Home Stinky Home

I just sat down to a nice glass of wine and a spread of cheese and crackers after spending the last four hours in traffic while picking up my car from a friend who borrowed it while we were gone. I can definately say, traffic is one thing I have not missed about Jakarta. The annoying thing about the roadways here is that even if you kind of know where you are, you can still get completely lost. Of course, it doesn't help that I have an extremely weak sense of direction.

This has been a grueling couple of days back to school. We have had meetings and orientations with only a tiny bit of time left in the day to get ready for classes to start. It has been nice catching up with old friends and meeting the new teachers. Thank God it is a short week and we have Friday off for the Indonesian Independence Day.

Judah is having trouble sleeping during the night, i assume due to jetlag or maybe some teeth, which means Leah and I are getting very little sleep as well. Hopefully he figures things out soon and gets back to his schedule. He is getting around so much now and is using anything and everything to get him where he wants to go. Also he is kind of becoming a freak about Leah. Whenever he sees or hears her he fusses until he is in her arms. He only likes me when I do some sort of stupid dance or chase him around on the floor.

I don't have a lot to say. I am extremely happy to be working towards a vegetarian lifestyle.

love,
g

My Heart Will Go On

Wow! I almost forgot about this account. Normally, I don't have anything real exciting to say so I end up logging in and logging out. This weekend was pretty action packed so I thought I would add a post to at least keep this account valid.

NoFX was in Jakarta on Saturday night. I went of course. It was pretty fun. Not as awesome as I was hoping but still fun. It was at this big outdoor parking lot. I was THE only white person there (of course I was smart enough to go alone). I felt totally safe and even a bit excited to do something that no other Bule was doing. Honestly though, it was an extremely strange feeling to be the only whitey in a sea of Indos. I ended up hanging out with a bunch of University kids, who spoke some english. Between my bit of bahasa and their bit of English we were able to talk most of the night without too much awkward silence.

The gate to get into the concert was a narrow lane enough for one person to walk through at a time. Imagine thousands of people squeezing their way through this gate, like trying to suck a steak through a straw. Basically, any movement that was made was not by your own will. The masses chose the direction of the flow and if you were lucky enough the flow took you to the gate. During this insane shuffle, my handphone was stolen. I couldn't believe it! I was kept my hands in my pockets the entire time until the last minute when you had to try to reach up to show the polisi you tickets (I bought mine from a scalper out front and I am almost 98% positive it was a fake). The second I got through the gate I checked my pocket and it was gone. Luckily my wallet was still there.

There was a hardcore band from Hong Kong called King Lychee (I think). The sounded really funny and I couldn't quite figure it out until I realize that the screaming singer was actually a girl who sounded like a man who sounds like a girl. NoFX had their usual stage antics where they talked for about 10 minutes between each song. I don't think the crowd liked it too much. Most likely because they couldn't understand very much of it. I thought it was pretty funny. The University kids kept asking me what things meant and why they were so annoying and rude.

It was really awesome to have a band, even one I don't listen to much anymore, come to Indonesia. On occassion some come to Singapore but never to Indonesia. Actually that is not true Saturday night was NoFX and Sundy night Good Charlotte came. NoFX made fun of them the entire time. And everytime they made fun of them the crowd went wild. I guess they thought NoFX was saying good things about them. Good Charlotte is huge here. I have never been able to figure that one out.

One other interesting thing was the insane amount of street punks that were there. I had no idea Indonesia had such a scene. Even though they spoke another language I could tell they were just as stupid as the ones back home.

The end of this story is kind of funny for those of you that know NoFX at all. Again, I was THE only white person there. I decided to head out on the last song to try and beat the mad rush of Indos out the same tiny gate. As I was walking all of the sudden a smooth reggae song with a cool bass line came on and it occured to me that I knew the song as I was unconsciously singing along. Then it occured to me that everyone else knew the song and was singing along. The weirdest part was when the chorus hit and the words go "Kill all the White Man, Kill All the White Man, etc... Me and 10,000 other people of non-pigment deficient people were singing these same words. For those of you unfamiliar with NoFX, they write a lot of joke songs and this is one of them...well maybe in America. So I was walking at about midnight, amongst thousands of Indos all singing these words. It was pretty surreal to say the least. Plus my phone was stolen, so even if something happened I would have had no way to get help. But this is a lesson, I never really felt unsafe and in general safety is not a big issue when you are with Indos. Most, even gutterpunks, are friendly and helpful.

One other exciting thing happened but you will have to read about that on our other blogsite for Judah...

http://judahbuddah.blogspot.com

later,
G

Where have we been, you ask? I'll tell ya.

While we have been gone. We managed to do quite a few things. In particular...have a baby! Most of you probably already know but just in case you didn't (Patrick), we had a little baby boy on December 9, 2006. His name is Judah Francis Souder. If you would like to see pictures of him go to his blog site.

http://judahbuddha.blogspot.com

I thought, "well I'm so good at keeping up this one blog, I may as well add another one to my list of things to eventually do."

Also, another exciting thing happened. We decided to extend our contract for one more year. We really like our school and although, Jakarta isn't the greatest city, Asia has treated us well.

I promise, I will update this again soon...

small world afterall!

sorry its been so long since i have written. hopefully people still check here periodically. i don't have a ton to say. we are eagerly awaiting our new baby to come. only a few more weeks. my best friend chris golwitzer just had his little girl about a month ago and our friends here just had their little girl on wednesday. we are next in line. it is funny how over the summer it felt like we had forever to go because chris and our friends here had to have theirs first. but now they have both taken their turns and its ours next.

school is keeping us quite busy. it is hard to believe that we have already had three months of classes. november and december are crazy months for me with lots of performances and report cards to write, at the same time as a baby is due to arrive. thankfully we have a week off next week for Idul Fitri, which is an important muslim holiday, kind of like christmas, but not really. we are going to head down to jogyakarta, which is where the big earthquake happened at the end of last year. just be happy we aren't going to sulawesi right now. we are going to stay in the city for few days and then spend a couple of days at a coffee plantation outside the city. it will be our last trip as just leah and i.

i just thought i would share a story of serendipity...

last saturday i participated in habitat for humanity and we went to a village outside of jakarta in the middle of rice fields and palm trees. i went with a group of students and teachers to help move bricks and roof tiles, and do whatever other odd jobs there were to do. when i was walking up to the site a girl stopped me as asked if i used to live in minneapolis. i thought it was really weird but off course i replied yes. she then told me that she used to work at the same tutoring center that leah and i worked at. i don't know how she recognized me because i think we only worked together a couple of times. leah knew her a little better than i did. she had just moved down to jakarta in august to teach at the big international school here. i was glad that she recognized me because it was really nice to talk to her when we finally got a chance to sit down for lunch. long story short, we met up with her at a couple of her friends for dinner that night and it was quite fun to talk about minneapolis with her. for anyone who has lived in that city, i think has to have a certain affinity for it. especially the specially grocery stores.

another strange occurence was that one of the friends that came along with our friend was introducing herself, and i felt like i was having dejavous. i told her this was weird but i felt like i had met her before as well. it was like i had heard all of the words she had just said when she said her name and where she used to live. anyway, it stuck me. i didn't really meet her but last year when we went to manilla, philippines for a conference i went to a jane goodall, roots and shoots seminar. this same girl was there and she sat behind me two rows. somehow i remembered her. no idea how though. normally i can't remember what i was planning to do 10 minutes before.

if that wasn't enough for a strange day, we went to this dinner with a bunch of friends from our school. now follow this... leah and i invited the girl from minneapolis. our friend cindy invited two of her friends. the girl that we invited, invited two of her friends, who later on invited one other girl that they new. are you following? the girl that was invited by the invited friends of the minneapolis girl that we invited, knew one of the girls that cindy invited from texas about 5 years ago. how crazy is that?

i guess all of this silliness just goes to show that the world really is a small place.

enjoy!

Kabar

Hello, Hello,

So I am currently nursing an infection on my toe that I have had for about three and a half weeks. It started as a mosquito bite and has now become a black and blue blister/puss factory. It doesn't hurt but it itches like crazy. Don't worry Mom I have been to the doctor and have an antibiotic for it.


Today we got out of school at noon because of a demonstration in south Jakarta. For those of you who don't know, Indonesia is a political mess. Supposedly it is getting better but I would hate to see what it was like when it was bad. Anyway, it was nothing that we had to worry about in the north but many of our students live in the south and in order to get them home safely and beat all of the traffic that the demos were bound to create they let all of us go early. Again don't worry Mom, we are safe and sound. the strange thing about political protests is that it is actually considered somewhat of a profession here. Protestors/Supporters are basically hired in order to make each of the political parties seem like they have the most support. However, these so called "supporters" will "support" any and all causes, no matter what they are, as long as they get a buck or two. Plus if they are lucky they may be able to break some windows, burn something down, or beat someone up.

Congrats to those who took part in the May Day festivities. Today was the international day to walk out on school or your job in support of international workers. I am pretending that my school did not let me out early and that I actually walked out on the job (because I was going to do it...I swear!!).

I have been listening to a ton of music lately of very ecclectic tastes and right now I am listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. They are totally awesome. At first I thought there name was rather annoying but now I wish I had come up with it. Tomorrow is a pretty exciting day, the new Velvet Teen ep comes out. I am going to download it during school even though it is not allowed. Please don't tell. In other media, Leah and I are watching the Sopranos. We just started season 3. It is pretty good. So far I think I liked Six Feet Under way better. I am also reading Ghandi's Autobiography and The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. If you don't know who he is, he is an interesting Irish writer. The first thing I read by him blew me away. It was in the collection of short stories put together by Nick Hornby called Speaking With Angels. check it out sometime. I recently finished 50 Facts that Should Change the World by Jessica Williams. Pretty interesting quick read. Next up on my list is Guns, Germs and Steel by I can't think of the author now.

One last bit of an interesting update. About 7 and a half weeks ago Leah and I had an unexpected surprise. We found out that Leah is pregnant! Its an alien ninja that is apparently hopping around inside Leah like a Mexican Jumping Bean. We are still kind of in shock but it seems to be becoming more and more real each day. We are pretty excited and can't wait until Leah is fat! We had been talking a lot lately about when we might want to have kids but we could never decide. All we could ever decide was that it would be easier if it just happened. And I guess that is when it happened. It seems like you can always find something to keep you from doing what you want. It is nice when the decision is made for you and all you have to do is figure it out from there. And if you know us, you probably also know how happy we are that we didn't have to make any decision about it. I have know idea how we are going to decide on a name. Currently we are considering Ninjababy! but I don't know what we will do when it grows up. Oh well, I guess that is something that he/she will have to deal with, not us!

Ok, I hope all is well with everyone. Just six more weeks of school and then we will be back in the states soon. Can't wait to see all of you.

Love,
Grant and Leah

Filipino Vacation

Here is a blog about our spring break trip to the Philippines which happened about a week back. I wrote it while on the trip but haven’t posted it until now. Also check out the other site to see more pics. Http://homepage.mac.com/doublebassface22

It is now 7am on Wednesday March 29. I could not sleep any longer. I decided to walk out onto our balcony and check out our view for the last time before we leave today. We are in the Philippines, staying at a resort called Coco Beach. It is a beautiful secluded place set into a small valley on the island of Mindoro, just south of the main island of Luzon. Little bamboo huts with grass roofs are carefully set back behind the thick of the trees so as not to disturb too much of the natural environment. Our hut is at the very top of the hill so our balcony provides a wonderful view of the bay. It also allows you to see down on all of the other grass rooftops, which makes me feel like I am living in a community of islanders who have never seen a telephone, a white man, or a car and who probably assume that as far out as can be seen on the bay is the end of the world. Sadly though, I am typing on a computer and there is a fan pointed right on me. Also I am just about to go down the hill to order a delicious breakfast. There is a family that lives in the hut right below us. They are called our “service family”. It is kind of a neat idea and this is the first time I have seen it. They are kind of the groundskeepers and the room cleaners for so many huts in their area. That means they’re whole family lives here at the resort. The family is very nice and seem to be pretty happy. The father’s name is Lando and he is always watering plants. I think there are about four other “service families” living here.

The last three days we have done a lot of lounging poolside or out on the beach. It is a pretty nice existence but I do believe the reason I slept so terribly last night could be the fact that I have done little else this week. Gasp! Is it possible to have too much sleep? Pretty much the most effort I have exerted this week has been to eat mangoes and to ask for more when I have finished. The mangoes here are absolutely incredible. People always say that the Philippines have the best mangoes and they are right. They are so sweet and always ripe here. It would almost be enough for me to stay here except that Filipino food is not that bad but it is not that great. They don’t use much spice. A little curry but where are the chilis?


We arrived in Manila on Saturday afternoon. It was a three hour plane ride with a two hour lay-over in Singapore. Upon landing in Singapore Leah was immediately caned for having chewed gum sometime last week. We spent the evening hanging out in the Malate district which is kind of the young area, I guess. There really wasn’t a whole lot to do there but there was a bar called the Hobbit House, which lived up to its name. The doorman, the waiters and the bartender were all midgets. It is hard to believe that someone could make a business out of another person’s shortcomings, no pun intended. But all of the employees seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves.

The next morning we headed out for our island getaway. We stayed at Coco Beach until Wednesday when we had to head back into the grime and chaos of the city. However, we were looking forward to hour next few days. Sure we were going to a conference that should inspire us and make us want to fill every moment of our lives thinking about how we can better educate the world and blah blah blah…but the most exciting part was that the conference was being held at the Shangri La Hotel…and we had a reservation. Or so we thought. When we arrived they told us that we were supposed to arrive the day before so they gave our room out to someone else. We were tired so we figured we had probably just made some sort of error and it wasn’t our time to stay in this amazing hotel. Luckily they set us up at the Richmonde Hotel…notice Richmonde is spelled with an “e” at the end maybe to indicate its importance to the world. However, for the same price it was no Shangri La. Well long and strange story short we ended up being able to get a room the next day in the Shangri La and it was totally worth it. Plus the conference was pretty cool. There weren’t a whole lot of music seminars so I went to all of the environmental and humanity type seminars. I came away with a lot of things that I didn’t know about and an overwhelming sense of how am I ever going to get any of these kids to understand the importance of the earth? Remember we teach kids who still have a nanny by the time they are in 7th grade. They don’t have to lift a finger EVER but if on the off chance that they do, it is probably holding a video game controller. Plus Asia, and especially Jakarta, is not known for its ability to live as one with nature as most Americans have grown to think of our neighbors to the east.

Overall, we had a wonderful time in Manila. The conference was a lot of fun. We met some great people there and came back excited and re-energized for work again.


Here is a picture of me eating a delicious tempe burger that if I am lucky, our maid will make. They are super awesome and don't make me miss eating meat one bit. This night, Leah ditched me and I had to eat dinner alone. Notice the bottle of sambal next to the plate. It is getting to the point where I can't eat anything without it. Sambal is a chili sause that is sweet and spicy. I love it!

Frisbees and Mangos

We just got home from playing Ultimate Frisbee in south Jakarta. I have been going for the past couple of months with some other teachers from school. Leah started going these last couple of weeks. It is a sport that I never thought I would get into but it is a lot of fun. It rained throughout the entire practice which was nice because it really helps cool things down. You just have to forget the fact that it is most likely acid rain. Leah went straight to bed and as usual I am wide awake and hungry.

My appetite has really increased as of late. Especially since I have become involved in so many sports. I am playing Frisbee, coaching and playing soccer. I am even golfing every once in a while. Actually we have a half day tomorrow and a bunch of the guys are going golfing. It should be fun. Sadly though, between figuring out how to do my job and the increase of activity I am finding less time for actually playing music. I do not feel bad though because I have been craving the bass so much lately that I know as soon as I get my bass back I will definitely play again. It always kind of scared me to get a real job because I wondered how bass playing would be affected. So many people especially music teachers get a job and then give up playing their instruments for any number of reasons. I always hoped, and I guess, still hope that it will not happen to me.

Anyway, we have an exciting couple of weeks ahead. On Saturday we leave for the Phillipines for a week over our spring break. It is a mixture of break and work. The first four days we are spending time in Puerto Galera and the last three days we will be attending a huge teaching conference for overseas teachers. It should be pretty fun and if not at least interesting. Plus the school pretty much paid for this trip. They paid for our plane tickets which was $500 each plus our registration to the conference. We have to pay for hotels but that’s not so bad. I am looking forward to this trip. Especially because mangos are not in season here in Indonesia right now but apparently they never go out of season in the Phillipines and to top it off, everyone says they have the best mangos in the world. I don’t know if you understand but mangos are my favorite fruit ever.

The weekend after we get back from the Phillipines is a three day weekend, thanks to some unpronounceable Muslim holiday. We are going with some friends to the island of Lombok. It is supposedly what Bali was about 20 years ago. The weekend after that is another three day weekend because of Good Friday(I might have those two weekends confused), we are going to Bali for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. It is going to be a good couple of weeks of insane traveling but well worth it. After those weeks it is a straight shot until summer. We will be counting down the days until we can see our new nephew Kade, and of course everyone else as well.

With all of these new photo opportunities coming up, I realized that our past photos have fallen behind. I just posted all new pics (almost 400) of our trip to Cambodia. Hopefully before we leave for the Phillipines I can get the pics from Vietnam and Thailand up as well. If you have forgotten the website is http://homepage.mac.com/doublebassface22

I don’t have much else to tell you. I hope everyone is doing well. Please keep in touch even if it is just an email that’s says hello. We miss you all a lot and will talk to you soon. I have to get to bed soon. I have kindergarteners at 8am tomorrow.

Love,
Grant and Leah
(sorry, no good photos to post)

It's me finally

So normally I leave this blogging stuff to Grant. He is a much better writer but I thought I would give it a try. You're my friends and family too. I also don't really feel like working. Grant just went to play ulitmate frisbe. I go sometimes but I have a little work to do and I hate working at night where as Grant works better at night. Things have been going great here. I finished doing my report card early so that is a nice relief. They are due tomorrow. We didn't do much this weekend. Just tried to relax. The upper school kids had a play this weekend so we went to that on Friday. Then we went and played poker (Texas Hold'em). We lost. But last time I won the whole game. I was pretty proud of myself and I won us some money. Also, on Friday after school I went to the spa and got waxed and a pedicure. I don't even shave anymore. It is wonderful. Every couple of weeks I just go get all the unwanted hair waxed off. Those of you who know me this is a dream come true. Saturday Grant had a soccer game which the kids lost. They have a lot to learn about teamwork and hard work. While Grant was coaching I went to get coffee and had an amazing cinnimin roll with my friend Cindy. Then we went shopping and I bought a couple of shirts. When Grant got home we went and had a massage. Grant tries to get one once a week. It is a great stress reliever for him. Then we went to this great India resturant for dinner. We seem to eat a lot of India food here. Our maid, Lilis, loves cooking India food so we also get a lot at home. I don't remember if Grant told you but our maid is the best. You know how I love my food and I don't like to have the same things all the time. Lilis is always trying new things and she an amazing cook. You would think it would be hard for us veggie eater to find good food but let me tell you you can get anything. We eat a lot of tofu and Lilis made us these tofu burgers or maybe they were tempa for us the other day and they were superb. They even looked like real hamburgers. I probably wouldn't be near as happy here if I didn't have good food. It's hard to come by taco shells here. Sometimes they have them and sometimes they don't so I don't get to have tacos as much as I would like but at least I get to have them sometimes. That's enough about food.

Tomorrow I am getting a new student. She is Chinese but is coming from Malaysia. She just finished 1st grade so she will be in my class next year too. The parents just wanted her to come for the rest of the year so that she can get to know the school and make friends. Hopefully she will fit in good with our class. I have a lot of drama in my class right now. The girls are always fighting. It is driving me crazy. I have a couple of boys who can't keep quiet. I have a couple of special needs kids in my class which makes it even more difficult. I am just so glad I only have 14 kids. I have a great story to tell about one of my students. It is quite gross I must warn you. This boy is one of my smartest boys. He is popular with the other students too. He also is a student I am constently telling to be quiet. Anyway, the kids were all coming in from there break when this student comes up to me and tells me he just pooped. He also announced it to the class. I said, "that's great thanks for sharing." Then he goes and gets a tissue and wipes his butt in class. He pulls the tissue from his butt and not joking he has poop on it. He then tells those that are listening. Now at this point I am in shock. I scold him and want to not draw any attention to this so I continue to start my lesson. After the kids go to pool. I think about the seriousness of this. I knew I had to tell the principal because some of my other kids could go home and tell there parents and then there would be calls. So I inform my principal and he wanted to see this boy immediately. Talk about wierd. This boy was an angel to me the rest of the afternoon. Has anyone every heard of anyone ever doing this? What was he thinking!

Well I must be off to work. I am sure I spelled some words wrong and some sentences didn't make sense but I am going to try and not worry about it. I am not perfect and I won't be afriad anymore gosh darnet.

So maybe I will write more. I have a little secret. I actually have a lot more free time than Grant does. You know him it takes him forever to do anything. But you gotta love him. I will try and get the photos from our Christmas vacation up soon. The problem is that Grant like to give each picture a title which takes forever plus he never has time. But I guess you guys appreciate that. Like Grant said before I can be quite lazy when it comes to things like that. We will get them up soon.

Oh yeah. I got tickets for us to come home this summer. I believe we will arrive home on the 15th of June then leave again on 1st of August. Can't wait to see all of you.

Love you and Miss you lots!

T'ent 2

Wow, two times in one week. Keep it up Grant. Since I am probably writing only to myself I am extra proud.

I ventured out a bit today. Normally, the only places we go in Kelapa Gading is home, school and the mall. I found this place that I had never seen before on the way to the mall. It is a little internet cafe. There are next to zero in Jakarta and this is the first one I have seen in Kelapa Gading. The cafe is called T'ent 2. Anyway, I decided to check it out. It is a really nice, clean and new place. They have wireless. They make a decent cappucino. The best thing is the wireless part is on the third floor so it is pretty high up and it has a nice view of the area. Actually the view is of the busiest intersection in K G. Whatever, it beats going to the mall.


So we had the day off of teaching kids but had to be there for a meeting on ESL (English as a Second Language) and then had the rest of the day to work on report cards. Everything after the meeting was a complete waste of time for me because I cannot focus on anything until about 10pm or later. So I sat around and only got a few small things done. I was kind of bummed. I wish work was the type of thing you can go to when you are ready to work. At least on days like this where there are no kids around. It would be nice if they would say just be here for eight hours at some point today. Now instead I will have spent eight pointless hours at work during the day and I will go back and spend three completely productive hours later tonight.

I have been listening to so much classical music lately. When I arrived here at the internet place I was looking for something to listen to...oh that is the bad part about this place and most of Jakarta, the music is terrible. For example, I think I just heard a remake of a song from Michael Jackson Bad. You never here the original music it is always a cover, cheesed out to the max. Anyway, I put on Slapstick and it made me feel totally incredible. I hadn't listened to this record for a really long time. I am surprised it actually ended up on my computer before we moved. They were definately one of the best punk bands around when I was growing up. I had forgotten what it was like to have an endless amount of energy and to want to find the fun in everything.



This blog kind of sucked. Maybe I shouldn't try to write so often. Sorry. My stomach hurts.

Jakarta Smells and Other Ramblings...

So I guess you could consider me really bad at this. As much as I want to be good at telling you about our lives, intentions are all I've got. I will now proceed to blame it on a number of things that we can all fall back on when discovering our shortcomings. Take notes!

Tired- I come home and the last thing I want to do is think. Let's all say it together...Work is draining the life out of me. Plus, lately we have been completely enthralled in watching the Six Feet Under series. Everytime we get a chance we put an episode on. The problem with buying show series' is that you cannot stop watching them until you are done.

Lazy- I admit it. Blogging is really easy. Emailing is really easy. Skype-ing is really easy. Uploading pictures is really easy. I have been pretty lazy lately. Soooooorrrry!!!

Jobs- Yes, we do work. I know it seems like vacation 24/7 but in between the pictures we actually have to encourage kids to do better than they did the day before. Right now it is report card time again. This is seriously the worst part of teaching. I have over 180 kids to write about and Leah has 14 kids with about 6 or 7 subjects to write about each. Remember this is not a complaint (as this is probably heaven compared to what teachers have to deal with in the states), I am only telling you facts so that you know more details about our lives.

Anyway, I am just smart as I have always been, meaning, right when something big comes up...say report cards...I come up with some insane and daunting brilliant idea that has nothing to do with any of the finishing the previous task...for example, I also decide to create this game that will wrap up a music history unit that I have been teaching. However, true to form, it is about the most intricate game on the face of the planet and it only took about 100 hours to put together. Some ideas are better left ideas. After I showed the game to the kids and they understood how it worked they seemed to like it a lot. That made me feel a little better about what seemed like wasting a lot of time. To top it off, today I was looking through the filing cabinet in my room and I found a folder titled Music History Unit. I was absolutely frightened to open it fearing what was inside. Luckily, it was only a bunch of games and activities that the unbelievably organized teacher before me had so kindly bundled together. Had I only known that the big silver box next to my desk held things that were actually useful, I would have looked sooner.

One last thing about school. Besides having this huge game and grades take up all of my time, I am fortunate enough to be the music teacher. I am the one required to put on all of these silly little concerts that are somehow supposed to represent the brilliant entity that is the NJIS Music Program. Every six weeks I have to put on another of these wonderful events so parents can come and see their little stars in action. That means that my life has now been metered off into fine incraments, that allow me to almost predict, as if it is a weather forecast or when the stars will aline, the days where I will completely panic in front of staff and students, the days where I will completely blow my cool at the kids, the days where I give up all hope and assume myself a failure. Finally I can then know for certain, the day where I can start the count down again. Its not so bad I guess. It is making the semester go by really fast.

I must change the subject...



Last weekend Leah and I headed for the beautiful city of Bandung. It is about a 3 hour train ride west of Jakarta. In fact it is the capital of the western province of the island of Java. Jave is broken up into three provinces; East, Central and West with Solo, Jakarta and Bandung as their capitals, respectively. Jakarta is also the capital of the country of Indonesia. This was our first time in Bandung, although we had heard quite a bit about it. We were terribly shocked, when we woke up the next morning and felt a cool breeze, smelled fresh air and saw blue skies. Jakarta is sadly, the butthole of Indonesia. I remember thinking Decatur was bad. Not even close.

We went to Bandung because Leah had signed up for this conference about turning your classroom into a creative learning environment. I think the only thing she got out of it is remembering how boring being a student can be. I went just to enjoy the hotel, paid for by the shool, and get caught up on work and other things, such as blogging and photos. The first moring I had room service bring me up a nice cappucino and was really excited to get started when I realized that I had forgotten my plugin charger for the computer. I didn't panic, I figured there has got to be something I can do. So I found out about an electronic store that is kind of a one stop shop. Indonesia and maybe Asia in general have this crazy concept of shopping. Everything must be a huge mall and must be kind of a shady ordeal. For example, these electronic super malls have everything under the sun but you never quite know where it came from. Whatever, they are not illegal (because the Black Market here is a whole other story) although all of the software and CD's seem to come in unoriginal packaging and look strangley like a photo-copy.

So I am at this mall and I look everywhere and there are no Apple computers to be found. I feel upset but then someone tells me that there is another electronics super mall that has an Apple Center store. Great! When I arrive they look at me as if I am crazy for actually expecting the store to carry items that you may want to purchase. The shopper's attitude is equally as weird as the mall concept. It is "lihat-lihat" which means "just looking". No one really buys anything but they love to look. Long story short, I got absolutely nothing done and sat around the hotel waiting for Leah to get out of the conference. It was a nice train ride and I did get to walk around Bandung a bit. I didn't take any pictures because you can just look at the pictures I posted of Bogor and they will look the same.

Speaking of pictures...I promise, promise, promise (janji, janji, janji) I will get them up after report cards are done.

The last thing I want to talk about is actually the reason I got so excited to Blog in the first place. I was walking home with a friend of mine tonight and the craziest thing just happened. This is a lesson for those of you who think (or say) "Indonesia...Oh my...there are so many Muslims...is it safe?" There is a gate that we usually cut through to get to our neighborhood. I lliterally live four houses down from this gate and the only other way in is too walk really far down the road and then come back almost all the way to the same gate. Often times we jump the gate or sometimes a security guard will be around and open it up for us. Tonight I decided to try a different method. There is a church immediately next to the gate. Mind you a church, not a mosque. There were some guys standing in front of it. This is not uncommon because the church always has people around and I think they are the band that plays during services. Oh yeah...the church is a contemporary christian church that comes complete with a rock band and all. Anyway, I talked to a few of the guys and then asked if my friend and I could cut through since the gate was locked. They said "Tentu" and "tidak masalah" (sure and no problem). They opened the door for us and we proceeded to walk through. We got to the other door when all of the sudden a man comes out and starts yelling at us. He was very upset. Obviously he didn't want us there but I asked if he would let us pass. He refused. Anyway, my friend got upset and told him he was a bad christian. The guy didn't understand any of the words but continued screaming at us. We tried to calm the guy down and the other guys that let us through were confused as to why he was so upset. He kept telling us that we needed permission from the office. He seemed to be the man in authority at the time so we just asked if he could give us that permission. Denied. Typical Indonesia. Anyway we left and had to take the long way around. This is why I was so excited to write though. After a few minutes of talking about how he was such a bad christian, I realized that I had just argued and understood everything that happened in that situation. None of it was in English.

It made me feel pretty good...

Until next time. Sampai Jumpa.

Love,
Grant and Leah (Sorry the stories are so one sided. I keep telling Leah to post something. See third paragraph.)


P.S. here is a peaceful and slightly relatable picture of our wonderful new nephew Kade Jeffrey McClearn.