teams are going to hate us when we tell you guys what kind of style we're eating in)
Look for my/our next post sometime saturday night/sunday morning our time (no clue what that is your time and too drained to try to do the math)
Lehai (bye in khmer)
Adam

Gifts around the world...

This is team Ghana packing up 300 pairs of pink Crocs they are taking as gifts.



And team Mizoram (India) packing up 19 microscopes to aid new malaria clinics!

Orientations are over and (as you can read below) teams have arrived at their locations and are hitting the ground running. Keep checking back for updates from the team all through the month of May.

Calamity Central

Greetings from the oh-so-hot other side of the planet!!! (otherwise known as Cambodia!)

Oh how fun it has been...
So we arrived at Pearson on time, but nowhere else. It seemed to be the status quo that our flights would get bumped. We got delayed so much we actually missed our final transfer and had to get routed through Vietnam. We made our final leg on a little propeller plane (actually kinda fun), and only ended up being 8 or 10 hours late, arriving sometime Wednesday morning southern Ontario time.

but of course that isn't all the fun... we've also had:
-one team member's bag get lost (read LOST, as in the airlines have no idea where it is)
-one severe case of nausea (it's gone now)
-an intern lose his voice (it's back now)
-and some severe jet-lag (granted, we expected that one)

Don't get me wrong, everyone is having a blast. We're enjoying the local fruits a lot, despite not knowing their names (we affectionately dub them things like "ugly fruit" "smelly fruit" "red fuzzy's" and "brown spikey"... or at least some of us do)

We also managed to start work today. We've divided into three teams to work at different schools, one in a slum, and two in the garbage dump (as in the piles of garbage are right outside the doors). The kids are great, and their enthusiasm for learning really brings joy to everyone on the team. It's really fun working with them, but their English textbooks, for those that have them, are a little outdated (read: last edition published in 1965) which leads to some very interesting situations (read: politically incorrect). But hey, the teachers seem fine with it!

Anyways, as much as I could go on and on about this, it's about dinner time and I'm really looking forward to eating and a shower (my first in five days, including two in country... with 30ish degree heat and ridiculous humidity, BO is getting to be an issue :S)

Happy travels!!
Adam

TEAM AMAZON...almost did not make it...bRRPP

Addiction to peanut butter...almost led to 11 people who were going to miss their flights and make a camp ground out of the Toronto airport.

What was the peanut butter connected to? ...Tim Hortons, the evil master of money collection in Toronto , Canada, and soon the world.

So we had a few members waiting eagerly for the joy that is peanut butter in an extremely lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng lineup. Later on we found out that the people in this line up were from a London flight that was delayed...due to lack of water on the airplane.

Their compensation? $12 worth of Free Tims. Now believe it or not, each person getting $12 is a heck of a lot of Tims. It was maddness all around.

By the time those members reached the glorious light, the last call to board had been made...but only a few others heard it...this led to scrambling on all parts. Us, the tims people, the londeners pushing us out of their way, the flight attendents threatening to toss our luggage off the plane, the lack of watches and clocks, and the general delirium of having to play the waiting game all day.

But. Fortunately, up above was looking out for us, and we made it to the plane just in time...16 packets of peanut butter in hand.

BOO YA!

Lessons learned:
- need more watches
- Pearson needs more clocks
- Attendents need to speak louder
- peanut butter puts you in sticky situations, Tims in even stickier ones
- Doñ~t travel to London
- and of course, work on general communication skills.

But what served as an interesting experince, allowed a great learning opportunity.

We cannot wait for what adventures come our way next.

Somos en La Paz!

Hey all,

Team bolivia has arrived safely in La Paz! We got in this morning at 5 AM.... chillly airport and we all felt a bit woozy due to the altitude. We took a beautiful taxi ride as the sun was rising and started to see the incredible snow capped mountains that surrounded us! The whole team was glued to the windows, taking in all the exciting city life that surrounded us. We were dropped off at our hostel (El Solario) and waited around a bit to get our rooms (as we did arrive at about 7AM). The whole team passed out for a while in our rooms (which are great! nice and clean with warm blankets -- very necessary as it is really chilly).

This afternoon we strolled around our neighbourhood which was an awesome intro to bolivia experience. We got some tasty cheese filled buns and explored the mercados (markets). We also happened upon a (peaceful!) march of the clothing vendors of bolivia who are marching for rights to sell used clothing (so the security guard told us). The team is learning spanish bit by bit which is great! We explored more of the city and familiarized ourselves with the streets, grabbed some freshly squeezed orange juice, and some delicious empenada-like pastries with potatoes and chicken or egg... with tasty salsa! Walking around the markets made everyone eager to go back and try some of the delicious meals they serve.

We are back in the hostel now.. taking it VERY easy -- the altitude makes us all feel very unfit haha. Climbing stairs is a big feat. But our bodies are aclimiatizing and we are staying hydrated!

The next few days we will be working with Para Los Ninos - going to meet up with Marlieke from the organization tonight or tomorrow to figure out the details. We will be working with a couple of orphanages in La Paz and there is talk of a painting project at one of the houses which would be awesome. The kids here are super adorable, can´t wait to start working with the orphanages.

Hope all the other teams are safe and well and the same for folks at home :)

lots of love from team bolivia,

Elise

Saucy Kumasi

What's up Globalites?!?!

Well, as orientaiton in Ontario is probably getting under way right about now, I would just like to say how fantastic a job Dave, Chris, and Becky did at running the first official Vancouver orientation. Even bigger and better poo and worm stories, if you can believe it. All in all, a huge success.

So SFU Ghana arrived in the capital city after a long but smooth trans-Canada, transatlantic, trans-Sahara flight, followed by a bumpy nocturnal bus ride north to the second biggest city, Kumasi. We were welcomed by Patrick, who has been an amazing host to our team of eight. He's even welcomed us into his 2-bedroom apartment and the team couldn't be more grateful for his hospitality.

After a short sleep, we began our first full day in Ghana by meeting the a number of important figures in the region, including the head chiefs of two communities. We also met with members of Human Life Ghana, the NGO we are working with until Wednesday. They asked us to give ourselves a team name, and we've decided on Canada Hip-Life. (Hip-Life is the modern hip-hop style version of Ghana's traditional music, high life.) Although I have to say, I think we may have lost some of our street cred when a few of our teammates tought some kids in the community songs like The Hokey Pokey and Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. A remixed version featuring T.I. would be greatly appreciated if anyone could pass that along.

Today we helped paint a community health centre and got to witness first hand the making of kente fabric... v. cool.

Well we're here in Kumasi until Wednesday, at which time we'll be travelling to Apam, a small village on the coast to work and stay at the Catholic hospital there. On behalf of the whole SFU Ghana team, we'd like to wish all teams travelling all over the world an incredible and safe experience.

Peace and love,
Greg

P.S. Kelso, I beat you to the first post bi-atch!
P.P.S. I love Sasha Knight!!!

First team away!

We just wrapped up the first (in a long time) Global orientation here in BC! There are two new locations this year at Simon Frasier University (on their way to Ghana) and UBC (gearing up for Thailand tomorrow!).



Their visas for Ghana came in at the last minute (inspiring the new podcast) and as I'm writing this they are checking in at the Vancouver airport!



We'll finish tonight with the Thailand team and have our first orientation dismissed and off to their locations.

Here we go!

Howdy folks, if you haven't noticed there's a new podcast episode over there to be listened to...it turned out pretty good. It's Dave telling the nail biting story of the first Global orientation. Go on over there, press play and enjoy.

Also, there are 26 teams heading out all over the world this weekend for this years Global trips. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

And keep checking back here for updates, stories and pictures from those teams throughout May.

Thanks!

Chris

Global article in the Oakville paper!

Check it out...GLONK HERE.

YWAM Modesto hosts Global Youth Network!

-by Chris

We partner with a Canadian organization called Global Youth Network. Every year they bring a batch of young leaders to Modesto for a week of outreach and training...which really means they hang out with us and do what we do with us. We love Global teams! Here's some pictures from the week...some from my phone and others from the team...



Day #1 - The obligatory touristy day in the city...Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Sunset over the ocean and awesome curry!



Day #2 - Church in the morning and a tour of Modesto and where we work for orientation.



Day #3 - the team spent the whole day downtown with no money, food or resources. They had to rely solely on homeless people to find out where to go for food. They ended up making some really good friends.



Day #4 - We spent the morning with Advancing Vibrant Communities hearing about their work and then we went and did a project with them...chopping and stacking wood for an elderly lady and her daughter...



...then we barbecued for the South 9th St. community...







This team dug in to our heart to make friends and let relationship and compassion lead the way.

Day #5 - Yosemite!





!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day #6 - We went back to 9th St and reconnected with friends from earlier in the week...





These guys were more than just another team...they dove into our heart for people and became friends and co-workers. We even dreamed together about the future. Yay team!



And I think we wore them out a bit.