early morning worker

Although this picture is rather fuzzy, partly because of the photographer, and partly due to the early morning mist, this young man I see virtually every day. Neither of us can really talk to each other, but, he is always so friendly. This morning, I asked him if I could take his photo and even though he said yes, I knew he was in a rush. The reason being - he delivers huge blocks of ice to various places every day.

daily ice delivers

I know it's not a very good picture. But this is the young man pedalling his becak full of ice. I can't imagine doing this for a living.

Yanti and Adam

This is the wife of the American Abdul. I am holding their son Adam. They will be leaving Cirebon this Friday to go to a city called Bangdun. It's about three hours from here. They have been very good to me, and Yanti has been a big help translating things for me and helping me get my Internet set up at home. I will miss them - but hope to get to Bangdun to visit sometime soon.

Another new housemate

Now that the torrential rains have been here every day, it can get very soggy, and new housemates appear every day. This lovely snail was on my kitchen wall, and his friend was on my wok. I left this one alone on the wall, but really had to wrestle his friend to get off the wok. They are rather big and messy.

I also have something running in my walls and ceiling the last couple of nights. The house next to me is getting ready for a new tenant- so I think they disturbed a rodent of some type. I just hope I don't see it or them face to face during a thunderstorm.

The rains have been so strong lots of flooding, and as I write this my bedroom ceiling is leaking. I've moved the bed, away from the wall as the water is streaming down. But I won't be able to get anyone to fix it tonight - it Sunday evening at 5:00 pm here. Hopefully tomorrow the school handy man can do something. But I suspect I will just have to live with it.

New haircut- and Micky Mouse Ears

Edward scissor-hand and I sadly parted ways and I tried a new place this past Saturday. I also decided to dye my hair to a nice shade of red, so look carefully at my ear. These plastic coverings are what they put on your ear to protect it from the dye. The man in the picture is the owner of the shop, he cuts the hair, his wife washes the hair and gives you a massage. Yet another person put the dye in my hair. For eighteen dollars I can't complain- and my mouseybrown and gray hair is gone for a while!

Rambutan- my latest fruit

The rambutan is a relatively common fruit the same way an apple is common to us. The word "rambut" in the fruit name 'rambutan' is Malay for 'hairy,' and this refers to the spiky rind. Besides being hairy it was covered with ants, so by the time I cut open and put in the frig, I was ready for a Granny Smith.

Family Fun Day

Saturday the school hosted their second Family Fun Day. One of the goals of the event was to have parents actively engaged in the activity with the children. Apparently here, parents stand around and don’t participate or have the nanny do the activity with the child. The children and parents (many with nannies) were scheduled to come at 7:30 a.m. so the staff was there at 6:00 a.m. We needed to start early since by 9:00 a.m. the sun is brutally hot and most people would be gone. Here I am with two other teachers after we had our faces painted

What impressed me the most was the simplicity of the “games/booths”. They didn’t need all the “whistles and bells” that we have sadly come to expect. No blow-up bouncing rooms, no arcade games, just simple old-fashioned fun. We had hopscotch – which many children didn’t know how to do; along with water relay races, and hockey using a rubber ball and cardboard. At the bubble station the wands were made with a long plastic stick with a pipe-cleaner attached to it to create the bubble wand.

I was working the Piggy Back Race, in which both parents were required to participate. Since many parents also work on Saturday, I was the surrogate parent for many of the participants. We had a lot of fun and lots of giggles.

Vendors had been arranged so there was plenty of food, so I tried different items. They have ice here, which in shape is similar to our freeze pops. But it is much smaller, and consists of coconut milk and different flavors – avocado, melon, and chocolate. The avocado which I had was very sweet with frozen avocado pieces.


After cleaning up a group of us went to a restaurant (really a shack) and had gado-gado. Gado-gado is pure Indonesian cuisine. It is a salad that consists of cooked mixed vegetables and peanut sauce.

A shop

This stall is on the street where my school is. It sells water, juice, food and you can make photo-copies.

water crisis in Cirebon

The rainy season is suppose to be days and days of rain, with a great deal of flooding and mud. However, we haven't seen as much rain as in the past. This has caused a terrible water shortage in the city of Cirebon. For the past three days I have been with very limited water supply. Often times the water is only coming out of the spigot in a trickle and between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. I've been storing up water in buckets so that I'll have enough for the dishes and laundry. Many of the hotels in Cirebon are also without water. Even though it has been reported in the paper as to the extent of this situation - nothing has been officially decided as to how to alleviate the situation.

Another weekend- another trip to Jakarta

Two weekends ago, Regina, her two children and I went up to Jakarta for the Indonesia/Japan expo. This tribesman from Papua was busy creating carvings. He never once looked up - even though many of us were milling about.

tribesman from Papua

Here you can see in the background some of the fantastic carvings this man has created.

3-d fashion

In one of the exhibits there were two three-d movie about Japan. The first one focused on the breathtaking scenery of the country and its people. The second one featured the "bullet train".

road construction signs

These tree limbs are what they use to let you know that they have dug up this section of the street. This is the street leading up to my school.
There are 4 of these (they just paved the road 3 months ago).