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.