Minimum Wage Monkey in Jakarta
(notice that the poor thing has a doll face over its head like a mask.)
Last week we experienced our first earthquake: a 7.0. I happened to be in a meeting when the room started to shake and sway. It was crazy because the night before I dreamed that there was a tsunami warning and despite my best efforts I could not run away; my legs just wouldn't move. The next day when the earthquake hit and a tsunami warning went out, I must admit I was a little shocked. But thankfully there were no big waves and I wrote my dream off as a coincidence.
We have been trying to get outside of our bubble and see a little more of real Jakarta. But at the same time we know we need to get our feet planted and this requires extra hours in the classroom and numerous shopping trips to set up our home. (We of course have also made a few other detours to places like golf courses, spas, outlet malls, and fabric markets to keep us sane.) So needless to say, at this point we really haven't seen much of the country itself. But hey, we've only been here a little over a month and settling in takes time! And because of that, it really hadn't hit me that we were living in a third world country until we went for a walk outside our gated community. We were meandering along and I turned to Jim and said, "Wow, this is really third world." I think his response was somewhere along the lines of a polite "Duh." I guess it is really easy to lose perspective when you live in an beautiful house and work at a world class school where you want for nothing. Below are a few photos from our walk that brought me back to reality. Unfortunately the sun was going down so the lighting in the photos is not the best.
Fruit stand just outside of our gated community.
Creative use of space? A garden right under the power lines
Hungry Goats
Indonesia really needs a recycling program, because at the moment they burn their trash. As always...if these photos are not enough for you, there are a few more at this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lizhaske/AroundTown?authkey=Gv1sRgCMy1_a_VjtixSw#
