Bintaro

Today we had a full faculty meeting for the entire Mentari staff. There are a total of four campuses and close to 120 teachers, so it was quite the meeting. The Jakarta campus doesn't have the facilities for such an event, so we met up at school early and all took a bus together. It took about 45 minutes to get to Bintaro, but it was a welcome break. First of all, it was great to get out to a suburb of Jakarta and away from dense pollution (which we're guessing is one of the main factors for Ab's recent cold). Additionally, the Bintaro campus has significantly more space than either Jakarta campus and the library at the school is really something. The two story windows and beautiful foliage outside were quite a sight to see, and hence documented below :) At this meeting, I discovered that the entire secondary math department of the school is new. While I was hoping to meet and talk with teachers who had been in the system before and consequently could give me more straight talk on the school's expectations, it was nonetheless good to meet the Bintaro teachers and share our recent experiences as well as begin to share materials with one another.

I briefly mentioned this earlier in the post, but the pollution, especially when in transit, is really starting to get to both Ab and me. We've started bringing cloth to breathe through and are considering moving to the surgical masks depending on how our new mode of transit, ojek, works out tomorrow. We're switching to ojek's because there have been three mornings when we've had to wait over 20 minutes for a bajaj to come. So even though it's cheaper to take bajaj (Ab and I each pay 5,000 rupiah as opposed to each of us taking separate ojeks and paying 10,000 rupiah each), one of the security guards at Ibu Thelma's is friends with an ojek driver and we'll be able to consistently have a ride who will show up right outside the homestay. All in all, things are going well and I'm excited for the year to start. The time is already moving quickly and it'll be December before we all know it!

It is good I didn't go to high school here. I mean so ridiculously beautiful it would be distracting!