GONG XI FA CAI! (MEANS A 3-DAY WEEKEND FOR ME)

Actually, "Gong Xi Fa Cai" means "Happy Chinese New Year." It's a phrase that was everywhere recently because Chinese New Year is a huge deal.

First, an apology for not blogging since January. ("Maaf!") Term 3 has come and gone in that time, and we have now finished two weeks of Term 4. More than 3/4ths done with the school year - hard to believe! I don't know if there is much to update about school. It continues to be a learning experience for me in multiple ways. There is so much to learn during your first year of teaching and I'm usually thinking of ways to make each term better than the one before.

I know how to work in the Asian-style school system now, but I am still learning new things and coming to understand the intricacies of it little at a time. One of the main differences between Western-style schools and Eastern-style schools (based on my limited experience here and talking to teachers from other Asian countries) is that here everyone must be on the same page at the same time. All students in a grade level go through their academic units at the same time. They might go at slightly different paces and each teacher may teach them in slightly different ways, but they will all complete the same worksheets and take the same tests on the same dates. Parents consider it to be of utmost importance that all students are given the same worksheets out of a sense of fairness. If a child in my class gets three practice worksheets, but another in a different class gets only two, how can that be fair? Because after all, they will all be compared to and ranked against each other. (The idea that "fair" might not be the same as "equal" doesn't really exist.) I understand it, but I still find it hard to wrap my head around sometimes, coming from a tradition of having personal and professional autonomy in the classroom. The good news is, the more familiar I become with how everything runs and what parents are expecting and what the end goals are, the better I am able to make things efficient.

But enough about school. You would rather know about my three-day weekend trip to the city of Yogyakarta during Chinese New Year. In any case, that's what I'm going to write about.

Before we get there, though, a word about Chinese New Year itself. CNY for me, before living in Asia, meant that there were some sort of celebrations going on in various Chinatowns around the US and maybe we can go out for Chinese food or any sort of Asian cuisine, and no more thought was given to it. I had no idea what a huge deal it is. I do believe that CNY is as big and important to many families as Christmas. For the Christian Chinese population here, I don't think it's that's an exaggeration. The traditions include giving money in red envelopes (ang pao) to your loved ones, eating lots of good food, and giving money to the lion during a lion dance (barongsai.) I had many students absent from school because they were visiting family on extended Chinese New Year celebrations.

On the Friday before the three day weekend, there was a celebration in school. Many students gave dance performances. Some teachers too, including me - I was wearing a red tunic and had my hair in pigtails! Then we all went down to the courtyard to see the lion dance. (Not to be confused with a

dragon dance. According to the interwebs, a dragon dance involves many performers, but a lion dance is operated by just two.) During this time we were doing a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity, so we had to be careful to not let the little kids mistakenly give their fundraiser money to the lion. They were so excited to see it though. Me too. I think it might be the first time I saw a dance like that. I can only imagine how horrible it must be to be inside the lion though - coordinating the jumps on and off platforms and running around.

Sometime after that week, I went out to dinner with some friends. Mildred, my Singaporean friend of Chinese descent, taught us about eating a traditional salad. It's a huge, multi-person salad with lots of different ingredients and sauces, all of which have a symbolic meaning for a good upcoming year. You shout "Huat Ah!" and mix up the salad with your chopsticks altogether and enjoy. I notice that people here in Southeast Asia love food. Not just consuming it, as we tend to do in the States, but really enjoying and sharing it.

Now on to Yogyakarta. I had been wanting to visit this city from before I left the US last June. I had heard that it was the heart and soul of Java, and I think that might be true. (FYI, the name is pronounced like "Jogjakarta" and sometimes it's spelled that way too.)

Nicole, Kristina, Lynsey and I flew out of Jakarta on Friday night. On Saturday morning we woke up at 3:30 AM to meet our driver by 4. We had the car and driver from 4 AM until 10 PM and we used every minute of that time. Stepped out of the car and onto the pavement in front of our hostel at exactly 10 and by that time we had done so much.

First order of the day was Borobudur  the largest Buddhist temple in the world, located northeast of Yogyakarta. There was some confusion with getting in, especially because our driver spoke not a word of English, but we were there when the gates opened and with our Indoensian work visas (KITAS) we got a discount price! I think we paid less than half the normal foreigner price.

Borobudur was amazing... at first. Actually it never ceased to be amazing, but we had a much harder time enjoying it as the morning went on. We started with the traditional Buddhist clockwise circum-ambulation starting at the eastern gate. We walked around beautiful Buddha statues and reliefs in the wall as the sun was making its way up the sky. Very beautiful, very peaceful. And then... "Hello Miss. I am from an English school. Can I ask you some questions?"

You never mind the first time. "Sure," you reply.

"Where are you from?"
"Jakarta."
Much giggling.
"We're from Jakarta."
"What is your nationality?"
"American,"
(On a side note, the usual response to "I'm from America," is: "Ah! America! ... Barack Obama!" The usual response to, "We live in Jakarta," is: "Jakarta banjir," which means, "Jakarta's flooded.")
"How long have you been here?"
"We're just here for the weekend,"
"What do you think of Indonesian people?"
"Oh, very friendly. Very nice."

Then you will be asked to sign a paper that confirms the student of English did in fact have a conversation with an real-life Westerner, and you go on your way. For one minute, and then... "Hello Miss. I'm in an English class. May I ask some questions?" And Indonesian people tend to be quite meek and cautious so this is usually accompanied by embarrassed smiles and/or giggles. You probably agree to do the survey a second time, even though you really just want to circum-ambulate and see the amazing largest-Buddhist temple in the world you've come all this way to see. But they just keep coming, and coming, and coming.

An hour after we had arrived and enjoyed the place to ourselves, soaking in the amazing ancient site, the place was inundated with English students and school kids travelling in packs and assaulting us from all sides. Not just kids either, but adults too. A middle-aged woman practically pushed me into a photo with her and her friend. We must have been asked for our photo about 30 times or more that morning. You will usually agree at first if people ask you politely, but it gets real old, real fast. Many Indonesians, especially those outside of Jakarta or Bali, have never seen Westerners so there are loud shouts of "Turis!" ("Tourist!") and "Bule!" ("Westerner!" - although the term deserves a little more explanation than that.)

You try to be understanding. Many of those kids have only seen Westerners in movies and television, so it must be exciting to see real-life white people, but the way they just mercilessly swarm on you and shamelessly yell at you and ask for photo after photo is downright annoying, not to mention rather disrespectful. To be fair, most Indonesians still act true to the stereotype and are quite polite, but others are not. So when people ask for photos, there's usually two caveats: "Just one photo, and if you're going to take a photo, I want one too." So I actually have quite a collection of pictures of me and my friends with all sorts of Indonesians.

We couldn't stay there too long, it was too overwhelming. Which was sad. That being said, the site of Borobudur itself was amazing and beautiful and I do recommend it to anyone who gets to Indonesia  But on a weekday. As early in the morning as possible.

After Borobudur, we went to a pottery village that was recommended in the guide book. (We travel with a minimum of two or three Lonely Planet guides it seems.) We stopped along a street with lots of splendid pottery and other art and craftwork. I couldn't resist a beautiful didgeridoo and brought it home with me for the grand price of 30,000 rupiah. ($3!)

Next we headed northwest of Yogya to Prambanan, a large Hindu temple complex. It was just as awesome as Borobudur to walk around and take in the history and art, but far less crowded. We only got asked for a picture once, by some nice, polite young guys and we didn't mind at all because they were very cool about it. Krisitina ran into them later and ate lunch with them. Both sites, Borobudur and Prambana had an amazing feel to them because they are so soaked with ancient and venerable history. And they're just beautiful too. We did have to wear hard hats inside one of the temples at Prambanan because of the risk of falling rocks, but nothing happened (except that I wore a hard hat on my head.)

Still trying to make the most of our day and the driver we had hired for 18 hours, we went to visit a nearby volcano. Gunung Merapi (translation: Mountain of Fire.) It was getting dark so we could only hike a little bit. Met some teenagers on the road who, of course, wanted a picture with us. But they were really funny. Very excited and dorky and funny and we gladly took a photo with them. One of the girls grabbed onto Nicole's arm looking like she was about to cry she was so excited! And then we parted ways and they laughed as they continued down the road. I'm certain they're going to tell the story about the night they randomly ran into some bules on the road for some years to come.

The neatest thing about Mt Merapi was the lava flow we found. After hiking up quite a steep grade on the road and then down another little hill, we came across a blackened area that had been literally incincerated, a path cleared from the forest in the last eruption, which was only a few years ago. It was pretty awesome to stand in the middle of where the lava flow had once swept through.

Finally headed back to Yogya to a restaurant recommended by Mildred, where we ordered an entire fried chicken (and again, I mean "entire" in a very literal sense, as in it came with the head and neck. I don't remember if the feet were still on.) All this in one day. (And I think we only got lost once. At one point our driver stopped outside a random house on a random street. We think he got lost, but couldn't tell us, not speaking English, so we theorize we stopped at his house!)

The next day we stayed in Yogya and explored the city. We went to the market in the morning and went to find the Kraton, which is the palace complex of the Sultan who still rules a part of Yogya. To be clear, it's not a palace in the sense of Versailles, but a bunch of nice buildings and courtyards. The Sultan and his family still live there and have some governing power over the walled area of the Kraton, and also some adjacent neighborhoods.

On our way, we stopped in a store to buy water, and the owner told us that the regular music and dance performances at the Kraton would be later than usual that day due to a visit from some important person. Instead he suggested we go to a particular art gallery. En route to said gallery we ran into a man who told us about a batik workshop and we decided to follow him there instead. The people in Yogya were very friendly and lots of people gave us directions and talked with us. Like in Bali, being able to speak any Indonesian seemed to impress the locals. There are a lot more tourists there than in Jakarta so the residents are more used to speaking English. You say "terima kasih," ("thanks") and people will say, "Oh! You speak Bahasa!" "Er, no, not really," and you look sheepish as you pinch your fingers within an an inch of each other to indicate that your Bahasa skills are in fact minimal.

The batik workshop was great. Local artists work on splendid, beautiful batik artwork and train in new artists. Everything there is local, small-scale, and authentic. Tried out some batik-making techniques ourselves on a sample cloth and bought batik artwork there. Later on, when we did go back to the Kraton, we found out we had missed the performances after all. We still walked around though and another random man on the street told us about a wayang kulit workshop we could visit. So we did. Wayang kulit are "skin puppets" that are used for shadow plays. They are made from leather and usually feature people in traditional clothing with exaggerated features so that they don't look like any one group of people or another. The workshop was a cooperative that works for the Sultan.

That afternoon was also busy. We went to a bird market with all kinds of bird and other animals for sale in cages (which was actually pretty bizarre after a while) and went walking around some ruins of a bathhouse. That evening, we went to see a Ramayana ballet. We took two of the becaks that are everywhere in the city to an outdoor dinner theater so see that traditional play about gods and goddesses and  kidnappings and love triangles and monkey gods and fight scenes up in the heavens.  Most of the other people there were middle aged European tourists.

The next day we did make it to see the gamalan music performances at the Kraton, which was very nice. I think we sat and listened and enjoyed for a solid hour. We ended our time in Yogya by seeking out the southern courtyard of the Kraton where there are two huge banyan trees. Tradition dictates that if you can walk blindfolded between the trees and make it from one side of the square to the other, you will have good luck. I tried twice and failed twice. The guide who gave us the blindfolds had to nudge me in the correct direction so I wouldn't run into the tree on the right! I asked him if this meant I would have bad luck or just neutral luck, but I didn't get a clear answer.

In any case, it was a busy, but utterly awesome trip to Yogyakarta. Hopefully I'll be taking Mom and Dad there in June when they come to visit!

Once again, sorry for my tardiness in blogging. Now that I've written about Yogya, next time I can tell you about our term break trip to Malaysia!

THE VENICE OF INDONESIA

 I have to admit, the name of this blog post is not my own original turn of phrase. I lifted this from a caption that my friend Christian put on one of his Facebook photos showing a completely flooded street near our school. But it was such a good title for the picture I decided I had to use it. (Not the one to the right; I took that picture.)

Jakarta has turned into Venice. Except instead of gondolas paddling serenely up the canals, we have motorbikes, cars, bicycles, inflatable rafts, and people soaked up to their knees or waists forging through murky, polluted, city rain backwash floods in the streets. So... very nearly the same.

This is really the rainy season now. I thought I had seen some good examples of serious rainfall before Christmas break. That was merely the prelude, it turns out. It rains everyday. As I write, a thick and smudgy solid curtain of rain is soaking everything in sight, making the construction site below us into a lake and turning the streets into rivers. Thunder occasionally rumbles through the sky and there are some fairly bright bursts of lightening too.

This morning when I woke up I had a vague, niggling sense that we might have a rain day. It was raining on the way to school (we took an alternative route, going the wrong way on one-ways and splashing through slightly less flooded streets to avoid the really badly flooded streets.) A different van with some secondary teachers got stalled en route to school and they had to get out and wade in the water to push the van along.

Only 6 of the students in my homeroom showed up today - the rest couldn't make it. The school day started and I had 7 kids in my first class of the day (4th grade English) and two of them left within half an hour. About 45 minutes into class (or, as it happened, building-paper-bridges-just-for-fun-because-I'm-not-going-to-present-my-English-lesson-to-just-five-kids) school was cancelled ("and there was much rejoicing") and the kids scrambled off to the bottom level of the school to wait for their drivers. I even heard a story of a first grader whose driver couldn't make it with the car so he walked to school to give the kid a piggy-back ride back home.

It didn't rain much after 8 or 9 in the morning, but it seems to rain through the night, like it is now. In fact, while I was writing just a few paragraphs up, I got a text from my Head of Department saying school is cancelled for tomorrow. (And I just texted 46 parents to let them know too.) So, if Minnesota has snow days (albeit grudgingly,) Jakarta has flood days. I'm happy to be able to sleep in tomorrow; not so psyched about making up these lost days on future Saturdays, as I think will be the case. (Saturdays just aren't sacred here, the way they are in the US.) We were told at school to buy more food, water, candles and/or a flashlight and long extension cord. If the power goes out in our apartment building, they may bring a generator up to our floor.

In other news, I'm back in Indonesia! The first week has gone well (that is, the 3 days out of 5 that we have not been flooded in) and the routine seems familiar now. Last semester was challenging because I felt like I was "driving by sight." It's apparently a German expression I read somewhere ("Fahren auf Sicht," I think?) that describes those situations when, say, it's so foggy out that you can only see five feet in front of you and you have to proceed slowly and carefully because you have no idea what's coming up down the road. But now I know what a typical semester should look like, so I anticipate that this semester will be easier.

On my way back to Jakarta, two cool things happened, as far as I am concerned. One is that to go from Chicago to Hong Kong (en route to Jakarta) we flew not east or west so much as straight north, then south, over the polar ice caps. I was mesmerized by the flight screen showing us north of Canada, north of Greenland, and then, miraculously, we were in the Eastern hemisphere, and north of Russia. How often can a person say they are north of Canada or Greenland, or Russia? And at one point, the map showed our closest landmark to be Svalbard! (Which I'd really love to visit someday.)

The second neat thing was visiting Hong Kong. I quite unexpectedly ran into another BBS teacher in Chicago before we got on the same flight to Hong Kong, and then the two of us ran into another teacher once we got there. We had both booked different hotels, but they weren't too far away from each other, so we figured out the airport shuttle and subway system together to get there. We had a 13 hour layover from 8 PM to 9 AM. My hostel was pretty easy to find, just a few blocks away from a subway station, and after I checked in I made the most of my short stay and went walking around. I poked my head into a few shops and even tried some late night street food at a place that was selling what looked like little bits of octopus tentacles and fish and kebabs. I stuck with a vegetarian kebab. I was lucky to get a few hours of sleep that night before going back to the airport and arriving in Jakarta in the mid-afternoon the next day. It was too short a stay in Hong Kong. It would be nice to go back for a three or four day visit sometime.

Well, that's it for now. I shall be sleeping in tomorrow and enjoying several cups of coffee well past 6 AM, which is when I usually leave the apartment to go to school. I just hope the power stays on in the building! (And that the owners of the laundry shop come back soon. They're probably flooded in too.)


(P.S. Here's an article about the flooding, if you're interested. Many areas have been affected worse than the particular neighborhood where I live. It's bad here, but not quite as dire as the examples in the article.)

TEACHING IN INDONESIA: SO WHAT'S IT ACTUALLY LIKE?

Hello Family and Friends. This will probably be my last post of 2012. Tonight at about 8:30, my roommate Lynsey and I will get on our Turkish Airlines flight back to the states. (Well, our flight to Singapore, then Istanbul, then Chicago, and then we will part ways and I will catch another flight to Minneapolis.) With the time change factored in, I will be back just before midnight on the 16th.

I had meant to update a little about some of the other fun things I've done in the past couple months since going to Thailand: visiting the beautiful Thousand Islands for a weekend (which involved swimming, snorkeling, and seeing a monitor lizard) and going to Singapore a different weekend with our Singaporean friend Mildred. Singapore is fun, but ever so clean, modern, efficient, and sleek. Basically it's what would happen if Ikea was turned into a country. We went to the Botanical Gardens, Chinatown, saw the Merlion and hung out on a beatuiful beach in November on Santosa island. There was also a Thanksgiving buffet meal at a swanky hotel in Jakarta where the champagne flowed freely and fun was had by all. Good times. Well, there's you mini update anyway. I don't have the time or energy for a longer explanation. After crying my eyes out while watching CNN this morning, I am already feeling drained. It's useless to put it out of our minds entirely, but Lynsey and I are listening to the comforting sounds of Paul, John, George, and Ringo so that we can move on and think about other things.

Nevertheless, I would like to write a little bit about what it's actually like teaching in Jakarta. In a word, it's different. I realize now that when I signed up for this whole overseas teaching thing, I was rather naive about the fact that not only would the country be different, the student would be different, the culture would be different, but also the school itself and the school culture could be very different. When I student taught in Belgium, the school operated on Western educational principals which I was already familiar with and there wasn't much I needed to learn or transition to, other than learning the IB standards.

Bina Bangsa is quite different from the Western schools I have taught at. It uses the Singaporean method (albeit a little out of date, because they don't progress as much or as often as Singapore actually does) and now I actually know what that means. I can't say I'm always a big fan of the educational philosophies that underpin how the system works, but it is what it is and it's my job to learn and adapt to them. What I mean by that is, for instance, for the past couple of years I have been molding a philosophy of education in which I believe that hands-on experiences are important, projects and holistic learning are essential, tests are not so important compared to integration into the so-called "real-world." It's all on my educational website if you're really that interested in reading it. At this school (and in the Singaporean system to a degree) tests are all-important and competition is the key. So, as I say, it's very different.

We had parent-teacher conference yesterday. Almost every parent wants to know what rank their child is in the class. Quoi? I can't imagine an American parent ever asking that. American parents might want to know if their child is doing okay and developing okay compared to other children the same age, but never would they want to know what their child's "rank" in class is based on total percentage of grades. It was easy to deal with that question however: "I'm sorry, I don't rank the students." There, taken care of, and also true. Many of the parents - most, I would say - are true Tiger Moms and Dads. This is not a stereotype, it's just true. I had one parent say, "I'm not so concerned about grades so much as that my son is developing creativity and social skills," and my jaw about hit the floor because it's just a rare thing to hear expressed here. Wish all parents could be like her. I was shocked to hear another grandparent express concern that her grandson's English-language accent was lacking and that he sounded too much like an Indonesian person. Um, he is an Indonesian person. But I promised her nonetheless that I would listen to hear if there was anything amiss with his pronunciation. Anyway, the vast majority of parents are very nice people, very friendly to the teachers, but also demanding that their children's percentages just go up, up, up. A lot of the students have tuition teachers for extra classwork after school just for this reason. Unfortunately, time left for just being a kid is little.

Here's just a little bit more about what the students are like here in West Jakarta.

Here are some adjectives that describes the average student at my school: privileged, nannied, wealthy, Jakartan, 75-99% fluent in English, rotund, sheltered, Chinese-Indonesian, trilingual, motivated, interrupting-all-the-time, good natured, normal kids.

The first three (privileged, nannied, and wealthy) are due to the fact that it's a private school. The wealthy Chinese-Indonesian business class of Jakarta (which is about 99% of our demographics) like to spend their money and don't blink an eye at expenses. Almost every single student has a nanny who takes care of them at home and a driver to bring them to school. Some families have a driver for each child! (It's an odd role reversal that it's the teachers who take the school buses to work and the students who arrive in cars.) Unfortunately however, the influence of having nannies can bring about some negative consequences for the kids (at least in my opinion.) First of all, nannies tend to replace parents without actually acting in a parenting role. Some parents don't live at home (some are even on different islands or in different countries) and some don't interact much with their children. For example, a friend of mine had to pull aside a student to address a behavior problem one day. Asking about home life, she asked the girl if she saw her parents everyday, to which she nodded. When asked if she talks to her parents everyday, the poor girl burst into tears. I don't know how common this sort of parent-child relationship is, because I'm sure it doesn't describe all the families at our school, but it is a reality for many kids.

The nannies also tend to baby the kids, because that's what they're paid to do. A friend who coaches the after-school swimming activity walked into the girls' dressing room one day to tell a girl she needed to hurry up because her older sister was waiting for her. The reason it was taking so long? The nanny was dressing the girl - who was a 4th grader! Apparently nannies also used to literally spoon feed students at recess and lunch up until 3rd grade, and put the students' backpacks on the lifts so that they could pick them up on whatever floor they were going to. Both of the last two practices are now gone, although I frequently have to stop my P5 kids (P5 = 5th grade, P4 = 4th grade, etc. P stands for "Primary,") from putting their bags in the lift. They claim the bags are too heavy. I give them two options. Take some things out so it's not so heavy, or just deal with it and carry your heavy bag downstairs.

Many of the students are also sheltered. They go on vacation, but they tend to go to resorts and play their iPads, not go mingle and explore. They have trouble relating to real-life adventures. (Sad, really...) I also say rotund, although that applies to maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of the students. It's not their fault obviously. The most popular foods are fried noodles, rice, and chicken. I rarely see students eating fruit or veg at lunch or recess time. In fact, my P4 students looked completely disgusted one day when they saw me eating a carrot, raw of all horrors! Vegetables are always fried or cooked.

Now, to talk about their good qualities, they are generally a very motivated bunch. They want to do well in school. I can say that pretty much across the board about all of my students. Part of it is that they have pressure from parents, but there is also a culture of wanting to do well. And the fact that almost all of them can speak English, Chinese, and Indonesian is very impressive (granted to varying abilites.) They are also very sweet kids, generally speaking. They like their teachers and respect them. If their behaviour is out of line they will usually change it when told why. I have mischievous kids, and demanding kids, but I don't have any that deliberately try to sabotage class activities or be destructive.

Where I struggle with my students is in getting them to wait their turns, or using imagination and critical thinking. The fact that they receive constant one-on-one attention from their nannies at home means they often (scratch that - regularly) fail to understand that there are many of them and only one of me, and I most likely cannot help them the instant they want it. Female teachers are addressed as "Miss" and male teachers are addressed as "Sir." (I go by Ms. Danna here, like in Belgium.) If I've given the students something to do, at about that time when the majority are finishing the task, it's a barrage of "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" and they will shove papers in my face, demanding that I check their work that instant. Of course I tell them to back off and wait their turn, but it took me a while to come up with the slogan that I plan on repeating until they understand: "I hear you. Wait your turn." They are bad interrupters too. Again, they want instant attention. I had to lecture my P5s the other day that unless it's a true emergency - unless they are bleeding profusely - they must wait because I will probably be done saying whatever I am saying  in a few moments. I try to thank people for raising their hands too. Again, I don't necessarily blame the students. They are used to having the instant attention. I just need to make it very clear that they must wait their turns and why.

That's about it for the students. I have relatively small classes. My P4 Science class is 15 students, P4 English is 24 students, and P5 English is 23. (That last one is also my form class, or homeroom.) It wasn't hard to learn names because out of all those students I mentioned above, only one has a Chinese name, the rest have Western names, although sometimes with surprising pronunciation of familiar names.

There's a lot more I could write about. The fact that we have Heads of Department, who must clear everything. (Aaah!! Micromanagement!) and also level representatives. I am the level rep for P4 Science so I write the tests and at least two worksheets per unit for all four P4 classes. As I say, it's just very different. Everything from the fact that we have no permanent classrooms and move to the different classes while the students stay put, to the way tests and report cards are done. Not to mention, beyond the mechanics of how the school day unfolds, the cultural basis behind what is done and why. Which, if you want to know about that, is better done in a conversation than a blog post.

That's it for now. I may - may - write more if I am stuck on a long layover with wifi access. Hopefully that will not be the case in Istanbul however, because of the chance to take a free tour of the city via Turkish Airlines that Lynsey and I will definitely check out. I sure hope that works out! I want to see the Hagia Sophia!

Well, I'll be home in something between 24 and 48 hours! Can't wait to spend Christmas with my family and friends. And see snow on the ground and wrap up in sweater! I miss that here in Indonesia. There is no sense of "coziness" that you get with a proper winter. But soon enough I'll be back in Minnesota and there will be lots of coziness I hope. It's been an incredible 6 months. Here's to the end of an interesting, eventful year!

A WEEK IN THAILAND, PART TWO: CHIANG MAI

On to part two of the Thailand adventure. We were on the night train, watching the country pass by and wondering when exactly we would arrive in Chiang Mai. Because of how the rail system is set up, at times we had to stop for a long time while another train passed us by, so that in the end we got there a few hours late. When we did get to the Chiang Mai train station we took one of the pickup truck taxis, called a songthaew, to our hostel. The songthaews have benches in the truck-beds with tall roofs over them, so that about 8 people can fit into one.

Our hostel was really nice. It was called Dozy House, and was in the northern part of the old city. Chiang Mai  is built within four very old walls. As I read when I visited the city's museum, the city was apparently born on a Thursday at 4 AM, thousands of years ago, and its head is at its northern wall and its feet are at its southern wall. Culture and history are everywhere in this city.

On our first day, after checking in, we got a car (and a driver) from Dozy House to bring us to the famous Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. (Wat means temple.) It's located partway up a mountain and is one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai. And there are a lot - there must be at least a dozen in the city, perhaps more. To get to this one, you began with a long climb up a brick staircase, flanked on either side by ornate, tiled dragon statues / railings. At the top, the procedure was the same as it is for any temple: shoes off, sarongs on. I really enjoyed this particular temple because of its great sense of peace, quiet, and spirit. Everyone was respectful and didn't talk above a low voice; no one was running around, just circling around the chedi, paying their respects. You could visit one of the monks if you wanted to receive a blessing, or walk three times around the chedi (the central dome-like structure) to pray, pay your respects, and light a candle. Or you could just walk around and look and soak in the atmosphere, but anyway you went about it, it felt like a spiritual experience. I think the mountain setting added to this.

That night we got a nice dinner at a restaurant close to Dozy House and went to check out the night bazaar on the other side of town. Chiang Mai is small enough that you can easily learn the streets with a little wandering and map-checking - it was easy to find and we didn't even have to take a tuk-tuk there. At the night bazaar we saw some traditional dances on a stage in a central plaza area and then spent the rest of our time looking around at the hundreds of stalls in the open spaces of the bazaar and all up and down the streets. A lot of the goods there are tourist-oriented: lamps, decorations, pants, skirts, dresses, candle holders, etc. I think - or at least I would like to think - that all the goods are local though. Probably made either by the sellers themselves or someone they know personally, at least in the case of the decorations and other handmade items. We didn't buy much of anything that night but resolved to go back again at the end of our time in Chiang Mai.

That night I had to make a very difficult decision. We were planning on going on a three day, two night trek in the hilly areas outside of Chiang Mai, and were leaving the next morning. We had arranged it ahead of time and would be with a couple of guides and stay in tribal villages or houses at night. Up until that night I had still been planning to go, despite not feeling very well, to be honest. I thought I might just push myself because I definitely didn't want to miss out on the experience of hiking in the wilderness in Thailand. But that night as we went around the night market and I felt exhausted and slightly feverish, my eyes getting puffy and tired, I knew that I couldn't go. If there had maybe been an option to leave and drive back to Chiang Mai as soon as I started to feel unwell, I might have pushed myself and attempted the trek. But we were going into the wilds where the only way out would have been a helicopter and I just couldn't put myself and the others at that sort of risk. So... I decided not to go and hang out in Chiang Mai instead. The next morning was difficult, because I was obviously very upset not to be going, but I stuck by what I knew was right. I wished my friends good-bye and then set off on my own exploration of the city.

That day, Tuesday, I took it pretty easy. My stomach still felt very  uncomfortable, so I stuck to rice, vegetables, and peanut butter toast. My accomplishments for the day were going to the museum in the center of town and getting a massage. On Wednesday, I went on an excursion I had signed up for the day before. I figured if I couldn't make it for a three day hike, maybe I could manage a one-day trek. This trek included almost everything my friends were also doing: elephant-ride, hike to waterfalls, and river rafting, but done by 6 PM.

For the trek, I was picked up in the morning by the tour company in a songthaew. I was the last one to join, the others in the group being three Germans and four Chinese tourists. We first visited an orchid farm, which was fairly interesting. Then we continued to drive out of Chiang Mai towards the Mae Rim river. The very lush, green scenery was beautiful and I enjoyed seeing it pass by from out the back of the songthaew.

The next stop was the elephant trek, which lasted for about an hour, or maybe a little less. I shared an elephant with one of the German girls, Susanna, and we fed the elephant mini bananas as we hiked along. Awesome as it was to ride an elephant in the first place, ambling along, seeing the countryside from the hightened perspective of the elephant was perhaps just as cool. We ended near the river and zipped across it in something that resembled a metal elevator box sliding along a cable.

We stopped for a lunch of pad thai (I have come to learn that a small parcel wrapped in banana leaves = food inside) and continued on to our trek. We walked for 50 minutes along a beautiful path next to a river until we arrived at a spectacular waterfall that seemed to suddenly come out of nowhere. Waded and splashed and sat around for a while. I tried to edge up as close as I could to the waterfall without getting completely drenched (not that that would have been so bad!)

The last event of the day was rafting - first in rubber rafts, then sitting on a bamboo raft - down the Mae Tang. Being on the water was amazing and it was such a beautiful day and place to be that I got a real sense of peace out of drifting along the river. I tried to soak it in, so I could remember it when I got back to the urban jungle of Jakarta. I was really happy I opted for the one-day excursion and still got to experience some nature. (And it only cost 1000 baht, or about 30 dollars, for the whole thing!)

That night, having finally regained my appetite, I ate at a small mom-and-pop type restaurant and had some wonderful pork curry dish. Just as I was about to leave, however, the rain started to come down with lots of gusto and I was effectively stranded. I asked the woman if I could stay and maybe watch the TV that was playing in the back of the restaurant. And when I say "asked" I really mean gestured, because she didn't speak any English and I don't know any Thai. The rain continued and I watched a ridiculous sitcom, full of silly antics and over-the-top gags and sound effects, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There were some portraits hanging on the wall and I managed to ask the woman who was in the pictures. She got out her English-Thai dictionary, and even though we couldn't say anything to each other, we had a very pleasant conversation about her daughter and granddaughter who were in the pictures. When the rain finally let up and I left, I felt very happy (and somewhat warm and fuzzy inside) to have made the acquantaince of such a nice, old Thai grandmother.

One the third day of my solo stay in Chiang Mai I headed to a local market in the morning. The zipper on my back had broken off while zipped up. I asked the owner at Dozy House where I could go to buy another one and she gave me directions and let me rent a bike from the hostel. Biking was a lot of fun. I remembered to keep to the left side of the road, and using what I've observed of road rules in Indonesia and Thailand, successfully managed to get myself outside the old city walls and to the big, sprawling local market. It was really local: the number of white people dropped dramatically - saw maybe four or five other white people there in a the span of a couple hours. I shopped around for a new bag (eventually settled on a small backpack, and bargained for my price of course) but when I went to buy it, I had to explain to the lady that I needed a scissors or knife or something to cut open my other bag so I could get my money out. Instead of giving me any scissors, she sent me along to a small corridor behind some shops to where there were couple of people randomly working at sewing machines. A man fixed the zipper for me, and then sent me along to another woman at a sewing machine to patch up the new zipper and secure the whole thing. She asked for 10 baht (about 30 cents) and I tried to pay the other man too, but he wouldn't take anything. Silly me with my Western materialistic mentality - why buy another bag when you could just fix the zipper? So now I have a small backpack and my old bag (which I'm still using.) I wandered around after that and explored the market.

For lunch I went to a tiny food court upstairs where nothing was in English. (Good sign I figure.) I saw one couple there who looked like expats who seemed to know what they were doing. When I went to ask them for their advice on ordering food, they invited me to sit down. The woman was originally from Thailand and the man was Australian; they live in Australia but visit Thailand every year. Before I even realized it happened, they ordered a meal for me and we chit-chatted for quite a while. The food was tasty and it was very rewarding to have such a nice, impromptu meeting with the couple. They even invited me to stay with them if I ever found myself in Australia. (And I just might!)

I spent the rest of my afternoon temple-hopping on the bicycle, by this point feeling pretty comfortable navigating anywhere in the small city. In the evening I returned to Dozy House where the owner told me my friends had gotten back. I met up with them at the night bazaar and we spent more time perusing the stalls and eating at the food court. The highlight of the night was the very glitzy cabaret show with Thai men in drag. It was so campy, I loved it! At the end of the show they invited people up on stage to dance and I decided to jump up there and give it a go. Dancing on stage at a cabaret drag show in Thailand? Check! The second highlight was bargaining and purchasing for very cheap at the midnight rate, a sturdy, proper backpacking backpack. I can't remember the exact price now (grrr!) but it was less than $100. I think I got it for about $50-60, which is absolutely ridiculous.

On our last day in Chiang Mai I went to a museum out of town (a sad, somewhat surreal, mostly empty-of-people museum that looked like it hadn't been touched since the 70's) while my friends visited the temples I had seen the day before. We ended our stay by taking a Thai cooking class and made some awesome food and met some other travelers: two British guys, two Chinese women, and an American couple from Texas.

We left for Bangkok by the night bus, having decided that the train was too unreliable. Of course, the bus was also more than an hour late in arriving. After traversing the country during the wee hours of the night and waking up early to some loud Thai pop music on the stereo system, we arrived in the industrial part of Bangkok and got a taxi to the airport.

And such was our whirlwind, but thoroughly incredible, adventure in Thailand. I'm only sorry I took so long to write about it. If anyone reading this ever finds themselves in that country, go to Chiang Mai. I don't image anyone could regret visiting there.

A WEEK IN THAILAND, PART I: BANGKOK

Sorry for the long dry spelling in blogging. No posts in September! (It's just too easy to put it off when you are busy or tired, which, with a job, I am most days.) Today's my last day to get a post in for October. By the way, Happy Halloween! No celebrations over here, and there was only a minimal mention of it in school. I hope Mom and Dad are enjoying Halloween in the new neighborhood though. Now, on to the main topic of this blog post, our one week trip to Thailand about a month ago.

This trip took place during out last long break, between Terms 1 and 2. One week is too long to just hang around Jakarta, and it seemed like a good chance to go see another country. So... Thailand it was! Lynsey, Nicole, Kristina, and I flew together to Bangkok on September 29th and flew back to Jakarta on the following Saturday, October 6th. We spent a day and a half in Bangkok and five in Chiang Mai in the north before returning to Bangkok.

In Bangkok we stayed at a rather cute hostel that was also a coffee shop out front. Had some trouble getting there though. After taking the express train from the airport into the city, we ended up at some intersection of roads and bridges and had trouble hailing taxis. The ones we did manage to call over all refused to turn on their meters, so we refused to get in. After several failed attempts - even with the help of a very nice lady who wrote down directions to our hostel in Thai writing, and then talked to the taxi drivers on our behalf, all while balancing a baby on her hip - we gave up on the idea of getting a taxi and pulled over one of the city's famous tuk-tuks. And so all four of us and our luggage squeezed into one tuk-tuk. And squeezed really is the right word (a bit like sardines, only cozier.) The view of Bangkok from the little motorized taxi was pretty awesome, and it seemed like the quintessential way to get to our hostel.

That first night we went to the train station to buy train tickets to Chaing Mai, our next destination, and then our tuk-tuk driver (we had given up on taxis at this point and didn't take one all week in Thailand, except at the very end of our trip to get back to the airport) took us to some boat tour company he was in league with. After bartering down a one hour trip to a more reasonable cost, we got a tour of the some of the buildings and temples along the river. It was a nice tour, but they shorted us for time. When we demanded we get the full hour tour instead of just 45 minutes, the boat driver just pulled out into the river and idled there. (Grumble, grumble, what a jerk!) After that, we wandered around the streets, taking in new surroundings and looking for the fabled Khao San Road.

Khao San Road is (to steal a line I read somewhere) a backpacker's Mecca. Instantly I knew we had wandered into some weird twilight dimension filled with surreal characters and places. It’s hard to explain the exact ambience, but I’ll try. One of the first people I spotted was an wandering, heads-in-the-clouds white hippie woman (quite possibly under the influence of drugs or simply eccentric) walking around in the middle of the road in her earth-tone clothes, no shoes on her feet. She met up with an equally spacey white hippie man. The characters in Khao San road are all interesting. A mixture of races, a lot of white 20-somethings with big "Aladdin-style" pants – the essential clothing for wanderlustful travelers on their Grand-Asian-Tours – and big backpacks with weeks’, maybe months’, worth of gear. I saw a man with crazy gelled hair that stood up like flames, and a man with dreadlocks down to his knees (I kid you not.) Aladdin pants, paintings, all manner of colourful sourvenirs, and foot massages were all for sale in the road. Once night came, the carts with the bizarre, stomach-flipping insects came out – 30 baht for a small sample, 10 baht for a photo. There were also locals, hawkers, and a number of families there, even families with small kids. Khao San road is the sort of place where people watching isn't just recommended, it’s almost required, and almost impossible to avoid.

I went home early because I was exhausted (and, according to my friends, looked absolutely terrible.) Turns out going on vacation is not the best way to recover from illness. (Oh yes, I had been sick the week before vacation. Almost thought I wasn't going to make it.) The next day it was a tight schedule of temple seeing. We wandered around with the map, visited a smaller temple first, then found out we were right across from the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace wasn’t just, it was absolutely spectacular. After waiting our turn with everyone else in the Foreigners queue, we came out on the breathtaking Temple ground. To look around the place, one of the best descriptors I can give is this: gold; lots and lots of shiny gold. Gold plated almost every structure in one way or another. Some of the temple roofs and ornaments seemed to be made out of solid gold plating. I have never seen such sunlit gildedness in my life. The buildings themselves were also beautiful: grand and imposing Thai architecture, replete with awesome mythical statues that prompted tons of picture taking. 

Next, was the temple of the Reclining Buddha (aka: Wat Pho.) We took off our shoes before going inside, as you do at any temple, and Lynsey and Nicole had to don lime green robes because apparently their shorts were just too short. (And by too short, I mean anything above the knees.) The Buddha is huge (according to Wikipedia, 43 meters long, because I certainly can’t estimate things like that,) lying on his side and looking leisurely, like the name claims. The toes are spirals made of mother-of-pearl and his feet show some sort of history, also illustrated in mother-of-pearl. A very awesome sight. I was really looking forward to seeing it, so I'm glad we got there. (Also, there was a funny sign outside the temple that said: “Ladies, don’t touch the monks.” Duly noted. That will go in my collection of peculiar signs.)

The rest of the day was spent wandering and somehow we ended up back at our hostel. The sidewalks in Bangkok are actually decent enough to walk on, unlike Jakarta. After having a long, leisurely lunch at a restaurant across the street, we finished packing up and headed to the station to wait for our train. (At this point in time I was struggling to enjoy Thai food, which I really enjoy, but  because of my recent illness I was eating even slower than usual because a lot of foods made me feel nauseous. It was rather tragic, but fortunately I finally felt better before the trip was done.) 

We left Bangkok that night by the night train. Again, lots of 20-something Europeans suddenly seemed everywhere. I felt like I had something in common with those people – a common cultural background, at least in a broad sense, and probably common knowledge of English – but I also felt the differences between us, we being expats on a week-long vacation, most of them on long tours, after which they would go back to France, England, Germany, etc. Still, there’s something oddly comforting about seeing people who look like you in a strange place. 

The sleeper cars were modest but comfortable. I slept well and enjoyed seeing the scenery the next morning as we made our way north across Thailand. The night before we made our way between rickety, questionable-looking passages between the cars to get to the dining car. It was neat to look around at all the other travelers enjoying their Singha beers and having a good time. I tried to soak up the atmosphere as much as I could. I'm very happy we took the night train; it was a good experience.

More to follow. That's only the first two days! The rest of our time was spent in the northern city of Chiang Mai, which was even better than Bangkok in my opinion.

HOLIDAY IN BALI

Last Thursday we got back from an 8 day holiday in Bali, which was absolutely fantastic. Bina Bangsa gave us a two week (paid!) vacation for the Lebaran (aka: Idul Fitri, aka: Eid) holiday which follows the end of the Ramadan month. ("Selamat Hari Raya Idul Fitri 1433 H!" as banners everywhere proclaim. Guess it's kind of like seeing "Merry Christmas!" everywhere in December.) Anyway, a group of 11 new North American teachers made a plan to go to Bali during school orientation in June, and we all stayed at the same hotel in Seminyak, in the southern, more touristy part of Bali. The rooms were large, I guess they were actually suites, and (somehow) managed to squeeze all the girls into one and all the guys into another.

We did a lot of amazing things, and I will do my best to describe what we did in concise paragraphs. Okay, here goes...

Wednesday the 15th: We left Jakarta and flew to Bali on an Air Asia flight. Like other Asian airlines, the plane has seats in the emergency exit rows, which is a little worrying. No matter, we got there in a little more than an hour and took a taxi from Denpasar to Seminyak. Our hotel, Centra Taum (which was really lovely and I recommend it to anyone who might happen to find themselves in Bali) was located down a dirt road in what I can only imagine was formerly a rice paddy. Other rice paddies, hotels, and the occasional convenience store were also located along the same road. We headed down one of the main roads to find dinner that night.

Thursday: Spent and hour or two shopping at Seminyak square at the open air market. It's mostly gifts and clothing there. I bought a dress. We then went to the beach where we sunbathed and I boogie boarded (which was a lot of fun, even if I seemed to get knocked over by the waves half the time) and left only a little sunburned on my back. The beach was about a 20-25 minute walk from our hotel down that same street where we ate dinner the first night.

Friday: Woke up at 1 AM, three hours after I had gone to bed. Left the hotel at 1:30 to meet the vans hired the day before to take us to Gunung Batur, a voclano in northern Bali. One of the vans showed up on time, the other was still MIA at nearly 2 AM. When Nicole called the driver, I'm pretty sure he was still in bed. He got there at 2:30 and the second group to leave booked it over in the dead of night. As for our van (which left first) I was asleep half the time we drove, but I do remember passing through a really strange night market that was completely full of people.

We arrived at 4 AM and began the climb in the pitch dark and cold. At the time I wished I hadn't worn shorts and a T-shirt. As we got hiking, I started to sweat of course, but when we paused I was all the colder and clammier. Hiking in the dark was a little challenging because we had to hold flashlights as we went and all of your concentration was on your next step. Seeing as we were climbing a volcano, the path was mostly sand, gravel, and loose pumice-y stones - not very stable. I had chosen to wear my sports sandals, which maybe wasn't the best choice, as all the sand and rocks fell in and got trapped under my feet and didn't fall out again. We got to the summit at about sunrise, where we were treated to a spectacular view out over the ocean, another volcano, and fields stretching out to the horizon. As a bonus, we were also treated to the scene of tons of Indonesians gathered around big flags singing their national anthem at sunrise, because it just so happened to be Independence Day. I don't know much of the national anthem, but we sing it every Monday in school at assembly, so I know a couple of words in the chorus. It was an awesome sight to behold.

We hiked up a little further and took a break at the highest point on the volcano. Our guides (we were required to have two guides for our group of six) cooked us eggs in the steam escaping from vents in the side of the volcano and made banana sandwiches, served with your choice of coffee or tea. Although all 11 of us had met up at the summit, the other group started their descent before us. I certainly didn't mind taking in the view at the top and listening (now for the fifth or sixth time) to the national anthem sung again. Then we began our own descent. The next part was absolutely terrifying and amazing. We were literally walking on the very lip of the volcano, winding our way around to the other side. I felt (mostly) safe but my heart was pumping adrenaline because walking along the path that was only five or six inches wide in parts, and in other parts a foot wide but with absolutely nothing (and I do mean nothing) on either side except the long, steep, slope of the volcano, and the feeling that too strong a wind might just blow you over... well, I had a healthy amount of fear underneath my seemingly calm composure.

The way down was easier, not least of all because now we had light and didn't need flashlights. Sand and gravel were still filling my sandals every 5 seconds, and I did slip once on a particularly steep and loose part of the gravel path. Scratched up my right leg pretty badly. This wasn't a deep cut or anything, but a big, wide surface scratch, about the size of my hand, that took off a decent amount of skin and really, really smarted. At the time there was nothing but to put up with it. The next time we took a break I poured water and hand sanitizer on it (which really, really smarted.) Also got a cut on my left knee from a pumicey rock with a little sticking out bit, but that cut hurt far less.

By the time we were at the base again, we were all pretty tired. Waking up at 1 AM and climbing a volcano can do that do you. But we will always be able to say we climbed all of Mt. Batur, and got some absolutely wonderful views and photos out of it. I especially loved standing and walking on the very cusp of the volcano crater ridge. The mixture of amazement, fear, awe, and appreciation I felt is a bit beyond words. That night we had a dinner at our hotel and got to watch Balinese dance and listen to traditional gamelan music.

Saturday: Went to the trendier, more touristy town of Kuta (jam packed with Australians) to do a little shopping and each lunch. That night we went to a restaurant / bar / lounge called Potato Head, which was directly on the ocean and had it's own beach front. The place was recommended by one of our Singaporean friends who has been to Bali many times before. The place was (to use our group's new favourite adjective) very chill. We had had to make reservations two days beforehand but it was worth it. That night, a few of us went to a bar in Kuta and danced the night away. The place we went, Tavern bar, was very crowed, loud, bright, and noisy. It was a little weird seeing only Indonesians working there and only Australians and Westerners dancing and drinking , but I was a little too busy having fun to worry about it too much.

Sunday: Sunday... What did we do Sunday...? Must not have done anything very productive in the morning, but in the afternoon we went to a beach in the very southern peninsula of Bali. This beach was filled with beautiful, huge boulders, sea caves in the surrounding cliffs, and tons of tanned, near-anorexic, Europeans. Swam a little bit and had some lunch, and then we went to meet up with others in our group to go to the famous temple of Ulu Watu. We had meant to all go to the beach together, but travelling in a big group and needing to take at least two or three taxis meant that we often got separated. The group I was with met up with the others just as they were leaving the temple. We stayed and watched the sunset (which was very beautiful) and walked around the temple. I had imagined Ulu Watu to be this secluded, mysterious bit of spirituality tucked away up a mountain in a jungle, but I should have known better. Like most of Southern Bali, it was full of tourists. So much for my visions of the Mystic Orient and it's mystical temples. Actually, I'm sure those are out there, just not in Southern Bali.

Monday: Left for Ubud in the morning. Ubud is a town in central Bali (and it's also apparently featured in Eat, Pray, Love.) There were still many tourists there, but the town itself has a far less touristy feel than Seminyak or Kuta. We went to the Sacred Monkey Forest there, which was super cool. I'm not exactly sure how old everything there is. The whole place is lush and green and beautiful. We walked around some interesting statues and down a little river path before heading back to the main temple area. There was a Hindu religious ceremony going on, so you could peer in through the gates but not enter. (Obviously. You'd feel like a real jerk walking in on the equivalent of someone's Sunday church service or ceremony with a camera in hand, snapping away.) Macaque monkeys were everywhere, big and small, energetic and calm, eating, running around, and nursing babies. I got some really good photos, including a few of a couple of adult female macaques who came and chilled out by me, about two feet away! They were very calm, so I tried to stay very calm, and we were all very calm together.

On our way out, something unexpected happened. It really shouldn't have been unexpected though. I was crouched down on the ground taking a photo when a cheeky little toddler monkey seemed to suddenly and magnetically attach himself to the metal water bottle on the side of my backpack. My reaction, which I fully admit was a stupid one, was to  whip around and grab the monkey, trying to pin him to my backpack so that he couldn't escape with my water bottle. If I had gotten bit I would have completely deserved it. Of course, he got away and started playing with my water bottle. I asked very politely for him to give it back, but he wouldn't. Then, also perhaps stupidly, I was taking a picture of this rascal, waiting for him to hopefully abandon the thing, when another, adult macaque came and took it. I have a photo of the baby monkey walking away from the water bottle and the next one is the adult turning it over with his hands and feet. I definitely wasn't about to fight this monkey, so I just waited. Fortunately one of the temple supervisors who deal with the monkeys every day distracted the culprit so that I got to take back my water. That's what I get for not zipping it up in my backpack.

After nearly fighting a monkey in the Monkey Forest, we walked around Ubud for a while, down some very beautiful streets, and then finished out day at the Elephant Cave nearby. This cave is apparently from the 11th century and looks like a giant demon head coming of out a hillside. You walk inside and there are a few alcoves with statues, include Ganesh, the Hindu god of education, as it is. The cave was worth it alone, but the surrounding area was also awesome. There were some absolutely beautiful paths that ran around hills and past boulders and waterfalls. I only got to explore part of it, but it really looked like something... I don't know... out of a National Geographic, on a postcard, but 20xs better. All in all, our day in Ubud was great.

Tuesday: Went with Lynsey, Eduardo, and Josh to try scuba diving for the first time! We traveled south to the beach area of Nusa Dua (which was also jam packed with tourists, but all Indonesians from other islands.) The driver got us a good deal so we only paid about $45 each. Our guide, a laid back guy whom I'm sure takes tourists out dozens of times a week, gave us the basics of how to breath underwater and what hand signals to use. Suited up in half-wetsuits and weight belts, we traveled a little ways out and stopped by where many other boats were parked. We got to do the compulsory flippers-over-head backward flop into the ocean and then our guide and his assistant helped us into the jackets with the oxygen tanks. They brought us down about 6 meters to an area with a metal fence around some coral. Apparently they bring all the newbie divers here. We stayed at the coral for the duration of the 25 minute dive and fed fish from bread in plastic bags they had given us before hand. Then it was back to the surface and back to shore. In a way it would have been nice to swim around a bit more, but I really didn't mind having a fairly mild dive seeing as it was my first time and I had no training other than a five minute session on how to breath and use hand signals.

Later that evening we went to the beach again for only a little bit, and threw ourselves in some waves. I imagine I ate dinner somewhere, but I really can't remember at the moment, so it must not have been that memorable.

Wednesday: Was completely lazy in the morning: read by the pool and then slept. Later, I went with two other friends for a massage (and was practically accosted by the overenthusiastic workers there.) Wasn't about to get a body massage with my back still sunburned, so I opted for a pedicure, which was a bit shocking (not to mention scary with all those weird metal tools they use to scrape and snip) seeing as I really don't like anyone touching my feet. But my feet did turn out much nicer looking in the end. Later still, I got a bit of time to myself to walk to the beach and write in my journal as the sun was going down, which was very peaceful.That evening a small group of us went back to Kuta to once again to get drinks and dance the night away. It was... shall we say, an eventful evening, full of lots of drink and dancing, and I even kissed an Australian surfer guy from Perth!

Thursday: We flew back to Jakarta. Our holiday was great. Already miss the relaxed atmosphere, clean air, beach, and mixture of adventure and laziness. We have another holiday coming up at the end of September, for one week. (That's the thing with year-round school - more frequent short breaks.) Right now a few friends are brainstorming ideas about going to Thailand or Vietnam, but there are no definite plans. Probably will do whatever is cheapest!

12 HOURS IN SINGAPORE

Visas are funny things, especially when you're living in a country that's riddled by slow bureaucratic processes and corruption. As of the 2nd, I'd been in Indonesia on a tourist visa, good for one month, and extended once, but I had to go to Singapore for the day to officially get my work visa. All I had to do was bring my passport and the application fee (which the school gave me) and then Julia (another teacher who went with me) and I were free to explore Singapore for the day while the visas were processed.

It was a full day because I was picked up by a school van at 4 AM and got back to my apartment around 11 PM. We ended up with about 12 hours in Singapore, which flew by. Singapore is awesome! It's only about a 90 minute flight from Jakarta but the two cities are night and day. Jakarta is actually less hot and humid than Singapore, but Singapore is CLEAN! The streets aren't full of rubbish (for good reason, you wouldn't litter either if you got a $500 fine,) the subway system is efficient and easy to use, and it's just a really interesting, diverse place. We had time for really only two things: first we went to Little India where we window shopped at the market selling Indian clothes and had lunch, and second, we went to Marina Bay, walked along the harbor, and went on the Singapore Flyer, which is a big observation wheel, kind of like the London Eye.

The first adventure of the day was meeting up with Julia. We had separate flights so I arrived at the airport by myself. We both had been given similar directions ("Go down one level, and out exit door #2 to meet the agent.) But, it turns out, we had arrived at different terminals! Add to that my phone wasn't receiving any text messages and wasn't connecting to the agent's Singaporean phone number and I was a little worried. Eventually I got ahold of Julia and made my way over to terminal three where we met up and found the agent, a woman named Fiona who handles all of this visa business for BBS in Singapore.

Fiona drove us to the agency in Chinatown where we dropped off our passports and got our pictures taken, and then we were free for the day until 5:30, when we were supposed to come back to the agency. I was impressed with my sights of Singapore, in the airport and driving to the downtown area. For instance, in the airport bathrooms there were touchscreens on the walls as you exited, asking you to rate your experience of the bathroom with five correspondingly happy or disgruntled smiley faces. On the bottom of the touchscreen monitor it read: "This screen is sanitized every hour." That's just the sort of place Singapore is: smart, efficient, modern, and scrupulously clean. Also very impressive (and completely mesmerizing) in the airport was the metal-raindrop-mechanical-artwork (that's the best way I can think to describe it) where a grid of at least a hundred ceiling-suspended raindrops moved in formation to make various shapes and patterns. It was awesome and I watched it for quite a while.

As for the rest of my day in Singapore, let me transcribe for you some of my journal entry:

"8:22 PM. Today was great. We did two things mainly: visited Little India and went to Marina Bay and in the Singapore Flyer. Spectacular view! Apparently Julia has a bit of a fear of heights, but she did fine. Coming back to Chinatown and the travel agency, we came up the escalator and found ourselves in a splendid, colourful, bustling street with all kinds of small clothing and souvenir shops. And... a Tintin boutique! I resisted the temptation to buy anything, but I did get my picture taken in front of the store, like a dork. I would really like to come back. Singapore is such an interesting, diverse place. It really deserves three or four days to explore properly. Who knows? I may very well be back sometime in the future."

"10:35 PM. (Still Singapore time, though we must be closer to Indonesia than Singapore by now.) I remember what I was going to say: I really enjoyed the Singapore airport. At any airport I love to people-watch, and the exhilaration of seeing all sorts of people from all over the world coming and going to all parts of the world. But the Singapore airport especially creates that feeling. I especially enjoyed seeing the Westerners. So many white people compared to Jakarta! Maybe every one in thirty are white in Singapore, compared to what feels like one in five hundred in Jakarta. There are particularly a lot in the airport (including, fairly frequently, a white man with his Asian girlfriend or wife and biracial school-age children out on holiday.) You can spot the Europeans fairly easily, especially the continental Western Europeans. And so many with sandals and straw hats and baggy pants and dresses, big, heavy-duty backpacks full, arriving in Singapore or on their way to the next leg of the great Asian journey.

"I saw three people whom I believe were German. A young, mid-20s couple dressed stylishly and a woman in her sixties with them, dressed in baggy, white cotton pants and shirt, in a typical Southeast Asian style, and black tennis shoes. I saw many families too. European I'm sure, because North Americans just don't go on family trips to Singapore. I wish I could sit down with a lot of these people and chat, hear their stories, find out where they're from, where they've been, and where they are going.

"Anyway... Singapura was great! I hope to go back. There's so much to see!"