This will be an amazing 8 months

And so begins the biggest and greatest (I hope) adventure of my life. A little melodramatic I know, but I don’t think it will prove to be a hyperbole.
I've included some snippets from the journal I've got going, so things might not be in context all the time.
I arrived here in Sidrap around noon on Sunday, and to be honest was borderline horrified. I think mostly due to the little sleep, the need for some food and water, and the REALLY sweaty and long trip up from Makassar, I was freaking out a fair amount. Remote is an accurate description and the pesantren’s condition is a HUGE change from the 4 star hotel I’ve been staying in the past month. For instance, I’m pretty sure at least one of the girl’s dormitories is a converted barn; which reminds me there are sheep and or goats wandering freely across the entire place; the cows are confined to a pasture and the chickens seem to be pretty much confined to my back yard!
My living situation, while probably more basic than just about anyone else’s, is significantly better than my surroundings. I have AC (I cannot express my joy for this), a water cooler, a refrigerator, a TV, and a second mattress; those are all things that I didn’t fully expect (and they’re also listed in their order of importance to me). In addition to that I have a western toilet and shower, but no heated water (not as big a deal considering the temperature here, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself) or sink. In reality it seems I might be a mix of home stay and on my own, as it looks like I'll be getting most of my meals from the headmaster, Irman (nice guy, studied Islamic law in Egypt, and after 9.11 has been to the US several times; seems to be pretty influential and important both in his community and to some extenet Indonesia), and his family. In addition, his home is the only place with Internet. He's been very open and helpful, but I feel a little bad depending on him for everything, and I don't know how much I should do myself or help out. I've offered to pay for some of my food, since I'll otherwise eat him out of house and home!
I kind of hate to ask for anything because it is so obvious how much they have done for me to be here, i.e. a lot of the stuff still has price tags or packaging on it. That being said, this is, I’m pretty sure, one of the most primitive placements (I talked to Jimmy today and it sounds like he may have me beat, as he doesn’t even have a shower, I think the two of us will have to stay in contact to help each other).
As for the teaching:
No doubt about it, this is going to be difficult, but also incredibly rewarding. Monday was the first day of school, but not really class. It was, as I understood, meant for the students to clean the campus after the long break. I thought everything would start at 7:30, and I was supposed to have breakfast with Ustas Irman at 7. Of course as with everything here in Indo, plans are only meant to trick you!
All this week I'll be just observing the teacher, Daya. I'm supposed to observe for the first 2 weeks, but I can't keep myself back that long!
My schedule looks to be pretty light (each one of the classes meets 2 times per week for 80mins each, meaning I will be in the classroom 11hours/week), and my only complaint was that they had me teaching Saturday morning, but I asked if I could change that to, hopefully, Thursday morning, if that is the case, I will have class only 4 days/week with Friday-Sunday free! That would be awesome!
Already the people here have been very nice and accommodating, especially my counterpart, Yusran and of course Irman. All of this will of course take some serious getting used to, but I think that I will enjoy it a great deal, but I'm already not sure how much traveling away from Sulawesi I will be doing. It's way too early to tell, but it takes such a long time to get to the airport that it's kind of a task. I don know I have the whole last week of November off so there will have to be a fairly major trip then!
Ok I'll cut this off here, and open it up to have people ask anything I left out. I won't be on the Internet a whole lot so be patient!