Walking through the streets in Jogja...

Here are some random photos I took of the street life in Jogja....

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Noodles!

(I didn't eat any.)

Christmas randomness...

Just a few photos for you to enjoy before I leave this weekend. (I'm returning to Jogja, which is where I went last year before Christmas. I'm going back because I'm going to take a language course there with my teacher friend, Elise.)
I'll be sure to update this blog again when I come back sometime on Monday.

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In honor of it being the last school day of the year, the students and staff had only a half-day of school. Yay!

Here were 10/16 of my lovely 7th grade homeroom students who showed up today. I made them stand in front of the 5 different languages we can say, "Merry Christmas" in our homeroom: English, Indonesian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean




I came home and played with Alia, since I won't see her at all this weekend.


We had quite an eventful, Christmas-filled afternoon. We/I made snowflakes...


...drew some Christmas pictures, including balloons...

...pretended we were lions...

...and baked cookies! (And cleaned the kitchen and Alia.) What an exciting afternoon!

Showing off her cookies, and showing off. :)

"It's been a hard day's night..."

Whew! Playing hard and baking cookies can be sooo exhausting! :-P

Heres she is, konked out, at last, while watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Sooo cute!

Now I have to go pack for my trip. The taxi is coming to pick us up at 4 a.m.! SICK!

My Christmas corners + peace on earth!

I've been ready for Christmas ever since Halloween ended.
Well, no...I was sick for 2 weeks immediately following Halloween, which just happened to be the 2 last weeks for our play...coincidence...
So after those 2 weeks, I began playing Christmas music, wrapping presents, and decorating my house, once I had the time. I had all presents wrapped before December even began! I'm so good.

This is the big, teak desk in front of my stairs that used to have the coconut autumn leaves on it. Most of the Christmas decorations here are cheap, and they definitely look cheap/gaudy, but I managed to find some decent-looking candle holders here.
The table runner is a purple and gold silk table runner that I bought in Thailand 2 1/2 years ago. The cards here are from teachers at the high school in Okeechobee, where I taught after I came back from Thailand, and from family members, so this is a bit of a memory table for me.
Alia is bigger than this Christmas tree. :-P



This is my actual Christmas corner, because it's in an actual corner. On Thanksgiving Day, Alia and I spent all morning putting up my 2 Christmas trees, which took 5 whole minutes, and decorating them, which took much longer, because Alia kept playing with the beads and ornaments.


Anyways, this is in my living room, and most of the presents have been given away now. However, Alia's and Samini's are still there, and Alia knows which ones they are. She asks about them frequently. :-P


(I'll post some updated photos of her tomorrow; she's gotten HUGE and wayyyy too cute!)

Also, Alia's still shorter than this Christmas tree, but I know she'll shoot past it within a year or two.

Here's my Drama 7 class, on a day they were being goofy. (I'm done with teaching them for the year, so they're allowed to be goofy now.)

Prisca, Clara, Andrew, Amanda, Shila, and Mandy

(All of the girls were Robin Hood's Merry Men, and Andrew didn't want to be in the play. Haha!)

Andrew is doing the peace sign, either wishing for peace on earth, or wishing for peace in the classroom.
This is why:

This is what they normally look like- and sound like- otherwise!

This is a very accurate photo of my kiddos.

Just think: I lived in a villa for 3 days at our youth camp with 17 7th grade girls!

And I get to go to Bali with the 7th graders in March! It's a good thing I like wild teenagers!

And now it's back to grading, because report card grades are due verrrrry soon...

Christmas thoughts, from the mouths of babes

Christine is my college friend that teaches first grade at SPH with me. She shared some funny thoughts that her students wrote last week about Christmas, and I thought I'd pass them along.

Her disclaimer: some answers are very random, strange, and...well...from the minds of first graders...

Enjoy! :)

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I like Christmas because:
It’s Jesus birthday
God is with us
It’s my birthday on the 20th and I love presents and I will play with my best friend. My birthday is on December 20 because I love Christmas so much.
We can get toys
I can give God my love and he will help me to be patient
It’s so fun and I can eat ice cream!
It is so funny!
I love to worship God
Baby Jesus is so cute!
We can dance! We can dance on the stage and the audience will look at us just like in chapel!
I can see a beautiful Christmas tree and I can see Santa Clause and he can give me presents
Christmas means God is so handsome!
I want to give a card to my mom
I like Christmas because Christmas is a Christmas day and Christmas is God’s birthday and Christmas is when we go to somewhere and see a Santa Clause.
I can play the piano and everyone can watch me in the gym and I’m so nervous
I am Buddhist so I don’t go to church but my dad said if it’s Christmas I can put a small Christmas tree on the table, and I like to see Santa Claus hat because it’s so cute!
At Christmas I will play with my Dad
We will go somewhere! But I don’t know where because my father keeps changing his mind.
I like Christmas because it is the bestest holiday ever! It is the bestest because you can do anything you want, like go to the mall, play my PS3, and practice my writing skills.

My favorite thing about Christmas is:
Presents and playing in the snow in America.
The Christmas tree and playing with my little sister
Santa Clause and a Clown
I’m excited to see Santa Clause and Peter Pan
Decorating things and playing in the snow in another country
Palm Trees because we don’t have any snow
Stories, toys, dresses and stickers!
Ice Cream and Tom and Jerry
Praying to God. My present to God is to love God and my family and teachers and friends.
Santa Clause and the star on the Christmas tree
When Santa Clause is coming to town and going to church and putting strawberry lights on my Christmas tree
When somebody gives me a present, like a toy train or noodles. I like to eat noodles.
Going to America to see a deer.
When I’m in America and I can eat so many hamburgers and a lollipop almost as big as my head!
“Christmas is my very favorite day because I want my family to be a good family and start a new family with a joy and enthusiasm heart. My sister had a baby, who is my nephew. My nephew is cute, and he likes Christmas because my nephew was born in November 24.”
When I get ice cream from Santa Clause
Reading Christmas books
Eating pasta and steak
That I want a new PS3
I can teach others to play the drum and dance!

What I want for Christmas:
I want a pokemon game because my baby brother always says “piccachu!”
I want to give God some presents, like loving each other, be kind to each other, and be honest
I want more fancy erasers because I love fancy erasers!
I want ice cream and stickers. I want so much ice cream and so many stickers! I love stickers so much!
If I’m happy then my parents will buy me some ice cream. IF I’m happy.
My mom said if I am bad she will send me to my grandma’s house to live forever!
I want my own bedroom so I can sleep well. I cannot sleep because my baby brother always shouts and bites me.
I want to be a photographer because my mom said that I’m good at pictures
I want a baby that can pee and poop all over the place
For Christmas I want to get socks because there is a hole in my socks.
I like it when my dad will go to Malaysia
I want go to Jakarta and play.
I want a blackberry so I can chat with my friends
I want to say thank you to God because your birthday party is so nice
I help my mom give things to my family like a dog and new watch and I will give something to my mom a like a doll
I want to say happy birthday to God and bake a cake for God. It’s God’s birthday, so that means we can bake Him a cake and He will be so happy.
Christmas means Jesus’ birthday so I will give Him my heart. I will help God and love Jesus.

an early Christmas greeting, from me to you!

Here's wishing you an early

Merry Christmas!

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This cat is currently my Facebook profile photo.

I think it's amazing b/c it's so random and dumb. :)

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My Swiss/Indian birthday in Indonesia! :)

This post is a long time in coming, because I've had no time this week whatsoever to post about my birthday...
I celebrated my Swiss/Indian birthday with Indonesians, Canadians and Americans in Indonesia. And it was wonderful! :)
We had a girls' day out last Saturday, which was 2 days before my actual birthday, but that was fine. We spent all day in Jakarta at 3 different malls. (So typical, I know...!)

Last year was the first time I'd experience the...thrill...of seeing gaudy Christmas decorations here. This is what the fancy malls here in Indo look like at Christmas time. Blech! Too much going on in the decorating department!

We shopped all day/night long and ate lunch at a Swiss restaurant called Marche' in one of the malls. It was, pretty much, one of the most amazing restaurants I've ever been to!

You receive a "passport" from the hostess when you enter the restaurant, and you can get it stamped when you order food at various stations. (Fresh juice station, soup station, crepe station, etc.) You pay at the end of your meal. So cool!

Here are some photos of what it looked like inside. We had to walk upstairs and eat inside a little "chalet", which was cute, but I didn't take a picture of it.

Here we are...

Front row: Shirley Anne, Chrissie, Yoshie, Fera, me, Shannon

Back row: Naomi, Lisa, Elise, Kris

Yoshie is now teaching at a school in Jakarta.

Naomi is Kris' daughter-in-law, kinda, and Shannon is Elise's friend who was visiting for the weekend.

Giving the lovely, green cow a friendly, birthday smooch

I'd read about an Indian Expo at the Jakarta Convention Center, which is huge, so I was excited about going to see this huge, Indian exhibition and handicrafts for my birthday.

However, we arrived toward the end of the Expo, so everything was sadly consolidated to a small room. :( I got some Indian sari skirts out of it, though, which makes me happy, b/c I can't fit into hardly any other clothing here in this country...

I look Indian now--yay! ;)

I'm going to wear this as to school in a few weeks when we have our Christmas day. (I'll wear it as a regular skirt, though, not as a sari...)

For my actual birthday, on Monday, I slept in, Skyped with my parents, and then went to Starbucks and bought myself a Ramayana shadow puppet at the Indonesian handicraft store next to Starbucks. :) Then several of us girls went to Kris' house that night for homemade chocolate cake with THE most amazing chocolate frosting. We played with their new poodle and watched "Hitch".

And since those wonderful days, I've been slaving away at my grading and end-of-the-semester documentation that comes with teaching at an IB school. Thankfully, this December, I'm not coming off of the play, like last year! That was 10 times worse.

Tomorrow, we girls are having yet another girls' day at Kris' house! We're doing activities and Christmas traditions in the afternoon, watching Christmas movies all night (I'm the only one who has any, thanks to my Ebay purchases this past summer), and spending the night, pretending we're teenagers again.

It's 9:45 on a Friday night. The night is young. Time to continue grading!

I'll post again very soon.

Robin Hood photos!

Yesterday was our performance day for the play, "Robin Hood and Maid Marian". We had 2 successful shows, in the morning and evening, and I'm glad it's all over. (Only b/c I'm suffering from a theater hangover that won't go away...)

These kids in these photos have been my babies/my family for the past 3 months here at SPH. The actors are in grades 7-10, and the 11th graders helped with EVERYTHING behind the scenes to make this show happen, including designing this poster and the black t-shirts you'll see here. I'm so grateful for them!

Enjoy the pics!
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(These first several photos are ones that I'm borrowing from some of my students from their Facebook albums, since I couldn't take any photos during the performances.)

The little girls who were Merry Men were also the villagers in the beginning. The guards stole their money, but Robin Hood and Little John arrived, just in time, to save the day!

The love situation in the play: The sheriff is in love with Maid Marian; he proposes to her with his eyes closed and accidentally proposes to Nurse instead; and, at the end of the play, he lifts "Maid Marian's" veil to see he's married her mother.

Poor guy- he just couldn't win...

Oops! The sheriff accidentally proposed to Nurse instead of to Maid Marian! (Maid Marian escaped with Robin Hood through the balcony.)

Scenes in Sherwood Forest

"All in favor of a double wedding, say 'aye'!"

Robin proposing to Maid Marian, at the end of the play.

(Little John also proposed to her nurse here.)

Prayer after the curtain call

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These are my own photos. In some, I'm wearing the backstage t-shirt that I wore during the morning performance that we gave to local schools and for some of our elementary kids, and in others, I'm dressed up for the evening performance.

You can see 'tech week' written all over my face- I look horrible! :-/

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With my assistant director, Fabio, and stage manager, Ibu Kiky, who graciously volunteered to help me, even though she's a student teacher!

***ATTACK MISS MANDY!***

All of Robin's Merry Men were adorable, little 7th grade girls. :-P

:)

My heroes!

Some of the highlights of the show were these guys!

"Little John" (Dias), "guard" (Raymond), "Robin Hood" (Kevin), and "Nigel, the guard" (Darren)

I have no idea what the sheriff and the guard were aiming at, but I caught them in action!

And then I reprimanded them for playing with the Merry Men's weapons before the show.

Haha!

The grade 11 students made this wanted poster, and I'm pretty sure they did it on a Mac. (They keep persuading me to trade in my Dell for a Mac, but I refuse.)

Cute kids!

"Everybody dance now...!"

I think they seriously wished this were a musical with dancing and choreography, b/c they kept singing this dumb song for the last two weeks at rehearsal, haha...

:)

Here's my awesome set crew...

...and most of the backstage crew.

My vice-principal gave me flowers. :)

It was a great, but busy and exhausting, week, and now I need to keep working on stuff.

Hope you enjoyed the pics!

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