PICTURE TIME!

I haven’t posted pictures for awhile, so here’s a rundown of pictures I found on my camera during the month of April.

1. Laurel and I. My first year here, she was my only neighbor. But after our first year, the Indonesian government stopped giving teaching visas to ex-pats over 60, and she had to leave. She really had a heart for Indonesia though, so she didn’t let that faze her. She spent two years out of country studying language and saving money in the hopes of being able to come back, and she was finally able to last year! Sadly, her parents (in their 90s now) are in failing health, so she’s leaving this week to go be with them. She dropped by a few weeks ago to give me a hug and say goodbye. I made her take a picture with me. I think it is the only picture in existence of her and I. The woman is absolutely crazy, and I love her.

2. I often find random things on my way to school in the morning. I don’t often take pictures of them though. But this day I did.

3. These pictures don’t do justice to what my eyes actually saw. We were driving to Semarang on the new toll road, and there were little rainbow patches in the sky all around the sun! I took about 25 pictures. In these two, you can see just a little bit of rainbow to the top right of the sun, but there were about 10 others that you can’t see. It was like a dozen little oil slicks in the sky. Even my description can’t do it justice - I’ve never seen anything like it!

4. A student asked to borrow my camera one day to take pictures for yearbook class. This is what was on it when I got it back.

Exhibit A. Three of my 8th graders. And three others in the background.

Exhibit B. The entire 8th grade class being goofy. There’s only 1 American in the whole class, and even he has spent most of his life living outside of America!

Exhibit C. My future boss and my senior TA. What a jolly pair.Exhibit D. The entire senior class doing… something…

5. Got my birthday box in the mail last week. It contained many marvelous things, such as a 12 pack box of Pop-Tarts, canned pork, and a box of Tide laundry detergent. Good thing those packages are flat rate shipping, because that box was HEA-VY. Anyways, the box also contained a bag of Doritos, which is probably my most missed American food. Sadly, the Doritos were packed at the very BOTTOM of the box. Underneath 14395 pounds of other goodies. They looked like this by the time I dug down to them.

Surprisingly, there were still a few whole chips inside! Good thing they taste the same in the form of cheese flavored dust as they do in the form of actual chips!

6. “What are those boys doing?” you might ask…

Chasing each other with a dead scorpion, of course!

“Will it hurt me?”

7. What’s that on my pillow? A black praying mantis!

8. Due to the spring play being performed and dress rehearsal-ed last week, I had helpless boys coming to school in the morning with stage makeup on because they didn’t know how to wash it off before they went the bed the night before. One poor 8th grader was being teased so much by the other boys that he begged me to help him get it off. So I found some non-alcoholic baby wipes in my desk and a compact mirror in my bag, and had him wash it off in the first couple of minutes of class. Some of the others got in on the action and helped him wash up. It really was a group effort.

9. Church on Sunday. One of these things is not like the others.

OK, that’s all for this month. Happy May!