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Published: June 13th 2014
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It has been a crazy twelve days but we’ve made it –today was the last day for this academic year . Students started holidays today and yesterday was their last day of school. As teachers and staff however, our extended break is here! Many people are headed home today and tomorrow as they make their way back to their respected home countries and reunite with family and friends. Others are pacing themselves and taking detours first before going home. Others like myself are not headed home at all, but rather sticking around and travelling to various places.
Tomorrow morning with a 5:00am flight I am headed off to Toraja, Sulawesi with a friend. Sulawesi is another major island that comprises Indonesia. This particular friend is headed back to the USA coming Thursday for a couple of weeks before she moves to Brazil to teach at another International School. This will be her last trip here in Indo! I have heard lots about Toraja and I am excited to explore it.
These last couple of weeks have been packed with yearend activities from co-MCing the 7-12 sport award ceremony to various Junior School sport
award ceremonies as well as Grade 6 graduation, Senior School academic awards etc.! Among all of these celebrations, we’ve been saying “goodbye” to dear colleagues and friends too. Being a part of an international community “goodbyes” are inevitable and happen every year as people move on. However, just because it’s the norm, it doesn’t make it any easier, but the circle of friends from around the globe just continues to grow. Dinner club has also wrapped up as we all cooked our last meal of the year. This system worked really well and will be continued when we return back to work in August. We also celebrated the end of the volunteer season at the local orphanage we help out at. The kids were dropped off at the school where we had games planned for them and food to serve. It was a great morning and the kids seemed to have enjoyed themselves.
Last weekend I hosted a games night and invited both national and expat teachers over. One of my goals for the year 2014 was to get to know my Indonesian colleagues better – it was a very successful night! I asked one
Good-Bye Party
Almost 1/2 of this group is leaving :( of them if they would be willing to help me with my oral Bahasa Indonesian Language skills and has willingly accepted. She will be one of the new BI teachers for middle school, so it’s perfect. It’s against the law for me to pay her with monetary gifts so I’ll have to be creative in how I repay her for her time. My goal is to hold my own in conversation and to be able to respond reasonably well. We’ll see how it goes….the flash cards I’ve made doesn’t seem to be enough....
A few weeks back when we had another “Red Letter” Day and final day off from work before the end of the year, I went to visit a friend at another campus from our school in Cikarang. We left right after school on the Wednesday and came back Thursday night. It was a nice get away and neat to see another school within the organization we work under. I have now seen all four and very different campuses in our school’s organization, but there is a fifth school currently being built and will open its doors in August. I have friends from my
campus who will be pioneering this campus in Pluit. I plan to pay them a visit and tour that school eventually as well.
It’s hard to tell that the rainy season has ended with all the rain we’ve had lately! It has poured almost every day like it does during the wet season. In fact, last week the thunderstorm was right over us – the lightning was especially close and the thunder extremely loud . Then the rain came – it POURED. I mean to the point where both pools overflowed. It overflowed so much that the nearby offices were drowning in inches upon inches of water. The head from my department said it was the worst he’s ever seen it in twenty years he’s been at the school. That same day – during all the rain, thunder and lightning I was teaching PE in the gym to Grade 4 when the power went out. The lights remained off for a while so we opened the doors to let some light in which helped a little. After about 10 minutes the
excitement ended as the lights came back on.
This past weekend I was invited to go to a pro soccer game – Indonesia verses Soccer Legends of the World. A friend of a friend had gotten VIP tickets for this exhibition match so he was giving them out for free. A large group of us met up and watched it. The national soccer team was practicing against retired players from all over Europe who were on a team together. It was interesting as various groups of people were not cheering for the home team but rather individual European players on the field despite the fact that all Europeans were on the same team. Apparently Beckham came and played a couple years ago in this match. Indonesian doesn't have a strong team so perhaps that is part of the problem...?! The final score was 5-2 for the World Legends. On the way home we sat in traffic and doubled our the time it should have taken us to get home....it was late at night and we were all anxious to get home and sleep!
I have officially paid for my new bike! We just need
Jakarta Traffic...
Spent an hour at the toll - doubled our drive home otherwise not moving whatsoever! to transfer all the papers yet, but it’s mine 😊 Can’t wait to drive it around.
I officially got a moving date – June 25! That means I can worry about moving after my trip to Toraja and can get the large items in my new place before I leave for Tanzania on the 27
th. Things are working out nicely!
Hope all is well.
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