The clouds cleared and the storm passed, which meant that we were back to work today again. Breakfast is getting quite monotonous, so I bought some Hungarian Honey Smacks cereal at the CBA grocery store in town to "spice" it up a bit. Our workday consisted of screwing in more plywood/OSB to the wood frame on top of the structure. Again, we ended up over screwing and the telltale sign was the fact that we ran out of screws before the end of the scheduled workday. The weather conditions were perfect, sunny but not scorching, breezy but not windy. By [View Full Entry]

---

---

Happy 4th of July! I set the alarm this morning for 6:30am. I decided to give myself a break from running and rest up for another day of building. Breakfast was scheduled at the normal 7:30am time. We had the usual: bread, ham, cheese, salami, corn flakes cereal, and yogurt. We headed out to the jobsite at 8:15am and proceeded as usual. This time, Shondor, a young, local Hungarian guy who was recently hired by Habitat for Humanity as Construction Manager for a different build site was going to act as our Construction Manager today (part of his 3-day intensive training [View Full Entry]

---

---

The alarm started beeping at 6am this morning. I wanted to go for a run in the rural town of Csurgo. It had rained and thunder stormed last night, but the sky looked virtually clear in the morning, so I got up and put my gear on. When I walked out of the hotel lobby, the air was crisp and the smell of wet asphalt was prevalent. The sun hadn’t yet peered through the clouds, but it was already out…perfect running conditions. I headed down the hill toward the local church/community center, turned left towards the town center and decided [View Full Entry]

---

---

Monday, July 2, 2007 First Day of Build At 6:30am I woke up this morning to see if my bags somehow magically appeared in the middle of the night…no luck! So, I was on my way to a third day in the same pair of jeans. I never knew how creative I could be with a pair of 7 jeans, but everyone was quick to comment on my new look each morning (full length, capri, long shorts, shorter shorts - alittle more constricting though, you name it). Luckily, we were given a new Habitat for Humanity t-shirt, so I gave [View Full Entry]

---

---

Surprisingly enough, I actually had a decent night's sleep last night. We made it home after a drink at the local bar at around 11pm. I woke up at 5:15am and couldn't go back to sleep, so I got ready for my first full day in Hungary. Unfortunately, my bags hadn't shown up yet (the other two team members who were in my same predicament got better news late last night), and the online tracking website indicated "Tracking Still in Progress" for my two suitcases. Would that give you the warm-and-fuzzy? Somehow, it didn’t for me. Due to the fact [View Full Entry]

---

---

My Continental flight from EWR to CDG (Paris-Charles DeGualle) was delayed for about an hour-and-a-half because of the previous night’s East Coast weather delays. Once we finally took off, the flight ended up being fairly smooth and quick. Unfortunately, my two-hour layover narrowed to a 5-minute layover after everything was said and done. I made my way to the Air France ticket counter and surprisingly enough the ticket agent checked-me in and printed my boarding pass, despite the fact that the flight was scheduled to leave only 5 minutes after that. I had to take a minibus to Terminal [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today, I planned to see my very best friend from preschool, Kai (who is also affectionately referred to as “Bud” - care of our growing-up days when we would watch The Cosby Show together). When I was 4 years old, I started pre-school at a place down the road from my home called Adventure Pre-School. I can only recall little snippets of memories from my childhood, but one that I will never forget is my first day of preschool. Being the youngest sibling and always having my sister by my side, I grew up never really being alone. That first [View Full Entry]

---

---

I had an amazing week in New York City. I stayed with my girlfriend from high school, Jenn Chen. I went everywhere in NYC… you name it, I went there. The one thing that I wanted to do, but never ended up doing was to run in Central Park. I will someday soon, however…probably on my return trip back from Europe. On Monday night, I met up with Jenn at Dos Caminos in mid-town (near both her work and apartment). I took a detour and stopped off at the bar on the top of the Mandarin hotel overlooking Columbus Circle [View Full Entry]

---

---

During these past three nights I have gotten a combined sleep of 12 hours. Yes, I know you are all saying that that is impossible because I can sleep anywhere, and can do it at anytime. So it is ironic that the next part of my journey will take me to the City that Never Sleeps - New York City. I guess I’m on a roll, and besides who would waste a quarter of this trip sleeping anyway? Not me. I don’t know how a person can love as many cities in this world as I do, but I do and [View Full Entry]

---

---

In the past year, I have been trying to slow the affects of aging, by making a concerted effort to do some sort of physical activity at least five days a week (ok, that’s on a good week, but we all have goals). About a year ago, I started going to the Kailua Bikram Yoga studio with my girlfriend, Kelli, in an effort to mix it up a little bit. I remember that first day in the studio, I thought to myself…what the hell am I doing in this room that is purposely heated to 100+ degree temperatures, holding these [View Full Entry]

---

---