Getting Here and First Week in Indonesia

It took a long time to get here, and it was not very fun. It was definately worth it though. Saying good bye at the airport was hard, and the long flights ahead did not make it much easier. The flight from Charlotte to Chicago was a few hours, Chicago to Hong Kong was 15 HOURS! ahhhh. I'm not going to lie, I cried more than once on the plane. The Hong Kong airport was pretty cool, we had a four hour layover. Most of the other ETA's arrived in Hong Kong, then we met the rest in Singapore. We spent the night in Sinagpore and then we arrived in Jakarta last Sunday. I am now at the Hotel Jayakarta in Bandung. It is very nice. Bandung is the 4th biggest city in Indonesia, it is HUGE.

Orientation goes pretty much everyday from 8 until somewhere between 4 and 5. We break for about an hour for lunch between 12 and 1. We have been doing things like learning about all the really bad things that can happen to us, what sicknesses we can get, where in the country we aren't allowed to go, how to teach, different teaching methods, and the we have a little bit of Bahasa Indonesia lessons everyday. We only have a half of a day of orientation on Saturdays and we are off on Sundays.

I have gotten to do some pretty fun things so far. One day last week, my Indonesian friends from Ohio University came to Bandung (well Lewina lives here) and we went out to dinner at this awesome place called the View, it overlooked Bandung.

Also, a friend of a friend from OU who lives here in Bandung and has a radio show, Anggie, asked if I would come to her station and talk on the radio, I said only if I could bring 2 friends. So me, Jen , and Erica went to an Indonesian radio station and talked on air! They asked us if we knew any Indonesian songs, and I said I knew KKEB. They asked if I would sing the refrain, and I said only if the one DJ, Una, would sing it with me, so we did. After we finished the show Anggie and her friends took us out to dinner at another cool restaurant, Cafe Conggo, that over looks Bandung.

Yesterday, Lewina took us shopping and I bought a bunch of tunics that I can wear while I teach, and then we went to an Indonesian mall to meet up with Adila (another OUer who is home for the summer).

We did school visits last week. They split us up into different groups and took us to schools in Bandung that will be similar to the schools that we will be teaching at in our cities. We sat in on classes and got to see the Indonesian teachers teach English. They were very excited we were there. Jane and I went to one class together and one boy asked us if we were married yet haha. The next class I went to was with Nenny Babo (one of the Aminef staff) and a boy came up to me and gave me a piece of candy that said "I love you". It is very funny the attention that we get when we walk around here because there are not very many Americans here so we are kind of a spectacle.

Today a bunch of us booked a tour and we took a bus out to a volcano, and then we went to some hot springs and had lunch. I will post pictures of it, but I am having trouble uploading, and I think I have written way too much for this posting!