A Long Weekend in Jakarta

One final trip for this school year. We had a holiday a couple weeks ago which allowed us to have two days off of school and a nice long weekend to travel. This time Molly and Emma helped plan a fun adventure to Jakarta. We stayed at a nice hotel in the center of all the fun shopping and good food. We ate at a really good Lebanese restaurant the first night. Then the next day we went to Sea World Indonesia and an amusement park called DuFan. Sea World was such a disappointment. It only had a few tanks of fish, no shows, no shamu, nothing. And the amusement park too was not at all what I expected. It was more of a carnival with a few real rides. One of the weirdest was a wanna be "Small World" like at Disneyland. We ended that day by going to the coolest movie theater ever. This movie theater has reclining chairs with a blanket and they deliver your food right to your seat. Then the next day we spent time shopping and eating and finally headed back to Bandung on the train. We spent the whole train ride playing the game Taboo and annoying all of the people around us, I'm sure. It was fun to get out of town and relax for a couple of days before heading into the final few weeks of school. Life has been busier than ever and everyone seems to be running on empty, with just enough steam to finish out the school year and make it to summer vacation.

Here are a few pictures from our fun weekend in Jakarta:

At the Lebanese restaurant.

A tank full of piranhas! That's a lot of fish.

On our way to the amusement park we ran into some monkeys hanging out on the side of the road. We got pretty close.

Me and my roommate Emma

The wanna be "Small World" ride. Do you see the resemblance?

So ghetto! :)

The movie theater and comfy chairs. We enjoyed watching "Iron Man."

For all of the pictures, click on the following link and it will take you to the Web Album:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/clauson.emily/LongWeekendInJakarta

Saying Goodbye

As the school packs up and gets ready to leave and move to our new campus, we needed to somehow say goodbye to the community. The school I work at has existed in the same place for the past 50 years. We've employed local Sundanese Indonesians from the community here for just about as long. We have helpers who clean the classrooms, work in the kitchen cooking lunches, and greet people as they come on campus as our security guards. Along with that all of our staff (and almost all of our school families) have employed people from the local community to work for us as house helpers, night watchmen, and drivers. The school moving an hour away is going to have a HUGE impact on the local community we live in here.

One part of the Indonesian culture is to have a perpisahan, or goodbye party, when someone leaves. So in an effort to part well and leave a positive impact, the school hosted a perpisahan a couple of weeks ago. Many of our school helpers as well as personal house helpers showed up. As is tradition we also invited the local leadership and officials for this community. We all dressed up in dressy Indonesian clothing and ate a yummy Indonesian lunch. We heard from some representatives from the school and the community. Our director Joey gave a speech and we heard from someone in the community who remembers when the school was built. In fact I think he even mentioned that he helped build it. Also, some of the ladies who work in the kitchen sang a special song that they wrote. It was a really special event. Even though I haven't been here long, it gave me a greater appreciation for the legacy our school will be leaving here in this community. We will be sad to leave, and they will be sad to see us go.

Greeting our guest as they come in with the traditional Indonesian greeting.

My roommate Emma with some of the women who help at our school and we see everyday.

Some of the women with our director Joey's son. They love babies!

Joey speaking to the group who came. He said words of thanks as well as asked for forgiveness if we as a school have done anything to offend anyone in our history in that place. Krissy one of the mom's at our school translates for him.

The old man who remembers when there was nothing around here and the school was first built. One of our dad's from the school translates for us from the local Sundanese language into English.

Some of our helpers sing a special goodbye song that they wrote.

And the fun begins when some of our helpers and others from the community begin dancing spontaneously.

Now they've got a whole group up on stage singing and dancing.

Joey ceremonially dishes the first and best food for the leadership in the community.

Lots of people in line to get food for lunch. It was delicious.

We're Moving

I knew when I came here that the school was going to be moving from one location to another, but I didn't really understand exactly what that would entail. Throughout this past year I've gained glimpses into what that means. But even still the future holds much unknown and only time will tell what it really means for the school to move.

We are building a new school facility about 45 minutes to an hour from where we are currently located. While building projects are never quite on schedule in the States, imagine what it is like in a developing country plagued with rainy season and often much dishonesty and corruption. So it's been an interesting process up until now, as I'm sure it will continue to be. The relocation committee is still optimistic that the building with be finished and we'll be able to move in before school starts the middle of August.

A few weekends ago we went to check out the house we will be living in next year. While we were there we stopped by to see the current status on the new campus. It was crazy to walk the halls in this unfinished building and begin to imagine what it will be like teaching there next year. I got a chance to step inside my future classroom, as we've already received a layout of the new building and classroom assignments.

In the next several months please be praying for us as a school. We could use lots of prayer that the building gets finished on time. Please pray for much needed finances in order to be able to complete the project. Also, pray for the staff as they pack up the school and personal belongings in their houses and move to a new place. Right now many people are in that transition phase of feeling grief over leaving and anticipation of what lies ahead. While it doesn't sound that far, this new place feels like a foreign land compared to where we've been living. We are trusting Him in all these things. Would you join us in asking the Father for more than we dare imagine for our future.

The front of our future school facility.

It's a very large building with large classrooms as well as extra classrooms for us to grow into.

The very large hallways impressed us all.

My future classroom. It's not done yet, hopefully :)

Jennie's excited about her future science lab, next door to my classroom.

Fine Arts Festival

There is so much to update you all on. Life has been busy as we're in the 4th quarter here at school. A few weeks ago we had the Fine Arts Festival, an event celebrating the arts, of all kinds. The school holds the event every other year. It was such a fun day! Students were put into groups with high schoolers as leaders. They rotated to different stations where they participated in various forms of art- from music, drawing, dancing, and even creating art out of fruits and vegetables.

The committee who put on the event did a great job decorating the sports hall. The theme for this year's Fine Arts Festival was "symphony of color".

The whole school gathered first thing in the morning for the opening ceremony. We watched the 9th grade class put on a skit and the Preschool and Kindergarten classes sang for us. Then the Kindergarteners performed a little play, which was very cute.

Here are the 9th graders as they demonstrate for us in their skit that art can be found in many different forms: dancing, karate, music, painting, photography, drama, sports, and much more.

This is our auditorium decorated with art projects from all the different classes in our school (from Preschool all the way up to high school).

I was assigned to do beads with the little ones (Preschool thru 2nd grade). Here we help the preschoolers make necklaces and bracelets. It was a little chaotic but I really enjoyed it.

One group learns to swing dance at this station.

The preschoolers do some marble painting.

One station was called synchronized stretches (in other words dancing with scarves to music... hopefully in time with the music).

The 8th graders spend time drawing at this station.

And a few groups even got a chance to do karaoke!

Here's a link to more pics if you want to see them all: http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyinbandung/FineArtsFestival