Photos!

Here are some photos for you to enjoy!


This is the view from the balcony of the teacher's house.


Us playing on the boat at "Pasir Enam" (Sand Six)


This is Hannah somewhere in the jungle up a canyon from downtown Jayapura.


This is a picture of Hiron (Louise's boyfriend) with a parrot on his shoulder.

Paul, The Flood, Antonia

Paul, The Flood, Antonia

Hey there, a bit of an exciting update today. Last Wednesday a new teacher arrived and toured EF, and now he's settled at the teacher's house on the top floor with the rest of of. His name is Paul, and his is Ike's cousin. (Ike is one of the Indonesian teachers). Paul is from Holland, and Dutch is his first language, although his parents are from Biak (the small island Hannah and I went to for Holiday), so he also speaks Indonesian and English, German, and a little French.

So far Paul has been a pleasure. The first day, we left EF in the evening and reconvened at the teachers house. Paul helped me cook casava pancakes (recipe I inherited from Hiron, Louise's Papuan boyfriend), and Hannah, Paul and I dined together. Paul has a military history, so for my cleanliness morale in general he has been a great booster. We cleaned and re-cleaned the upstairs, preparing for the new teacher from Switzerland to arrive on Sunday.

The real cleaning project started on Thursday morning. I stayed up late on Wednesday night chatting with Paul in his room, and looking at some of his artistic photography. I was very tired, and decided "tomorrow I will sleep in." In the morning I woke up having to go to the bathroom. I put my hand on the floor to brace myself as I stood up (our mattress in on the floor), and I noticed the floor was wet. I had knocked my water bottle over in the night and so assumed that I must have spilled some water. Curiously, there was quite a bit more water than I thought. I looked at my water bottle and quickly reasoned that there was no way all this water could have come from my bottle. I stood up and my confusion was dispelled. The entire floor of our bedroom was covered in about an inch of water. I waded through the water and opened our door to discover that the entire top floor was also flooded.

Wade and Rani were hastily mopping and cleaning the empty teachers room, and I learned from him that someone had left the tap on in the large bathroom water tank, and when someone turned on the pump that morning, the water had overflowed the bathroom and flooded the whole upstairs and the water, traveling down the stair, had flooded the two downstairs bedrooms as well. Paul and I spent the rest of our morning tidying, sweeping and mopping, moving wet books and clothes and mattress downstairs and outside.

The flood damage was pretty much taken care of that day, and we resumed our normal mode of living in the teacher's house.

On Sunday morning, Antonia arrived from a one month stay in Australia. She was very pleasant, but tired. Wade's family prepared lunch for her, and we helped her with dinner to get her settled in. Today she is at EF with Paul and the rest of us, and Wade is getting them oriented and having them sit in on classes to start observing.

Now I am sitting in the teacher's room at EF, browsing the internet on Hannah's computer! I discovered an unprotected wireless signal from one of the classrooms one day, and now we just piggy-back on that signal instead of paying money! Yay! This signal is also reliable, so it makes up for the speed.

It's so nice to have other people in the teachers house. Hopefully we can continue to cook together and clean together and generally just have a good time.

Ciao for now, hope you are all doing well.

-Nick

Happy New Year!

Hey friends and family! Nice to communicate with you again!

Hannah and I arrived back in Jayapura yesterday morning about 9:00 AM. Our trip to Biak turned out to be not quite as relaxing as we had hoped. We took a private car to the Sentani airport here on the mainland at 5:00 AM last Thursday morning, which cost Rp150,000 ($15.00 but still fairly expensive by standards here). The driver was late, so he drove us at an illegal speed to the airport so we could make our flight on time. We made our flight without a hitch, and the plane ride was very pleasant. Hannah and I have been very impressed with Garuda Indonesia so far. They provide a small meal for EVERY flight, no matter how short. Makes US Airlines look downright disorganized.

We arrived in Biak early in the morning, and it was rainy. We didn’t do any research before we left Jayapura, nor did we know anyone on Biak, so we had to wing it. We sat chatting with some locals at the airport for almost half an hour before we decided to try and hitch a taxi into “Biak Kota” (Biak City). We made it to the city, but didn’t know where to go, so we grabbed our bags and marched down the main road, hoping for some sign as to what we should do. Luckily for us, we received a blessing. Half-way down the road someone called out to us from a house. It was a young plump woman eager to give us some advice. She brought us into her yard and had us relax on her porch while she arranged for a car to take us around to some hotels. As it turned out she was a very close relative to one of the teachers at EF! She was very kind, and helped us select a hotel that suited our needs. The first hotel we tried to check into noticed that we both had written “single” for our social status, and refused to allow us to share a room. The next hotel we went to, we both decided to write “married” in the box labeled “social status”, and they were happy to let us share a room.

After we rested we went to try and find a beach. In Indonesia, if you are in a city, you can be sure there will be no beaches. It seems like people build whatever they can right out on to the water. We had to walk for about a half mile before we spotted something that looked like a beach, and then, not really. We plodded around on this “not-really” beach for a while, and were greeted by a local. Hannah chatted with him while I looked for interesting shells, and finally he agreed to meet us somewhere the next day and give a ride to a good beach. We waited at the specified location early the next morning, and our “guide” didn’t show. Probably got drunk the night before.

Instead, we met someone there named “Mattheus” (not sure if I got the spelling right there, forgive me). Mattheus turned out to be a really nice guy. He was a big “Orang Biak” (native of Biak) and spoke enough English to have an intelligent conversation. We chatted for about thirty minutes and then he decided to help escort us to the taxi station, where he helped us on a bus to a nice beach in East Biak. The beach was wonderful, and we got there early so it was quiet. I went looking for shells, and at the point I swam in clear blue water with some Papuan children. They showed me a spot on the cliff above the point where they were cliff-diving. I took one dive, with success.

We left the beach an hour or two before dusk, and went to a “fancy” “Rumah Makan” (restaurant) and ate some delicious food. I ordered something by mistake and had to wander into the kitchen to tell them not to cook it. The next day Hannah contracted a bug (probably from the restaurant) and it put her out of commission for the day, frequenting the toilet. After Hannah recovered, I contracted the bug. Mattheus’s brother had agreed to take us on a boat to some of the nearby islands along with some Russian folks, but he turned out to be unreliable and didn’t show up. We left about noon for the same beach, me with the bug now.

New Year’s Eve came with about as much noise and fireworks as we could handle. People all down our street were shooting fireworks of on the sidewalks, in there front yards, down the street whizzing past the heads of patrolling policemen… I lit a couple sparklers, and Hannah and I watched some of the larger fireworks in the sky, then headed back to bed.

New Year’s Day was our last day, and we tried our luck again with Mattheus’s brother. We ended up sitting with Mattheus at his house (a couple shacks surrounded by scratching chickens and a hobbling dog) and chatting while we waited for his brother to return with the Russians. Mattheus gave us some soda, which I appreciated very much since I could hardly keep so much as water in me. Finally his brother showed up with the Russians, and we had a very disorganized and wet journey to a couple of the small islands.

It’s nice to be back in Jayapura now, getting ready to get into the swing of teaching again. At this point it’s almost looking as if the school here will be shut down by Jakarta, since nearly all the teachers currently working here will be terminating their employment in the next couple months, and since the owner’s might have actually lied about the insurance policy and broken everyone’s contract. More news about that when it comes.

I’m out of time, so Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope you’ve all made some good resolutions.

Until next time,

-Nick