Alam Sutera

Since moving to the new school at Alam Sutera about six weeks ago, things have been fairly slow. This location just opened in May, so the enrollment numbers are much lower than the school I was teaching at for the first month and a half after I arrived. That means fewer students, and a whole lot more time sitting around without much to do during the work day. That is expected to change as the number of students increases over the next year. I started driving the school’s motorcycle/ scooter as a way of exploring the area and getting away from school from time to time and that has been a welcome respite. I’ve also taken a couple of short trips since moving here. The first was a very spur of the moment visa run to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The second was later that same week when a friend of mine from Church, Nate, and I tacked a couple extra days onto a group whitewater rafting trip we were already planning on joining to visit the famous city of Yogyakarta, about twelve hours by train east of Jakarta.

I once heard it said, “Spend money on experiences, not possessions, because even a bad experience is still a good story.” There were plenty of good experiences on both of those trips. Malaysia was really cool. I think I liked it better than Singapore, though it’s close. The whitewater rafting was a lot of fun, and the group we went with is always awesome to be around. The sites we got to see around Yogya, as well as the scenery on the train ride there were gorgeous, and I will remember them for a very long time. That said, because of a mistake when we booked the tickets and traffic congestion on the way there, we ended up having to buy the tickets three separate times. In addition, around 2 am on the morning we were planning to go visit all the ancient temples around Yogyakarta, I woke up with a miserable case of food poisoning. That didn’t stop me from making the tour, but it mostly did stop me from being able to enjoy it. Even with food poisoning and extra money spent, we made a couple of friends from Europe, snapped a bunch of pictures of Indonesia’s most famous ruins, had an overall good weekend, and got a good story out of it all. I don’t regret it for a second.

As for what’s on the horizon for the next month or two… I’m of course hoping to get more students. I’m wanting to get more involved with the Church here. There’s a missionary I met a few weeks ago, who I was able to meet with for lunch last week that I’m planning on helping out during my time in Indonesia. He’s a really cool guy who also happens to be a North Central graduate. Around Christmas break, I might end up doing a little traveling to other parts of Indonesia, as well as taking my next visa run to Singapore at the end of this month. A couple big things also on my mind right now are attempting to move out of the school and into a house in the area, and purchasing my own motorcycle. I think both of those would help me have some separation between home and work (right now I live upstairs at the school), as well as just giving me a little more sense of autonomy living here. Prayers in all those areas would be greatly appreciated!