Happy Bastille Day!

(Naturally, I am celebrating France's destruction of a prison by watching a televised parade of uniformed French people marching down the Champs Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe. It's actually kind of boring, but the band music is stirring. Goodness, my French is rusty.)

It was not really a good idea to arrive on Sunday morning and expect myself to start work on Monday bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I've actually managed fairly well. Every time I have jetlag, I feel like I'm a baby who deserves to be praised for achieving a normal sleeping pattern. To date, I've slept through the night twice without pharmaceutical intervention, and while my output at work hasn't been spectacular, I haven't fallen asleep at my desk yet.

I've actually been fairly busy orienting new teachers to Jakarta and to IPEKA. Carol is our new English teacher for year 11. (Not that the personnel changes of a high school in Indonesia are particularly interesting to you, but Karla, with whom I've worked for a year, will be teaching year 10.) So my job has been to make Carol's life a little bit easier by overwhelming her with thousands of pieces of information like:

"Put your copies here for the office boy to take down to the copy room." (Have I mentioned we have office boys? We do.)

"This is where you can buy really yummy juice drinks. My favorite is fresh orange juice mixed with vanilla frozen yogurt."

"Those buildings over there, they're called Taman Anggrek, and they're my landmark when I'm out in Jakarta and don't know exactly where I am."

"Here's the section for English materials in the teacher resource room."

"When you need medication, you don't have to have a prescription. Just go to the pharmacy and ask for whatever you need."

"I don't really understand tipping. Just give them a few thousand rupiah extra in taxis and restaurants."

"Our students' writing skills are not as strong as their oral skills in English."

I've also taken Carol and Disha, another new expatriate teacher from the elementary school, to the mall and the grocery store, navigating taxis and angkots along the way. We're still in the early days of friendship, but I think we're all going to enjoy each other's company very much.

I am, however, missing Tim. He moved back to the United States during the holiday, and with him go some excellent conversations and verbal sparring sessions.

And now, with my suitcase still not unpacked, tomorrow I'm headed to a retreat (since when is 6:00AM a godly hour to leave for a retreat?) for the next three days with the teachers and staff from all the IPEKA schools around Jakarta. I'm trying to be optimistic, but I'm expecting to be a bit bored, so I'm bringing a new cross-stitch project to get started on. Go ahead and laugh.