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
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
posted by Nick at 8:07 PM
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