February 23, 2007 by will.krzy.

HCJB is taking on a new project where it wants to add the internet to its tool for communication and outreach. I don’t know who exactly the audience is, my guess is American young adults who readily access the internet. So when a memo was sent out to some of the folks here at HCJB Quito that suggested that www.youtube.com would be a small project, I found myself explaining to some of the older generations what the significance of youtube was, and how it could be used. I think its a worthwhile ambition, it could be an interesting way to gain exposure to people who could get excited about this line of work. Here is a video that HCJB posted on youtube.com.
Truth in Motion

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February 17, 2007 by will.krzy.

My image host, www.flickr.com (which is a service of yahoo.com), has a bug at the moment. I don’t know if it was caused by a hacker or what, but images are being randomly switched with images from other users.

If you click on a thumbnail you are given a larger image, and you are also given options to see it in many other sizes. The images that are switched are random, not every single size is switched if the original one is… nor are the optional sizes guaranteed to be the image of the thumbnail.

I sent a complaint. One of the images that was switched was inappropriate, which is kind of frustrating seeing as I’m linking the images to a blog I sent to church members and family friends. It only effected less than 5% of my images, so you can still look at them with most accuracy.

You can see how one of my pictures that I linked to on this blog was effected. Its in the post “Trip to the highlands.” I was quite surprised to see it!

Anyway… for those of you who want real news on a post… today I’m planning on going to the historic district again. This time I hope things are open. Its carnival weekend, which means the whole city pretty much turns into one big water fight. Its pretty much appropriate to soak anybody at anytime. Young kids can pelt a 70 year old woman with water balloons and for some reason its acceptable. Its exciting!

I’m working on presentations for the Rydbeck family (engineer who runs the clean water projects), for their HMA (Home Ministry Assignment), which has been a little frustrating, but a good experience. I was expected to be given a little more freedom with the project, but I wasn’t. This was a personal presentation, which I eventually realized, and was glad to relieve them of a stressful part of HMA’s. They were very grateful for my help, which I learned to appreciate.

At some point I would like to work on a project more along the lines of a documentary, with more of a narrative approach, rather that a straight up factual presentation. Where the message isn’t laid out point by point, rather it can be connected by the viewer. In this way it allows the viewer/audience to get emotionally involved. I think this would be most effective, representationally accurate, and achieve a level of inspiration. When people are challenged to think, a message sinks in deeper.

I think I’ll have to do this on my own time, and give my work day to what they want me to do. Thats fine by me, I’m here to serve. Ok, a little into Will’s head, but there you go.

Love you all,

Will

UPDATE - problem was fixed, apparently it was a server crash that did something weird. The images are all sorted out, and i also posted a new one of the refugio on Cotopaxi (elev. 15,700 ft), which is the highest I’ve been on since the last time I was at the refugio when i was 7 or 8 years old… ok, enjoy

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February 12, 2007 by will.krzy.

The biggest thing that happened last week was my trip to Carabuela. Its a small village outside of Otovalo. Otovalo is a cultural center in Ecuador and famous for its market. Carabuela’s primary source of income is making items to sell in the Otovalo market.

The reason we went to Carabuela is its water. The people of Carabuela came to HCJB’s water projects about 3 years ago and we have slowly been working on developing a plan of attack for this communities problems. I don’t exactly know why its taken so long, but I know that there is a long waiting list for this departments services, and this particular community doesn’t fit the type of projects they like to accept. I don’t exactly know the criteria, but I think its based on need and highest priority. This community has a lot more financial resource (comparatively) because of its close ties with Otovalo, and has large amount of water infrastructure already built. The problem is that it is terribly inefficient (common of government work), and costs the community a LARGE amount of money to run. Our department has committed to devising a plan for them and they are responsible for taking it to the local municipalities for implementation.

Beto is a pastor and graduate student working on his engineering degree. He is doing a version of his own of this project for his thesis. My job was to help him understand the survey equipment and assist in teaching everyone the new data collector. There ended up being more people than jobs in this particular situation so me and phil shared the duties of teaching and running the instrument. It gave me a good excuse to talk to some of the people of the village.

Over all the trip was fantastic. I got to eat some more Cui (I checked the spelling of this and this is the official way to spell it), take some pictures, talk to the people of the village, and sleep on a woven mat! This is probably one of the most beautiful valleys I’ve seen.

On the weekend I landed myself on the mountainside of Cotopaxi. The Harrison family invited a couple of us on a trip to Cotopaxi, an active volcano a few hours south east of Quito. I asked if had erupted recently and got the answer “not in 500 hundred years” but upon further research its been VERY active in the past 300 years. Just not in the recent past. “There have been more than 50 eruptions of Cotopaxi since 1738. Numerous valleys formed by powerful lahars (mudflows) surround the volcano. This poses a high risk to the local population, their settlements and fields. The city Latacunga has been completely destroyed at least twice in its history. Cotopaxi’s most violent eruptions in historical times occurred in the years 1744, 1768, and 1877. In the 1877 eruption pyroclastic flows descended all sides of the mountain, with lahars traveling more than 100 km into the Pacific Ocean and western Amazon basin. There was a major eruption in 1903 through 1904, and some minor activity in 1942.”

I have some good shots of us hiking up it. Hopefully I’ll get those uploaded soon.

So Phil brought along his GPS device and made some cool images from it. Hope you like them (I’m thinking my father will enjoy them quite a bit). Read my flickr for more information (click the image).

Oh yeah! I almost forgot… the weekend before last I went to Mindo, which is much lower than Quito and in the cloud forrest. Erin (holwerda) might remember her tube trip, and waterfall jumping experience when she came to Ecuador. Well, my experience of Mindo was wonderful. I went on these ginormous ziplines and had a blast. One of them was about 400 meters long and I took it going stomach down which was an incredible experience. We then went to a hike to see some waterfalls which you can see my whole experience via flickr. Anyhow… please keep praying. Me and Sarah need some prayer seeing as this distance thing can be rather stressful. Thanks… love you all.

Will

P.S. Mr. Van’t Land… the people in the office do remember your daughter. Bruce and Roberto send their greetings. The work she did is still functioning strong, and they were very happy with it…

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February 2, 2007 by will.krzy.

Although the week proved to be very productive and exciting, even though it wasn’t very photogenic. I did a lot of learning about survey work. I know can take the survey equipment, use it to take points, record them, use the given software that comes with the instrument, upload it to “AutoCAD Land,” and inject them, add contour lines, and make a 3D model of the land… ALL BY MYSELF! Ok… know that I figured out the equipment (with the help of a fellow working visitor, who’s two degree’s are in aerospace and mechanical engineering) I have to teach the people in the office how to use it. Most of the engineers are really busy and never had the time to figure out how to use a piece of equipment called the Data Collector. Today I spent 2 hours explaining it to Beto, who is doing his masters thesis by working one of the projects in our department. He didn’t know how to use the equipment so I tought him… IN SPANISH! I’m learning!

As for the Spanish, I started doing an interchange with a class at HCJB’s communications college (I don’t think its a full 4 year college but you do receive a large portion of credit - I think up to 3 years of credit - acceptable to most US schools). So, I’ve really noticed how much I’ve improved my Spanish while talking to them. I could carry on a conversation in three tenses (past, future, and present). We talked about relationships, my fiancee, slang, and many other things… it was very entertaining. I’m continually building friendships, and its been very exciting.

Here is some pictures of my sightseeing in downtown Quito. This is the historic district. Its very European, maybe spanish , and quite beautiful. They’ve had a problem with crime in the past, but they have police posting on pretty much every corner so its quite safe now. Hope all is well back home. Love you all, and hope to hear some replies!

Will

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