We headed downtown on a sunny Sunday to take in the Indonesian National Museum.
Big Stutz family news this morning – Susan and I have accepted jobs at the American School of Warsaw for the 2015-16 school year! Alea will graduate a JIS Dragon, but Breck will be a Warsaw Warrior.
We must have had a premonition, as we’re wearing the school colors of white, red, and black in the holiday photo we took this weekend:
We headed downtown this morning for a session on Clean Up Jakarta day. A great bunch of teachers, administrators, parents, and kids took the time to positively impact our adopted home. We got good and sweaty doing some good for the city!
Photo credit to Alea for discovering our new favorite neighborhood street food stall (mie ayam = a very simple yet popular chicken noodle dish)
A group of us went downtown this weekend to visit the old Batavia boat docks in Jakarta. Led by a group of guys who have been there a number of times, we had the opportunity to visit and take pictures of places that few Westerners get to visit. I took too many photos to post at once, so here’s an album of some of the faces we saw along the way. Most of them are dock workers, more than happy to take a break for the cameras…
Our holiday season was festive and bright! We got the tree up and lights lit in November – the latest we’ve waited in a long time! The White Elephant was a huge success, and we had loads of fun getting everyone set for the holiday. Presents were opened on the 16th, and we are off in the morning for a 3-week adventure through Cambodia and Laos. Happy holidays to all!!
While certainly not our typical “here-we-are-in-a-new-country” first blog post, our inaugural entry from Jakarta has the most important element of a good news story: if it bleeds, it leads.
We have indeed made it to Indonesia, have started settling in to our new home, gone through a week of school in-service training, and are looking forward to the beginning of the school year in one more week. But the most exciting news of all has been the ongoing battles between man and beast in our abode.
We are in a lovely house, complete with a back yard and a pool! It is the single-floor living, however, that is providing the most entertainment. On our second evening here, a bag of chips disappeared off a shelf during the night, only to magically reappear in the middle of the room, with teeth marks chewing through the plastic. We bought a series of small “sticky” traps, and by the next morning one of them had vanished (and we still haven’t found it).
But then, all heck broke loose. On the next evening, I was in the bathroom when Susan started shrieking about a rat. She chased it into the kitchen, keeping an eye on it and the 2 sticky traps attached to its body. When I got in there, she handed me my crescent wrench (the only “appropriate tool” we could find) and locked the door.
He’d crawled up into the stove, so I had to chase him out with a spatula – a process I had to repeat once he climbed into the base of the refrigerator – but then things got exciting. Chasing him around on my hands and knees and swinging the wrench like a wild man, we scurried together all around the kitchen. Sparks flew when I hit the tile floor, and his squeaks echoed into the living room (according to the kids). But the battle eventually ended, and the last task of the evening was to clean up the mess…
But then tonight, as we started Dr. Zhivago (we are so sophisticated), I saw another scurrying form head into Alea’s room. This one was a bit easier to corner, as it was a bit younger. Hopefully that doesn’t mean there is a nest of them somewhere.
In any case, we are on the lookout for more rats, and Susan has completely turned around concerning pets. According to her, we start actively asking around for 2 cats tomorrow!
Jakarta, Indonesia!We accepted positions today teaching first grade and middle school math next year at Jakarta International School. We are thrilled and cannot wait to share all the exciting prospects of this move.
We are pleased that the kids will be graduating from a World IB school, that we are in a country where we can explore everything from mountains to jungles to beaches, where we can meet orangutans and Komodo dragons face-to-face, where we can get our scuba diving certificates, and where we can easily travel to Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, and Thailand (to name but a few).
We are SO fortunate and look forward to many visitors 🙂
