Indonesian Independence Day

We kind of had today off for Indonesian Independence Day, but we had to go into school for an hour to attend the flag ceremony, which was a bit unpleasant. It involves standing outside in full uniform, and even at 7 in the morning, it's too much like a sauna to be wearing a blazer. Since I still don't really understand the Indonesian, and I don't know the songs, my participation was pretty much limited to counting trickles of sweat.

Actually, the songs always make me smile. The Indonesian national anthem sounds as much like stirring European band music as you could want, but I'm more fond of the Independence Day anthem because it sounds like the kind of song that you might hear at an outdated theme park ride and have stuck in your head for the rest of day (a bit like "It's a Small World").

But even with a slightly painful morning, I'm glad for the rest of the day off, particularly since I had a busy weekend to recover from. Saturday, after talking to the family (including roommate passing through Indianapolis!) on Skype, I helped lead worship for an evening church service. Have I mentioned The Gathering Place? It's a small satellite service of my church that meets on Saturday night in South Jakarta. It takes a while to get down there, but I've met a great circle of friends. So for a while, I've been doing "social church" on Saturday night and "Sunday church" on Sunday morning. One thing I love about TGP is that there are always people going out afterwards, so dinner and ice cream followed the service. Yesterday, I did more church, and then decided to go see Up before meeting Carol and some new friends for supper.

Now I have long been a sneaker of food into movie theaters, but I've moved away from candy bars and towards...fresh fruit? Yes, I snuck organic strawberries into the movie theater, after I washed them in the mall restroom and dried them under the hand dryer. It was totally worth the strange looks. And Up? Delightful.