Guus Bosman

Thursday afternoon Michael and I traveled back to Raleigh/Durham. We had planned to take a 5.30 pm flight from Newark, but unfortunately the flight was significantly overbooked. We arrived at the airport about 50 minutes before departure time, and the machine didn't give us a boarding pass but a "priority seating ticket" of some kind. Bad news!

Anyway, so we were bumped off the flight, but with the help of our excellent travel agency and some creativity we got seats on a flight to Charlotte, and American Airlines paid for the minivan we took from there to RDU. We were home at 1.30 am, but at least we didn't have to stay another day and take a flight on Friday night (the first thing the AA agent offered us).

The Full Frame Festival 2008 Awards were announced an hour ago. Not surprisingly, Man on Wire won the Audience Award and got an honorable mention from the Jury (we saw the film last night and it was amazing). The Jury award went to Trouble the Water, a movie about Hurricane Katrina.

Two other movies that I saw received awards: Lioness and At the Death House Door.

This afternoon I went to the Durham Armory where the tickets are being sold and I was in line from 2.00 pm so I was the first one to buy tickets -- Sasha and I will see Betrayal at 3.45 pm and in the evening I'll see Trouble the Water. Betrayal is playing in Cinema One, a small venue, so it was getting sold out quickly.

The movie opens with a beautiful nature shot of a river in Sri Lanka, and the camera moves to two heavily armed girls of around 18 years old. They are soldiers in the Tamil Tigers rebel army.

The personal story of the girls shows why they choose to join the rebels at the age of 11 after attacks by the military on their village. The father of one the girls is killed in an air raid as is told in moving interviews with the girl's mother. The mother hasn't seen her daughter in year since the girls now live and train in a rebel controlled area. In conversations with the two girls it becomes clear that the girls are trained to become suicide bombers, who at one point will strap a mine to their body to attack 'high value targets'.

The film is directed by Beate Arnestad and produced by Morten Daae. It is amazing how much access the filmmakers had to these two girls, and they did a great job providing context to their story and the civil war that's going on in Sri Lanka. The audience gets a bit of an understanding of why and how people can become ready to kill themselves for a Leader; the movie also shows some of the tragic results these suicide attacks have on the civilian population. When I searched for more information on the civil war there I found a newspaper article that just today, Sunday April 6th, a suicide bomber killed 12 people at the start of a marathon in Sri Lanka.

An eye opening film; one of the best I've seen on the festival this year. I'm now sitting in the Armory, waiting for the results of the juries decisions and hoping to be able to buy tickets for the winning movies.

Early in the morning the weather forecast for 8.00 am in Raleigh still mentioned thunderstorm, but when I arrived the weather was quite acceptable; overcast but no storm. I was really happy that the race would start on time, my first half marathon ever.

It was great fun! I finished in about 2 hours and 20 minutes (the official time will be posted on their website in a while), about 10.7 minutes a mile. That's better than my long training runs and it's a good first result that I can improve on a next time.

It's strange that the race that I've been training for so long is now over. I'll have to find myself a new running goal; I hope to find another half marathon for in a few months. And I promised myself I can buy new shoes now; mine are about a year old and have seen many miles.

Downtown Raleigh is beautiful, and I liked the track. There's a long out-and-back in the second half, where it's 4 miles up and then 4 miles down Hillsborough Road. The first part was a bit depressing because you see all the runners who are so much faster, but the second part was nice because you see the runners that are slower. There were music bands every few miles, a nice touch. It's wonderful to be able to run in the middle of the road! The surface is nice and smooth, and in the middle the road is flat so you don't walk crooked like you do when on the side of the road.