Monday night Sept. 20

I just waddled up from the hotel café.In addition to my capcai cah/nasi putih, I had the cooks heat up my leftover pempek; I had 6 ( quite filling just by themselves ) and the guys in the kitchen shared the rest - 'special', they said, and they should know.

I had my first real meetings with students this morning, though not scheduled ones.First I met with 4 women/3 men in my Curriculum Development class who had come in to get a required signature from Herizal.We sat around a table for about an hour and I asked them questions about their English study up till now,told them what they'll be doing in the course, etc.Their English was mostly not that great, and some said nothing or almost nothing.Then another group of 7 women who I won't teach thistermand who were not happy about that sat with me for over an hour and we just chatted about whatever interested them, though again a few did all/most of the talking.Lots of questions about how Americans treat Muslims, relations between blacks and whites, my hobbies.It felt great finally starting to do what I mainly came here to do.I told them I'll be happy to continue our informal chat sessions whenever they want and I'm not busy; they seemed delighted.They all took lots of photos with me, in which I again looked like a beached whale among the seagulls.

I also had Skype typed chat sessions with both my kids.Last night I'd had even longer typed exchanges with both of them down.I think we all are happy to find that we can stay in touch free and often.Then this afternoon another ELF, Elisabeth, called from Jember - and we actually had a video, chat even if the video was a series of 'stills'.She doesn't begin teaching till Oct 3 though her school had insisted she come back from her trip a week ago - for nothing.It was great to talk with her - until a rainstorm there knocked out her internet.But we'll look forward to connecting again.

Food was delivered again for lunch: gado-gado, which I've run across references to in books since I was a kid but never actually could visualize.Basically bean sprouts and mixed veggies in a thick peanut sauce, with hard-boiled eggs on top.Very good and very filling.A cheap protein-packed meal for 50 cents, wow!

I met lots more teachers today, both English and Arabic.I saw many students' schedules, 10 2-hour -per-week courses each, all teaching-related or linguistics-related beginning in Semester 5. Dian Safitri emailed and told me I can't commit to taking on any extra substantial presenting even at IAIN without Herizal having first cleared it through RELO.

We had another downpour mid-afternoon and that really cooled the air down nicely.My computer shut down suddenly around that time and I couldn't get it going again - uh-oh! But it turned out my el cheapo plug adapter had burned out and I'd been running on battery power till it was suddenly gone.So the computer guy in the building came up and gave me a new adapter and I was OK again.What a relief!