The Jungle Tour

My daughter, Sarah, has been wonderful to set up this blog for me and to post photos for me when I can't get them there from here. I have been working from my laptop, Sharan's laptop and the UPM computer and each one handles photos, emails and skype differently, so it has been an interesting technical journey for me. I am teaching 2 classes for WWU on a new Blackboard system that I am trying to learn form here. So I can say, "Isn't it an amazing world we live in?" It is Tuesday here in Malaysia and I am working out the Sharan's apartment today to prepare my keynote for tomorrow's conference and have been working on my classes through Blackboard and have had skype conversations with John, who just made it to Virginia, a skype video call with Sally and Frank and the kids, a video skype last night with Sarah and Dylan and Justin, a skype call with Casey and Ed Webster and Gail Goulet. So I feel comfortably at home in Bellingham even though I am in Kuala Lumpur. So that is just amazing to me! I am even learning texting on Sharan's phone to stay in touch with some people that are stopping by her apartment today.

I wanted to let you know that the Jungle Tour we took was in the Taman Negara National Park. You can go to their website for more information and photos. We stayed at the Nusa Holiday Village that has a grouping of modest cabins (with air conditioning) and electricity that does go out from time to time. I wrote the previous blog as a message to my family and hadn't intended to tell all of you I fell down the mountain in the jungle, but I did and I am fine today. The most amazing thing for me about the jungle tour is the sheer beauty of the jungle. You will see a few more photos of the folliage and the long boats. The long boats are the only way to get to the villages and the hanging bridge is the world's longest and is called the Canopy Walkway. The actual bridge is under repair and I took some photos of where big sections were missing. They have rigged up a series of 6 bridges you take, one after the other to get across the jungle. When you walk across you honestly try to look straight ahead but just can't because you do have to look down to see where you are walking. I will post here what the flyer says that the bridge is 25 metres high and stretches over 400 meteres. You walk over the top of all the trees but the newer bridges did not have us walk over the river like I expected. But it was breath taking nevertheless and as I said, I did it and now am most comfortable in Sharan's apartment. We were all drenched in sweat from the jungle walks so the guides took us back to our camp where we changed into lighter clothes and the took us white water rafting on the long boats. It was so cool and we finished in a watering hole where everyone jumped in and spent an hour getting cool. All in all, fun was had by all.

Sharan has an all day workshop for 50 people on conducting research. The conference we are participating in the next 2 days is The International Conference on Sustainable Community Development for 2010. We have about 200 professors coming from all over the world to discuss using human and social capital to grow communities. I am focusing on the futures planning process to help form an educational plan on health issues for a community. It has been fun to delve into the futures trends and John has helped a lot in putting this together. I have another presentation on the next day about the breast cancer awareness project here and then on Saturday am presenting a 1/2 day workshop for the women survivors of breast cancer here who volunteer to help other women. I head home on July 27th.

I am hoping all of you are enjoying the summer. I hear from John, Ed, and Casey that the weather in WA state has been a little hot and from the East coasters, it is really, really hot there. So come on over here to the tropics and enjoy! Sandy