Frustrations with Floods

There has been a bit of flooding in a few areas of Jakarta recently. Apparently these floods are nothing in comparison to last years, but there have still been deaths and many people have been put out of their homes. I feel awful to complain because really, in comparison to others I know my issues are minimal, but here are a few examples of how the floods have been frustrating me.

Work: For the last two weeks the 7:00 staff meeting have been sparse. We are lucky enough to live in the same building we teach in, so we are not late, but for our fellow co-workers the commutes have been rough. It took my partner teacher 7 hours to arrive at work the other day because she got stuck on a toll road. One of the chefs was in a traffic accident, and so we have to very quickly hire new staff. The classrooms are supposed to be opened at 6:30, but the man who holds the keys has been late to work everyday due to traffic. One day the doors still were not open at 8:00 when the children had already arrived. And so my flexibility has been tested.

I have also had a very difficult time getting out of bed in the morning. This could be because I just had 5 weeks, or because I'm just exhausted right now, and not getting much sleep, but I think the true blame can be made on the horrible weather. Everyday I wake up to gray and go to bed to gray. It makes me want to sit inside, eat soup, drink tea, and watch movies. 

My friend Morgan took this picture. The story goes: This woman was sitting for about 3 hours in the same spot and finally Morgan asked what was wrong. He was told that she was debating whether to go back to her house to get something valuable she left behind. Very sad. 

Trips: We were given a public holiday this past Friday for Chinese New Year. The original plan was to take a boat out to an island and spend our weekend lounging on the beach, hiking, and snorkeling. Unfortunately, we didn't want to do any of this in pouring rain, and there were flood warnings for the Thousand Islands. Our next plan was to head to Bandung to do an all inclusive tour, but on Wednesday we were informed that the road was bad and it would take us a lot of extra time to arrive there.

Morgan took this one too. No floods by me. I feel so fortunate. 

So we opted to stay in the city and Matt suggested we have a party at his house. I was keen to get out and use his oven again so I suggested we have a pizza party, which everyone else was also excited about.

It really did turn out to be an excellent weekend. I headed out to Karawaci on Thursday evening with Chelsea who is dating Matt's boss. She gave me all sorts of tips about the commute between the two cities, including information about busses, and the best times to leave. We had a very relaxing evening of ordering in Indian food and watching TV, and the following morning we headed to the mall to get ingredients for our pizza night. Matt suggested we stop for a coffee and he took me to Time Zone to show me some of the games he helped program. After 2 stops at 2 different stores we had everything we needed and came back to the house. My friends arrived and I baked a batch of cookies (we ate them all) and then after some Pictionary we got started on the pizzas. We had an excellent night of food, drinks, and games with friends.

The following evening we got to head to Kemang to enjoy a ridiculously large burger and to hear the Irish band play at Murpheys. We ended up meeting some other teachers from America, one who was from Wisconsin (Packer fan!) and one from Washington State (Seahawks fan!) We had an excellent night talking to them about their experiences abroad and then were quick to call it a night. The next day we went to car free to walk around and followed this up with coffee and grocery shopping. All in all, the weekend turned out to be excellent.

We ate the whole thing....

So the rainy season is absolutely putting a damper on my life right now, but lucky for me there are so many other good things going on that I have excellent distractions. And I'm told that it's coming to a close in a few short weeks :) Scuba diving classes, hikes into the middle of nowhere villages, and beach weekends to come!