Ukraine was full of parties and get-togethers at my apartment.

Which included a few Nerts games!

And forcing Ukrainians to try "authentic American food" like deviled eggs and ants on a log.

And making some of my famous dishes.

And trying amazing Ukrainian dishes myself.

And making lots of new friends.

Including 5 "Natalia's" in one day!

And hosting some Couch Surfers from around the world.

Including Joe!

And seeing a few sights along the way.

The reason for going to Ukraine (and anywhere else in the world) was two-fold:

1. Get to know the locals
2. Network for internationalizing SammyK Media.

I highly succeeded at #1. I failed at #2.

Now I'm in Austria for a few days and then I'll head up to Germany before heading back home. I'm actually scouting my next location for another 2-3 month stay abroad… more info to come. :D

Kiev, Ukraine has really grown on me. At times I feel like I'm walking through Reykjavik in Iceland, and at other times I feel like I'm walking through Antigua, Guatemala. Weird.

My Frist Ukrainian Contact

My first reaction to Kiev was "ugly buildings," (and yes, the buildings are still ugly), but I've been able to find some of the architectural diamonds in the rough. One of my new Couch Surfing friends Denis took several hours to show me all around his city and he gave me the insider information about everything. I had a fantastic time.

And that's been the vibe of Ukrainians I've felt here so far - very hospitable.

The Saturday Night Mixup

Last Saturday I was supposed to meet a group of Couch Surfers in the city. They had a plan to visit about 5 different locations in the city. But when I went to meet them at the first meeting point, I realized that I didn't know the exact location and left my map at home. So I had to walk all the way back home to get the map (about a mile away).

I plotted the locations on the map and shoved it in my pocket. After over 2 hours of walking in circles, I finally found the tiny pub we were supposed to meet in. The Couch Surfers weren't there. It was 10:30. We were supposed to meet a 8.

So I figured I'd catch them at the next location. After a 20 minute power walk, I found the restaurant and tried locate the group of people I had never met before. One of the servers spoke English and I asked her if there were any English speakers in the restaurant. She said they left about 30 minutes ago. Dangit. Just missed them.

So I asked her the fastest way to get to the next location on the map. She said the subway. I'd never used the subway before. But I went anyways.

Ukrainian is written with Cyrillic characters and I'm barely able to sound out all the letters yet - but event less so on the fly in a high-paced subway. Add to that fact there were no clear signs posted and I had no idea where I was or where I was going.

So here's what happened: I hopped on the first train that came into the station and realized that that was kind of stupid because I still wouldn't know where I was at the next stop. I got off at the very next stop which was a transfer station. I walked to the other station and pulled out my map to find the station closest to my house (giving up trying to find the Couch Surfers at this point).

I got two people's attention and pointed to the station on the map that was closest to my apartment to see if they'd point in a direction for me. They just said, "Da" (Yes). I was struggling to ask in Russian, "No, I mean how do I get there?" But they spoke English and said, "You're already here."

After nearly 4 hours of walking around aimlessly, I found my way back home.

How the heck did that happen!?

Easter Sunday

Last Sunday was Easter. I purchased one of the local Easter cakes known as a Babka.

I tried me some.

And it was dry, but pretty good.

The Crash

That same night I stayed up all night coding. I was working furiously to launch 2 web projects in an insanely short amount of time. I noticed my MacBook Pro was running a bit slow but figured it was just because I was working her to death.

As I finished the last project, I did my ritual of backing up my active projects online and shut the computer down for the night.

The next morning it happened.

My MacBook Pro is down for the count. Bad. I run a web-based business and if my computer is down, my company is down. There is no time to play around - 2 projects were just hard-launched and that means if anything went wrong, it was live for the whole world to see.

Minutes after I discover my computer crashed one of my clients called my Ukrainian cell phone with an urgent request for some files.

The closest Apple store is in Germany. I wasted no time in finding an "authorized Apple reseller". It was more of a shady outfit, but I was desperate for a computer. They didn't take credit cards and were asking for $300 more than the retail value.

I didn't care. I went to the nearest ATM and took out as much cash out of my business account as my bank would allow. Then I went to another ATM and took out the remainder from my personal account.

With pockets full Ukrainian Hryvnia bills, I came back to the "store" and bought a white MacBook with a Cyrillic keyword.

The whole process took up the whole day so I wasted no time in taking her home and plugging up my backup hard drive. I hadn't done a full backup for over 10 days, but at least I had that!

This was going to take a while.

So I made myself a nice little dessert.

When I got everything restored back to 10 days ago, I was able to download my latest online backup of the two projects I had just launched. I love SVN!

The computer seems to work fine and will sometimes пооп жунк poop out cyrillic characters.

My Apartment

I'm finally moved into my for-real apartment that I'll be staying in for the rest of my stay in Kiev.

It's located directly in the center of Kiev. It's got a ridiculously high ceiling and an uncomfortably high toilet. It makes it hard to take a dump.

New Ukrainian Friends

This past Friday I posted a message on Couch Surfing seeing if anyone wanted to meet up at a coffee shop for a low-key get together. There was a great turn-out.

When I ordered hot chocolate, they basically gave me a cup of melted chocolate

After a while we went out to eat at a tasty Italian restaurant. And then regrouped at one of the subway stations to meet up with more Couch Surfers. We had about 12 people join us throughout the night.

We eventually made it to a bar (ew) but it was not very loud so we were able to talk. We even tried to play the game where you have to talk but you can't show your teeth.

As the night wore on the group started to whittle down little by little. Eventually there was just 4 of us. Ian, a guy from the UK and Natalia from the Ukraine were having a very "lively" political discussion. I was quite entertained and sat back with a smile and listened.

I was just about to call it a night when this cute waitress approached the table. She was acting a bit sheepish and I realized she was not a waitress.

Ian jumped on the opportunity to talk with the pretty girl and introduced himself in part English and part Russian. I'm quite entertained by male slash pretty female social dynamics so I quietly observed the interaction with a smile.

After a bit of back and forth it was clear that she didn't speak hardly a word of English. She looked at me with a shy smile and then turned her attention to Anton, one of my new Ukrainian friends sitting next to me and said something in Russian.

Anton laughed and turned to me and said, "She wants you to join her at her table to meet her friends."

Feeling quite special, I proudly walked over to her table and met her friends who spoke about 10 words of English between the 6 of them.

They were all very nice people and were full of smiles. The "alpha male" of the table was a bald guy with fairly noticeable muscles.

They poured me a shot of vodka and flashbacks of Vietnam ran through my head. Although it wasn't quite as nasty as the Vietnamese moonshine, alcoholic beverages are just not my "cup of tea."

I asked them how to "cheers" in Russian and the muscly bald guy came over to me and locked arms for the drink and then gave me a big Ukrainian kiss on both cheeks.

I suppose the bald guy's muscles posed as a challenge for Anton because he ended up arm wrestling the guy.

And won!

After a while of trying to communicate and laughing at not understanding each other, I was pooped. I had help from Natalia with finding a taxi that wouldn't rip me off by letting her do all the talking.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Language exchange group to try and learn me some more Russian. I'm also doing an exchange with one of the Couch Surfers so I'll be Russianed out by tomorrow night!

There are some serious fires going on in northern Thailand. It's so bad that you can barely see through the haze caused by the smoke.

And sometimes small pieces of ash will float down and land next to you even though the fires are miles and miles away. The other day it rained and really cleared the sky of a lot of the haze, but the whole town smelled like smoke for a few days.

When I left the temple, I went down to Chiang Mai to stay at the Grand Napat again. Needless to say, it was quite a contrast in living.

But there are two things that my monk quarters had that The Grand Napat will never have.

1) A coffin...

2) And Chicken Killer.

He would just lay outside my doorstep waiting for me to come out. I miss that little guy.

But The Grand Napat did include a big tasty breakfast buffet each morning. After eating rice and eggs all day while being a monk, I was happy to eat some bacon!

Or should I say "bacons" and "hams".

The Grand Napat is the same place me and William stayed at for over a month last year. We used to play in their pool often. I think we were the reason that they now have official pool rules posted.

Those didn't used to be there... and neither did the signs about not getting into the fountains. We did that a lot last year.

And William's favorite pirated DVD rental store was no longer in business.

I also got to meet up with Ploy (who stayed with my family back in 2005) and her bother Nat. They took me out for some Japanese food.

After a few days of luxury living, I flew to Bangkok to begin a very long travel day to Ukraine.

In Bangkok, I had about 5 hours to kill so I just stayed in the airport and worked on web projects. They were playing strange "classical music" through the PA including "Here Comes The Bride".

That night I flew to New Delhi, India. I had a connecting flight the next day. Since I didn't have a visa for India, I couldn't go out and stay at a hotel overnight so I just stayed at the airport.

Miami has long been on the bottom of my list of airports for years now. Not once have I ever been to an airport that I have come to dislike more than Miami. Until I flew to New Delhi. By far the worst airport I've ever seen. And since I didn't have a visa, staying overnight meant being confined to a small room packed with other "connecting flight" people for nearly 10 hours.

I made friends with some Czech people and an Indian guy. We played cards and then I worked on web projects as long as my two laptop batteries lasted.

After waiting forever, I boarded a plane to Moscow. That 6 hour plane ride felt longer than my 14 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Korea for some reason.

I got to Moscow and then finally boarded a plane to my destination - Kiev, Ukraine.

When I arrived at the airport I got though customs without any problems (even though I don't have a return ticket leaving Ukraine which is technically an issue with customs). When I went to get my backpack, I found that somewhere along the way, one of the many airports I had traveled through zip tied all the zippers on my backpack. And one of them damaged my backpack by punching a hole in the top compartment.

I blame India.

I was picked up at the airport by someone from the apartment company I booked through. He took me to my temporary apartment since the one I'll be staying in for the next 2 months won't be ready until the end of next week.

I have always had this image of Ukraine as looking very "soviet" as far as archetecture. As we drove into Kiev, my suspicions were confirmed. When the soviets were in control here, they pooped their unique architecture all over this town. "Ugly-ass buildings" would be a good untactful way to describe it.

Here's the view from my 11th floor apartment.

Aside from that, Kiev is a pretty typical city from what I gather walking around a bit for the first time today. A smile is a rare thing to see. Except when they are laughing at your sad attempt to speak in Russian.

I've been learning TONS of Russian... well considering I didn't know any Russian at all before. But I'm pretty comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet now which is really whack when you consider that all but 4 of the latin letters make a different sound than in English. For example, "P" makes the "R" sound and "H" makes an "N" sound and there are all these other interesting characters that make all kinds of neat little sounds.

And on top of that, this is Ukraine! Ukrainian is the official language... and so is Russian! So half the time stuff is written in Ukrainian which doesn't help me with my Russian phrase book.

The phrase book has been a life saver though (thanks Lonely Planet for the whole 2009 catalog BTW). So far in my 6 or so encounters with people in the city at restaurants and supermarkets and such, only one was able to respond in English when they saw me struggling with my phrase book.

But that's cool with me. I'm a big believer that if you go visit a country, you should be respectful to the culture by learning at least the basics of that country's language. This just means I really have to learn Russian to survive here. I'll just be taking on tips from my polyglot friend Benny.

And so far the Couch Surfing community seems strong. I posted a message asking for Russian lessons in exchange for dance or English lessons. Nine interested Ukrainians responded and offered to show me around the city too. Awesome!

So my next mission is to find a SIM card for my phone. A Couch Surfer guy is going to help me with that tomorrow. Saturday there is a big Couch Surfing get together that I will be attending. Should be full of good people and dancing. Dancing!? You don't have to ask me twice!

1) Refrain from causing harm to any living creature.
2) Refrain from taking what is not given.
3) Refrain from sexual immorality.
4) Refrain from false speech.
5) Refrain from becoming intoxicated.
6) Refrain from eating at the wrong time.
7) Refrain from dancing, singing or beautifying the body with perfumes and cosmetics.
8) Refrain from comfy bedding.

Not much has changed except I'm not eating after noontime and I'm wearing all white. I'm not a fully ordained novice monk or anything, so I'm not taking on the orange robes.

There was a little ceremony that took place to officially start me on the 8 precepts. I had to recite a few phrases in the ancient Pali language to one of the monks. Things like, "I request the precept to refrain from harming any living creature, etc". But I had a little cheat sheet and a personal pronunciation coach.

The monk then gave me a blessing in Pali and told me to "keep the precepts".

Meditation Lessons
I then had my first lesson on meditation. I have be anxiously awaiting such a lesson. Taming the mind is not easy which is probably why not very many people meditate. The whole idea is to concentrate on one thing like your breathing or a white circle with a black border. My mind is constantly wandering and I keep catching myself thinking of anything but what I'm supposed to be. It's a constant struggle now, but they say it gets easier.

Yeah, don't worry, I'll get to the shaving-the-head part soon enough...

A Monk Ordination
Yesterday I got to witness two laymen get ordained as novice monks. It was a huge celebration with lots of people.

It all started with each of them sitting in a wooden chair while the laymen lined up behind them. One at a time a layman would take a pair of scissors and cut off a lock of hair.

It is said that when the Buddha was establishing the Sangha (basically, getting Buddhism started by ordaining Buddhist monks and establishing a Buddhist community), one of the Naga (a serpent-looking animal that protects of the Buddha) turned into a human and tried to become ordained as a monk.

The Buddha knew that the Naga was not really a human and said, "No, silly rabbit, Tricks are for kids." Just kidding, he said, "No, silly Naga, monks are for humans."

So when a "pre-monk" is going through the ordination service, they are called "Naga" and are eventually asked a number of questions before becoming ordained. One of which is, "Are you a human?"

The mother of one of the Naga even let Ralph (one of the fellow "Monk For A Month" students) cut off a lock of hair.

It's taboo in Thai culture to touch someone's head. And in the "old days" a barber would apologize to their client before a cut saying, "I'm sorry sir, but I will have to touch your head and step on your hair while I cut your hair."

That is why the Thais are so diligent about putting the the locks of hair into a special bowl instead of letting it just fall on the ground.

Once all the laymen had had their way with destroying the Naga's haircuts, the shaving time began.

Then the laymen lined up again and each poured water and flower petals over the Naga's head.

When one is ordained as a monk in the Buddhist faith, a huge amount of merit is given to the mother of the monk. So it was quite an emotional time when one of the Naga paid respect to his grandmother and parents.

It was equally emotional for the whole family when they poured the water over their son's head.

Then he got rubbed down with turmeric powder. Not sure why they do this but the original monks used to dye their robes with turmeric powder or saffron.

Then the whole party moves to the main temple where they get their gifts ready. All the gifts looked like one of two things - an orange blanket or a fan...

The Naga is brought in and is given louts flowers (a huge symbol in Buddhism) and incense.

The Naga don't get to wear the signature orange robes until the robes are ceremonially given to them in the temple. They change into the robes in front of everyone (they are diligent not to expose anything that might break any of the precepts of course).

Then everyone gets behind him to parade around the temple three times.

Then right before they enter the temple, the Naga is handed a bowl full of what looks to be colorful candies.

In reality it's wrapped money. The Naga tosses handfuls of the wrapped money into the crowd symbolizing him giving up his worldly treasures to pursue a life of holiness.

Then the whole party moves into the temple and spends over an hour ordaining the two.

I didn't have quite the party full of family and friends for my head shaving... but I'll get to that in a sec.

Farewell Ralph
One of the fellow "Monk For A Month" students Ralph (who cut the hair in the video above) had his last day yesterday. It was just him and me for this past week and so we got to share a lot of experiences together.

There are about 20 temple dogs running around the temple. One of them in particular whom Ralph so affectionately calls "Chicken Killer" (because that's what he does), is easy to fall in love with. He always comes and lays next to us when we eat and is always jumping on our white clothes thus making them brown.

When it came time for Ralph to leave, Chicken Killer followed us out to the bus stop. When the van arrived, we said our farewells.

When Ralph boarded the van, Chicken Killer tried to get on with him and Graham had to hold him back.

So off he went and when we turned to go back to the temple, we saw one of Ralph's bags sitting on the ground. Frantically we waived for the van to stop as Graham grabbed the bag and ran towards the van.

A kind man on a motorbike saw what was going on and stopped in front of running Graham and pointed to his motorbike seat. Then Graham jumped on and they sped off after the van.

The van came to a stop and Graham was able to return the bag to Ralph thanks to random kindness from a motorbiker.

Chicken Killer was so sad to see Ralph leave that he had to be carried all the way back to the temple.

My Head & It's Lack of Hair
And finally, I know my head-shaving experience is at the forefront of most of your minds, so here we go.

Meet the head barber - Joy.

Joy is a senior novice monk and speaks very good English. He's been unofficially put in charge of shaving all the foreigner's heads.

Not much more explanation is needed really, bring on the pics!

I asked Joy to just leave the sideburns.

But that lasted about 10 seconds.

And did I shave off my eyebrows too!? I'm afraid so.

Just one missing...

Well, there you have it. I now have no hair anywhere on my entire head. It feels really weird, not so much the feeling of touching it, but the feeling of the top of my head being touched. You should try it some day!

I recently had the opportunity to witness the novice monks during their chanting exercise in the main temple. The chanting (and most of their formal ceremonies) are done in the an ancient language called Pali.

The main temple is about the size of a small rural church in the US. The far end of the temple houses a wall full of statues, photos, lights and incense. Dominating the wall full of holy nicknacks is a massive golden statue of the Buddha. It's reflection can be clearly seen in the spotless dark glossy hardwood floors.

When one enters a temple in Thailand, one must be diligent in manner. A few things to keep in mind when you enter such a room.

Take Off Your Shoes
People take off their shoes to enter a building anyway, so this is especially true for a temple.

Don't Point Your Feet At Anyone
In Thai culture, the feet are regarded as one of the nastiest parts of the body. It is considered rude to point your feet in the direction of any person. This is why when Thai people sit on the floor, they always tuck their feet under their bodies. This rule is especially true for the Buddha statue; you never want to point your feet at it.

Show Respect To The Buddha Statue
In Thai culture, it is respectful when greeting someone to "Wai" them. This means putting both hands together like you're going to pray, bring them up to your nose and subtly bow your head. This action is usually accompanied by a friendly verbal greeting.

There is a hierarchy of "Wai"ing. Kids Wai to adults, but not the other way around and laymen Wai to monks but they don't Wai back.

When one enters a temple, there is a special Wai that one must give to the Buddha statue to show deep respect. It starts with the person kneeling on the ground with both knees and sitting on their feet. The "prayer hands" are brought from the chest to the nose and then he bows to the ground. This is done three times and is ended with a final chest-to-nose action.

The "special Wai" is expected twice; once when one enters the temple and once when one leaves the temple. You can see the Wai in action in the first video above when one of the monks comes in late (about 30 seconds in).

The novice monks and laymen will do this action before a monk during special ceremony like with taking on additional precepts or ordaining as a monk.

It's Not Worship
To most Westerners familiar with Judaism, Christianity or Islam, it looks like the monks are worshiping an idol when they see them bowing down to a Buddha statue. But in reality, they are simply showing deep respect for the Buddha.

It's also a common misunderstanding to those unfamiliar with Buddhism to assume that Buddhists think Buddha is a god. This is not true. In their religion, he was just a guy. But this guy was special in that he reached "Nirvana" or "enlightenment" without anyone telling him how to do so.

According to Buddhists, anyone can reach enlightenment. And what enlightenment truly is begs a "you'll know it when you get there" type explanation.

Cut Kids Picture Time
Aside from chanting, I got to visit one of the public Thai schools on a special day. The kids were selling arts and crafts and putting on performances. I'm not trying to make a trend of closing my blogs with cute kid pictures, but I'll do it at least one more time.

I was greeted at the gate by Graham, a Scottish buddhist in charge of the Monk For A Month program. He grabbed one of my bags and lead me inside the temple walls.

I had to lean in to hear what he was saying despite the fact that he was speaking loudly because the air was thick with the piercing screeching sounds of thousands of Thai bugs that put saccades to shame.

Graham gave me a quick tour of the temple.

Then he showed me my new living quarters.

As with all covered areas, you must take your shoes off before you enter.

My new room is simple.

And the bathroom is even simpler.

There's currently no running water so that means, bucket showers and bucket flushes. The water is brought in by the novice monks in large containers.

Temple life is slow. But entertaining.

The other day this monkey came up to me and grabbed my camera string.

So I tied him to a tree.

Just kidding. One of the novice monks did.

Three times a day a woman on a motorbike pulls up and drops my dinner off.

It's usually quite tasty and consists of rice or noodles and some kind of meat. It's usually accompanied by fresh fruit.

Each morning I'm given a few hours lecture on Buddhism. It's really interesting to learn so much about what most Thai people hold so near and dear to their hearts.

Buddhism can be applied to one's life as a "way of life" or as a religion. It seems like most people here apply it as a religion.

Buddhism has a number of rules everyone is expected to follow that they call "precepts". A lay person is only expected to follow the first 5 precepts:

1) Refrain from causing harm to any living creature. (Killing)
2) Refrain from taking what is not given. (Stealing)
3) Refrain from sexual immorality.
4) Refrain from false speech. (Gossip, lying)
5) Refrain from becoming intoxicated.

These rules are really the moral foundation to nearly all Thai people.

If someone wants to spend several days meditating and chanting, they might change their wardrobe to all white, shave their head and take on 3 additional precepts:

6) Refrain from eating at the wrong time. (No meals after noon)
7) Refrain from dancing, singing or beautifying the body with perfumes and cosmetics.
8) Refrain from comfy bedding.

On Friday, I'll be taking on the additional three (which is also when I'll be getting my head shaved). I know you've been waiting to see shaved head pics, but you'll have to wait until at least Friday.

Precepts 7 and 8 I'm pretty much already doing. I'm not busting any West Coast Swing moves in the temple (although it has an amazing open dance floor, so dancing on it was the first thing that popped into my head when I went in). And my bed is just basically a low wooden table with a thin mat on top.

This temple houses many novice monks. Novice monks take on two additional precepts to the 8.

9) Refrain from using or touching money.
10) Refrain from using high seats.

Since they can't touch money, they can't buy themselves something to eat. So what do they do? They rely on the support of the local community.

Each morning the novice monks go into the town to collect alms.

They walk up to a house that regularly gives them food and wait a few seconds for a food-baring person to come out.

Without a word the food-baring person will take off their shoes and give each monk a small bag of homemade food. Then they will step back and kneel before the monks to receive a blessing.

As the monks give their blessing through chanting, the kneeling person might pour out water to share the good merit that they received by giving the monks food with an ancestor or family member who as recently passed away.

Once the chanting has ceased, the monks quietly walk away.

After hitting up about 5 or 6 houses, they bring the grub back to the temple and dig in.

The Monk For A Month program is run by "The Blood Foundation" which is an organization that provides aid to refugees in Thailand. Yesterday we spent the whole day going from one tiny village to another checking out the programs that The Blood Foundation founded.

Most of the people receiving direct benefit from the programs are kids. So I'll sign off today by leaving you with some cute pictures of said kids.

P.S. Internet here is sketchy at best. The temple has WiFi, but apparently it's down right now. So I have to walk down to the nearest internet cafe which is always packed with kids playing computer games. Today I went in and got about 45 minutes of internet access before it cut out for several hours.

It's fun trying to be a monk and run an internet business out of a tiny town with sketchy internet service.

But I'm starting out with a familiar country - Thailand. I was here this time last year with my buddy William.

For the first few days here in Chiang Mai, I've settled down into the same place as last year - The Grand Napat. It's luxury furnished apartments with pool and workout facilities for about $70 a night. That's a deal!

But tomorrow I go up to Fang, Thailand for a very important mission: become like Aang.

The Last Airbender

Aang is the the Avatar. No, not from the recent movie, but from the cartoon, "Avatar: The Last Airbender". The most amazing cartoon ever made. If you haven't seen it yet, by all three seasons on DVD. You will not be disappointed.

Aang is a monk from the Airbener tribe who is supposed to be the "avatar" or basically the only one who can save the planet from destruction.

I'm not going to save the earth from impending doom or anything, but I'm going to be immersing myself in the monk culture for 2 weeks.

So You're Becoming a Buddhist Monk?
Well, I'm definitely not becoming Buddhist, but I am seriously becoming a monk and will be doing all the things the monks do at the rural temples in Thailand.

What does that entail? Well, you know, not killing any living creature (including mosquitoes), not touching women (even bumping accidentally)... shaving my head and eyebrows.

Don't worry, I'll make sure to post some pics of my new look tomorrow sometime. The temple has WiFi - these are some modern rural monks we're talking about!

Here's a question I get asked a lot.

Why are you becoming a monk?

1) To Learn Meditation Techniques
At first I wanted to go to the temple to just practice meditation. It seems like most people in the Kentucky culture automatically associate meditation with some strange eastern religion and won't touch the concept of it with a ten-foot-poll.

This is unfortunate because there are many health benefits from meditaion. There is also strong evidence from the Bible that Jesus meditated. When it says Jesus went off to pray in several of the passages, it describes Jesus secluding himself for long periods of time. I doubt he was just sitting there saying, "And dear Lord help me this and give me that." I'd be willing to bet he was in deep meditation and focus.

And focus is exactly what I wanted to take away from this. I'm a bit of a rabbit chaser and any shiny object tends to grab my attention. The hope was to learn to spend a few minutes everyday in meditation to clear my head and really focus on my task at hand.

And who better to learn focus techniques than from the monks who go up into the mountains and sit in the snow with nothing but their thin robes on and through meditation, bring up their body temperature so much that it melts the snow around them! Now that's focus!

2) To Get To Know A New Culture
The other reason I wanted to become a monk is to get to know a culture that few Westerners get to experience.

Most monks we Westerners know from TV and movies are these crazy kung-foo monks who fight bad guys with impossible fighting techniques. Our view of monks is badly warped and I wanted to see what a real monk culture was like.

Ever since I learned that people live their lives differently around the world when I was in Guatemala back in 2005, I started to look at the world and other cultures a bit more objectively. Now I want to experience many lifestyles to better understand why people do the things they do around the world.

With understanding comes respect. With respect comes better co-existence.

3) To See What I Look Like Bald

I know it sounds crazy, but another reason I wanted to become a monk is just to see what I'd look like with no hair on my huge noggin. I could have just shaved my head back at home, but that's boring. Now I have a perfectly legitimate excuse.

Thanks to Amanda, I now know that for 20% of the population, once the eyebrows have been shaved off, they don't come back - or they come back all sparse and scraggly. Let's hope I'm in the 80%...

And Then...
After my monktastic adventure, I'll be taking my bald head to Ukraine where I will immerse myself in yet another culture for 2 months. I've also got some cool plans for my time there.

The goal is to keep everyone who cares up-to-date here my personal website. It won't be as glamorous as my adventure videos from Two Guys Around The World, but hey, text and pictures are still in for at least a few more years. :)

This thing is a beast not because it's got the latest hardware or has a powerhouse CPU, no. It's a beast because back in 2001 when I purchased it, I took it downtown to the co-loc room at QX.net and turned it on. That was almost ten years ago and it's still running.

I don't care who you are, any computer that's been running for almost ten years straight deserves a little appreciation. So here is to you, my lovely Dell Poweredge 1550. I raise my glass to you for your loyal and relatively stable service you've provided me an my websites over the past 9 years.

Today the site is officially moved over to my server account over at (mt). Why? Well, after 9 years of running, the Dell Poweredge is showing signs of "bucket kicking". The hard drive is probably about to fail permanently (it's already failed a few times the past few months) and who knows what else might fail.

Let's take a quick look in history to commemorate a job well done from Dell's server division.

November 2001: Lexwave (my former web business) purchases a Dell Poweredge 1550 to host web clients.

April 2002: SamPowers.NET is added to the list of sites hosted on the server.

March 2004: The server get's hacked by some stupid kid from Florida. I lose a lot of blog entries because I didn't back up regularly. The server experiences over 7 months of downtime as I wait for the new hard drive to ship in and Rick to help me install it.

July 2009: The server goes offline for no apparent reason. Chase has to go downtown to reset it. She's showing signs of aging.

September 2009: A power outage knocks out the server for several days as it was the only server that didn't restart properly. She's an old woman now.

January 2010: Time to put a bullet in the amazing server. The server is now in the hands of eLink Design, my former employer, where she is being used as a development server.

Lonely Planet is is one of the largest travel guidebook publishers in the world so this is a pretty big deal.

Help me out by giving me a vote (with two clicks of your mouse). Just go to the Lonely Planet 2009 Travel Blogger Awards site and scroll down until you see "Best Video Blog". You'll see twoguysaroundtheworld.com listed there. Just click on the radio button and then click on the button that says "vote".

Thanks for all the support!

Here's our latest video podcast on twoguysaroundtheworld.com (if you like it, vote!)

It comes out on November 24th at our travel website.

I'm still using it. It runs like a beast. It's a rockstar. I still haven't heard back from Lenovo even though I sent them my computer over a week ago. So they have my computer and my $1,700 still. They suck.

In the past, my attempts to prevent hackers from breaking into my server have failed. It's been several years since that hack, but there's always a potential threat out there. It'd be nice to know I have redundancy and guaranteed uptime when I'm traveling the world, so I turned to MediaTemple. They have amazing uptime, redundancy, scalability and service. I have to move all my sites over to them before the end of this month when my DNS account with DNSMadeEasy expires. So if you're someone like Frith, then expect to receive an email from me soon about moving your site.

With the move, I am planing on upgrading the backend to SamPowers.NET. It will also help me to get TwoGuysAroundTheWorld.com up and running. In the meantime, I will use my old server to upload our HD video files that we record during our travels so that someone back at home can download them and back them up. Should be a pretty sweet setup. I hope it works. :)

This past Wednesday was the last West Coast Wednesday for me. It's sad. I loved busting into some 3 hours of non-stop West Coast Swing. Paula from Grand Rapids went with me again this week. She lead me through a few songs, so that was fun to be the follower for once. I have never gotten lost on the drive back to Grand Rapids, but for some reason amidst all the construction we took an exit that sent us to a bridge. It was a big bridge with lots of lights. It had a weird name, "The Bridge to Canada." I was sure that I had never seen that before. So I drove around until I saw signs for our road and we eventually got back on track.

But we had wasted so much time being turned around in Detroit that I was booking it to get home. It was 2AM. There was no one on the road. I mean no one - for miles. Which is why I was surprised when I saw headlights show up in my rear view mirror very suddenly. They were ridding my tail. As soon as I realized that those were the headlights of a Crown Vic, the cop put his flashers on. Poop.

I have never been pulled over for speeding ever. One time I got pulled over in Wilmore because the cop thought I was drunk (I wasn't). But the biggest ticket I have ever received was a $25 parking ticket. I pulled over and turned my truck off, turned on the cab light and put both hands clearly visible on the stearing wheel. I had read that that is what you're supposed to do when you get pulled over on the Lexington Police Department's website.

The cop came up to the cab and shined his flashlight in my face. He was quite friendly. He asked me what I was doing and why a Kentucky boy was in Michigan. I asked him if he had ever heard of XXXChurch and he said he hadn't. So I explained that it was an organization that helps people stop looking at porn and he asked, "Are they the ones who do the Porn Debate with Ron Jeremy?" I was like, "Yeah, that's us!" He laughed and started to go back to his cruiser with my license and registration and stopped and turned to ask, "Do you know why I pulled you over tonight?" I smiled and said, "Yeah, I was going a little fast." "Yeah, I clocked you going 81. I'll be right back." The speed limit was 70. But I was trying to get us home before 4AM since we had wasted so much time being lost in Detroit.

After about 5 minutes, the cop came back and asked, "So what's a 'war driver'?" I have "Proud to be a war driver" written on the back of my truck. I started to explain that it's a person who takes a laptop with a wireless access card and drives around town and plots wireless access points on a map." He gave a confused look and asked, "Why?" Strange. Of all the people who have asked me what a war driver was, no one has ever asked why. "Uh, well, it just a hobby." I don't think he heard me because something caught his attention and he turned his flashlight off. He was staring intently into the darkness just off the highway. "Somebody's over there." With his gaze fixed in the darkness, he soved my documents to me and ran off to his cruiser and sped off.

I did not receive a speeding ticket that night.

On Saturday I headed to Fowlerville, MI to go to a friend's farm (Kayla) and went horseback ridding. I was ridding the horse Kayla calls Grandpa. He was stubborn and didn't like having a bridle put in his mouth. It was a little difficult to control him, but I think he got used to me after a while.

After lots of horse-ridding fun, I headed up to Flint, MI where Mrs. Mojo throws her second-Saturday dances. There was lots of West Coast Swing going on there (which means lots of fun). A friend of mine (Holli) requested the song "Flo Rida - Low" since that was the first song we danced to a while back. It was so much fun - but fast a crap.

Sunday I woke up late and left for the beach with a friend (Paula) and two of her friends (Jen and Laura). I had never been to one of the great lakes before, but it's essentially like the ocean with sand and waves and everything, but the water is freshwater and there are no sharks I guess. There was a pier that we walked out on and the waves came crashing up against it spraying us with a cool mist.

Afterwards we all went to Red Robbin where the waitress would not let up the fact that my face gets red easily. The girls told the waitress that it was my birthday while I was away and she came over to our table and made me stand up and made a huge stink about it being my birthday. She didn't care that it wasn't really my birthday, she just wanted to see my face get blood red. It worked.

But it really is MAP's Birthday (on the 13th)! Happy Birthday Maudie! Don't get too drunk on your big 21st b-day. I love you!

This is to inform you that your request to return system in order number has been approved contingent of a rebook or replacement order. You may place a new order in our website or may call sales at the number below for assistance.

Please provide us with the rebook order or replacement order number for our returns team to initiate the return.

In other words, I have been approved to return my broken laptop that they already "fixed" as long as I FIRST buy ANOTHER one of their broken laptops. Bull! I refuse! I WILL NOT buy a Lenovo computer EVER AGAIN. EVER! You cannot PAY ME to take another one of these worthless computers.

Fhew... ok. Calm down. I gave them a little call. I was surprised that I was controlled enough to not use any swear words, but I made it quite clear that I was pissed off. I was eventually transferred to the "Executive Team". I told the lady the whole drama as calmly as I could and she said that she'd review the case and get back with me tomorrow. I'm OK with that as long as she works with me and allows me to return this POS for a full refund. Anything else is a scam. Period.

By the way (to much rejoicing of Frith and El Clinto), I'm getting a Mac. That's right.

I just got back from Cornerstone 2008. It was an experience I am glad I had. But I am glad I'm back. Now that I have experienced the "Woodstock" type of thing twice, I think I am pretty much done with them. Once you've been to one, you've been to all of them. I will blog about it on the XXXChurch site and link to it here. I'm also working on a video of Cornerstone and how I got to be Rex and went into a "night club" thing they had going on. Twas fun.

Happy Birthday papaw! (And USA).

I was working at Beaners again today and I looked out the window to see some guy taking a picture of the back of my truck with his cell phone. I still have the PHP and MySQL logos on the back. So I ran outside to meet him with a, "Hey, are you a nerd too?" He was. He looked like one too. It was great. Nerds are cool. And nerds that can dance are even cooler. I thought I'd just throw that one out there. Speaking of which, some of the WCS ladies left some nice comments for me. ;) Thank you ladies. The pleasure was all mine.

The apartments here are quite nice. There is free breakfast 5 times a week (not biscuits and gravy or anything, but breakfast nonetheless). There is a free work-out room. Free indoor pool and jacuzzi. And a few perks such as a free membership to a local gym. I'm going to find out more details about that on Monday. There is also internet access, but it's kind of slow. Probably because it's shared throughout the building and there's a guy across the way named William downloading entire seasons of The Simpson's. Over all it's a pretty nice living situation.

Moving around like this has made me think about why I brought so much junk and what it's going to be like when I travel around the world with William. We'll be moving place to place non-stop for a full year. Wow. This little 3-time move in Grand Rapids is making me realize how important it is to travel light.

One of the things I brought up here was my professional camera, the Canon XL2 that we haven't even used for anything yet. It made me start to think about how it's going to just sit there in storage for the whole time I'm traveling the world. So I think I'm going to sell it. Along with the accessories: case, tripod, Kata backpack... I don't know. It's my baby! If I did sell it, I'd give piority to a few friends who might want it like Braedon or Andrew. But I would be sad to see her go.

No word from Lenovo about my computer headache.

Let's make some predictions about what they're going to say:

"Mr. Powers, we received your laptop and have run some hardware diagnostics on it. We weren't able to find any problems with the hardware. So we restored the operating system to factory defaults and it is working fine."

Well that's great, but I ran diagnostics too and all the tests passed. I also reformatted the hard drive and it still froze up after that.

"After we reformatted it, it seems to be working fine."

Well, after I reformatted it, it continued to freeze.

"It is working fine now, perhaps it was a program you had installed that made it freeze."

No. It froze up as soon as I took it out of the box originally - before I loaded any software onto it.

"That may have been a different issue with the computer than this one."

I find it very hard to believe that a brand-new computer that has never worked properly from the get-go is assumed to be dysfunctional because of something I have done to it with normal use.

"Well sir, the issue seems to be resolved as it is working fine now."

How do you know that it's "working fine now"? Did you work on it for a few hours until it locked up on you?

"No, but we did a full-"

Then clearly you don't know for sure that it's working.

"We believe that it is an issue with one or more of the programs that you had installed. It is running fine after we reset it to factory defaults."

So your telling me that I can't run my programs on my new computer without them crashing it? What's the point of even having the laptop? To sit there and stare a Windows Vista all day?

"No sir, you need to install one program at a time until it locks up again in order to eliminate them from the suspected troublesome programs."

That's not acceptable. I guarantee if you work on it for a few hours even with NOTHING on it but Windows, IT WILL LOCK UP. I guarantee it. I'll put money on it.

After a little bit more back-and-forth, I'll have them send it back to me and then I'll try to get it returned. I'll make sure to post the real conversation once they contact me.

I went to bed last night thinking to myself, "Maybe I didn't give Lenovo enough credit, maybe it was just a weird Vista fluke that is fixed now."

I woke up this morning and went straight to work on the X3 sites. Things were running fine until the computer had a brain fart and one of the programs froze. But I didn't panic. "Maybe it's just thinking really hard." So I waited on it for a second and it came to. Whew. I thought it was going to lock up completely again. I guess the computer is fixed! Haha! Nice. Then I double-click on a folder to open it and the mouse cursor turned into that spinning circle thing that Vista replaced the hourglass with. This time, the computer was not just brain farting as one by one, each application that I was running began to lock up. Soon nothing was responding - not even the "panic button" combination, Ctl+Alt+Del. My Lenovo laptop crashed again.

Defeated, I called up their tech support already knowing that I was going to need to send it in to get it looked at. The tech support guy asked me to do everything I had already done. "You need to do a system restore." Did that. "You need to run PC Doctor to test your hardware." Did that too. After a few more questions, he told me I would need to reformat the entire system again and not install any programs and see if it still froze up.

I have to begin a new paragraph after remembering how I felt when he said that. I was about to list off a number of 4-letter adjectives to the tech guy but suppressed them and responded slightly more professionally. I let him know that I was not an idiot and that there was something clearly faulty about the Lenovo laptop. He didn't debate me too much after that and sent a box to me that I will use to send the laptop to them.

So that's what I'm waiting on right now - a box. It's unfortunate that my blog updates are about my problems with my computer. I had hoped to blog about my experiences with XXXChurch. No worries, I shall blog about other things - after all, I won't have too much to talk about until Lenovo calls me on the phone and tells me there's nothing wrong with the computer. Then we'll have something to talk about.