More updates

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes and yes everything is going fine (and safely) here!
The following is a jumble of updates and answers to questions I received, organized in no order whatsoever:
· There are, or will be very soon, more pictures on Facebook in the album I posted last time.
· As an only child
· All the ETAs are safe and sound now, but there will be some shuffling around to different locations. For me, the good news is that I now have two friends in Makassar!
· I’m getting more involved with the teaching already, and am actually having to keep myself from taking over completely; that’s not my job and I’m not qualified to do so, but being the control freak I am…but then again, you can’t really plan things here!
· Today for lunch Yusran, my counterpart (i.e. the guy babysitting me!) took me out to get some lunch after class (still working on getting that Saturday class moved). While the food was pretty good (descriptions and pictures on Facebook in a new album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2074625&id=15804233&l=97bf134ccd ) the highlight for me was having a ‘whoa! I’m riding through the middle of the Indonesian countryside on a scooter’ moment! I tend to just take things as they come, but this means I miss some of the impact of what I’m doing, moments like that one bring everything into perspective and are the reason I love traveling!
· As we drove back to the Pesantren we stopped and I picked up a sarong (yes there is a picture of that too); wearing one of these is the only way to go in this heat and humidity!
· Last night was the first rain storm: wow it really comes down! But it doesn’t stop after 20mins like in VA. And lots of thunder and lightning. The rainy season isn’t supposed to be starting yet, but it looks like it may be : ( Also, the power went out with the rain, so now too little water and too much water have to same effect!
· Imran and family get most of their food from a local market that is held 3 days a week and since I’m doing pretty much a home stay that is where I get my food. The market was yesterday so for dinner we has some sort of small bird, not sure what it was, but it was good! About the right size for a pigeon or something similar. Also had a traditional banana pudding from Linda (Imran’s maid), egg, coconut, sugar, and banana (telur, kelapa, gula, dan pisang) steamed in a banana leaf. Really tasty, and not too heavy, plenty sweet
· I found out that the students have ~19 subjects and half of their time is spent on religious studies, half on general subjects.
· I’ve been having some pretty good discussions with Imran. He showed me some funny pictures critiquing ultra-conservative Islam; I think it’s great that he is willing and able to make such comments (the pictures were on his Facebook page!), he is a very interesting guy and seems very determined 1st to make sure I am comfortable, and 2nd to keep and portray his community as moderate and modern (for Indo standards)).
· Another cool thing was one evening when I was returning to my room, there were a few boys sitting outside my door step. The next thing I knew, I was holding court with maybe sixteen 11-13 year old boys. That went on for maybe 45mins: them asking me questions and me answering in a mix (campur) of Indo and English, I want to get them to be learning English while I do things like that, so I’ve still got to figure out a better way to accomplish that.
· I played my first bit of soccer with the students today. Even the jr hi students are better than me, but I actually did a little better than I expected
· The pesantren really has a sort of family feel as a large number of the teachers are alumni; some of the teachers also live in the pesantren (maybe 5?). Speaking of the teachers, they cover a wide range of ages though I get the feeling that within the last 5-6 years the pesantren has started to become younger as the original teachers retired (the school was founded in 1974 by Imran’s grandfather). Also adding to the strong family feel is that I’m over at Imran’s home so often and he has 4 really cute kids (a 4th grade boy, 2 younger boys, and the youngest a 14 months year old girl).

That’s about all I got for right now. I’m sure there will be more later as next week will be my first week of actual teaching, but before that tomorrow I may be going fishing.

Take care semua!