Two and Half Battles and a Steamroller

A battle I am winning:
A few months ago, I decided to do something about the fact that my accumulation of plastic grocery bags vastly outstrips my consumption of them as trash bags. So now at the grocery story, I confuse the people at the cashier by whipping out an enormous wad of plastic bags from my purse. I'm not sure that they have ever seen anyone bring her own bags. They security guards certainly haven't; I once had problem (the substance of which I never understood) at the entrance to the grocery store when I had the bags in my cart. A security guard explained the problem to me in Indonesian, and I explained in English that the bags were empty and that I wanted to use them for my groceries. We eventually came to an uneasy understanding. And finally, I've started to make a dent in the plastic mountain under my sink. Small victories.

A battle I am losing:
Ants. There seem to be three main colonies in my apartment. One raids my kitchen trash can. One invades my kitchen from behind the sink. The third inexplicably scavenges in my bathroom. I prefer to use behavior modification techniques to control them, as in "If you crawl on my counter, you will die, so tell your friends." I even had a dream of perfect ant behavior in which I squished five or six, and hundreds of them turned around and went back where they came from. (Erica described it as a strange mix of teacher and exterminator.) However, I'm starting to think that chemical warfare is the next step.

Steamroller:
It's no secret that the expatriate teachers at IPEKA are much more vocal complainers that our Indonesian counterparts. And sometimes I feel like I steamroll over Asian personalities when I say how I'm feeling, what I think, or what I need. I didn't consider myself an especially outspoken person before I came here, but in comparison to Indonesian gentle politeness, sometimes I feel like an inconsiderate buffoon. The worst is when I can tell that my students are not being direct with me out of some kind of respectful non-disclosure. I can't help them if they won't tell me how they're struggling. I have yet to figure out how to let them save face when they're feeling uncomfortable, but I've realized that that is one of the kindest things I can do for them.

Half a battle won today:
My apartment is much tidier than it was this morning, and I made a delicious chicken curry for supper.