Week in Review

Well, i will try to keep this post short in words, but pack filled of pictures.

Saturday we had a party at the guest house. There was a surprisingly large turnout considering the torrential downpours (it is supposed to be the dry season, but global warming has hit Indonesia). No pictures, but it was a fun time.

Sunday was another lovely day at the pool.

Early Monday morning I headed back down to Lamno for a few days of meetings with other organizations working in the area. Meetings were interesting but essentially everyone told me "Be careful" and "Good luck". Very assuring I tell you.

There is a nice guest house where we stay. Here is the picture of my home away from home, away from home. And here are the roosters that decided to have a roosting competition at 6am each morning. And this is the lovely rice fields right across from the house. They will be a lovely green later in the year. It is a nice place, but no running water (yet) and the water now is a lovely brown right out of the well. We will be getting a tank installed in a few weeks and then we will be in the lap of luxury with cable and running water and if we are lucky, the electricity will work!

OK, so now for the good stuff. We headed back Wednesday afternoon and here are some pictures along the way. Really some spectacular vistas, as promised.



So, I am not certain how well you can see this, but it is the road. Yes, that is sand and we are right on the water - that is the ocean to the left. Yeah, who knows how long this new road will last - or even when it will be finished. From what I hear they have been working on it for months. But they are moving a few of the hills on the side of the road to move it inland a bit. And that is a truck backing into another truck which got stuck in the wet sand. I am happy to say that our vehichle had no problems.

I made it back to Banda Aceh in time for yoga, phew! But would you know, we lost electricity in Banda Aceh. So, when I came home, again...no water. But this time I took my bucket bath in another room which had a smaller mandi, so I didn't come as close to falling in.

Then tonight we lost electricity in the office yet again. Oh and a nice little mouse came to join me in my office. Afterwards I went with a friend to movie night. Unfortunately, they did not inform us that it was German movie night (with no subtitles). For some reason we stayed and despite three of the eight people there being German speaker, we ended up getting partial translations from an Italian woman who had just seen the movie three times so could tell selected tidbits. Very strange I tell you. Oh, and another mouse decided to join us for the movie. This time we were all sitting on the floor and it just ran right behind our pillows. This country is filled with mice, geckos, cockroaches, ants and lots of other exciting animals! And many of them like to hang out in my house.

I'm off to the beach this weekend. I'll tell you all about it when I get back...