Busy week, and full of surprises!

This week has been so busy, that I've been bad at blogging. But that's life, and I'd rather have things to do, than nothing to do but blog. . . 

Because different and random things have happened, I'll label them by days:

Saturday: Taman Safari

Taman Safari is a pretty awesome place. We started the day with the drive-by safari. The animals come right up to your window if you've got carrots in hand! We fed elephants, zebras, and many more! There were also linos, tigers, giraffes, bears, kangaroo, the list goes on! After the safari drive, it was like a zoo, and you could also hold certain animals for a small fee. The sad part is that we could tell they had been sedated for it. . . so we didn't want to support it by paying for it. You can check out my facebook page for all of our pictures, but here's a few:

Erik, Amanda, Chaney, Kaitlyn, me, Chris

Check out that mouth!

These guys were pretty spastic

poor guy was drugged, but oh so sweet looking

This guy wasn't drugged though - he was full of energy!

There's lots more, so go check out facebook! :)

Wednesday: Student led Conferences, and an eventful morning. . .

Quite eventful! To put it simply, I got stuck in our bathroom and we were late to school. Yep, that really happened. Remember my "How Jakarted" post about dumb door handles? Well, that one was still broken, so that door didn't open. I got up like a normal morning and showered. As I attempted to leave the bathroom (in order to get my clothes), I was met with another "locked" door  - oh great! At first I was thinking: no way, this isn't real. But it was. I hollered for Chris, and we twisted and tugged from both sides, but whatever happened to the other door handle, happened to this one as well! I was stuck with no way out.  We called for maintenance three times. Each time they said they'd come, but no one ever did. Can you imagine being my principal and getting a text at 6:15 saying that we'd be late to school cause I was stuck in the bathroom?! Yea. . .

Our school's head of maintenance ended up having to drive to our apartment and speak with the apartment maintenance to explain the problem and get them to come fix it. And the story gets better. . . When I could hear them all outside the bathroom door, I had to awkwardly tell Pak Heri (from our school) that I had no clothes (just a towel), so if he could kindly ask them not to open the door all the way when they got it open, then that would be great. awkward!

They ended up having to saw off the doorframe, and now two days later, we have new doorknobs, and messed up door frames. I was stuck in the bathroom from 5:30 - 7:00. During that hour and a half I took my sweet time to get ready, and then decided to make better use of my time by cleaning the counters and  organizing under the sink. 

We made it to school within the first period of the day. 

And. . . we're still laughing about it. 

TIJ

Now onto conferences. . .

For the third term, conferences for Junior school are all about the kids! They get to show their parents around the homeroom class and all the specialist classes, while checking off activities at each point. For teachers, this means a LOT of front loaded work. But during the actual event, I just smiled, talked, encouraged, and took pictures :)  Chaney and I divided the subjects between our classrooms so our students roamed between both. I had math, biblical studies, and two science stations. 

Thursday (today): Great news!

Our Easter holiday started one day early! We've been jealous over here of Salem's snow days and cancelled school. That's definitely not going to happen here. BUT Indonesia is doubling it's gas prices as of April 1st. Funny April fools joke? I think not. This has launched many people into protests and demonstrations at the city center and congress buildings which makes horrible Jakarta traffic, even worse. Bad enough to cancel school! The big demonstration is happening tomorrow, and they anticipate closed roads and possible riots in the streets. Half of our kids might not even be able to get to school. So, while the reason for school being closed isn't as awesome as snow. . . we'll take it! :)

Tomorrow. . .

We hop on a plane headed to Istanbul! We're spending 10 days traveling between Turkey and Greece! I'll post our itinerary in the next blog. Thanks for reading about our crazy and exciting week!

ps. don't tell me if there are lots of typos. . . it's midnight and I tried to get this posted as fast as I could so we can just focus on getting to the airport on time tomorrow :)

Happy Easter/Spring break to all!