A Tuesday Off - in Pictures

Tuesday at Bina Bangsa School was Children's Appreciation Day. That means...no school! I spent my day really appreciating the students I have been blessed to work with. Okay, not really. I showed my appreciation by going exploring with my buddy, Scott. Scott was featured in my last blog post, "Taman Mini." Great dude. For this blog post, I will walk you through my Tuesday with pictures (and video !!) taken throughout the day.

(Monas is the national monument for Indonesia; the first thing we wanted to do on Tuesday was go to the top)

(Tuesday there was various military equipment stationed outside the monument)

(zebra tank)

(thought of Sam Calvert when I saw the choppers)

(Indonesian service men)

(Monas with Istiqlal Mosque in the background; our second goal of the day was to go see Istiqlal Mosque)

(elevator that you take to the top of Monas)

(the crew: Scott, me, Danna - "blog girl"*, Aasha - fellow PIK primary teacher, Dipesh - visiting Aasha from London, Nicole - KJ primary teacher; I had originally thought that it would just be Scott and I, but we were fortunate to be blessed with the company of some amazing people)

* Before coming to Jakarta, all of us first-year teachers that were flying out of Chicago were copied on an e-mail so that we could contact the other teachers we would be traveling with. The e-mails turned into a chain of everyone introducing themselves followed by us sharing any information we knew about Indonesia. One of the teachers, I can't remember who, copied a link to the blog of a teacher with BBS that had been in Jakarta for a year. It was Danna's blog. Danna is a teacher at the KJ campus. At the Teachers' Conference (where all teachers from all campuses were present), anytime one of us saw Danna we would say, "Look, there's 'blog girl.'" She and Nicole are both awesome people. I am very lucky to work with Aasha - she is great. And Dipesh is a great dude. Glad they all tagged along for the fun.

(Danna, Aasha, and Dipesh taking in the view)

(cool view from the top of Monas looking south; this is a good view to show that there is not one major area of skyscrapers in Jakarta: they are spread out)

(view of Istiqlal Mosque from the top of Monas)

(view of Istiqlal Mosque from street-level)

(Istiqlal Mosque had a lot of courtyards outside of the main area)

(there are speakers up there to use for the call to prayer)

(I have no idea what this is, but it was hanging for you to see before walking in to the main area)

(Istiqlal Mosque is the largest mosque in SE Asia. It is quite breathtaking in person; unfortunately, these pictures do not come close to resembling the building's beauty)

(Scott and I were fortunate enough to be in this area when the call to prayer happened)

(ladies at the back smh)

(I went up to the 2nd floor; access to the 3rd floor was blocked off)

I had a very good day off with some great people. I managed to figure out how to upload videos to the blog, so that was a very good thing. I never got to show everyone the video from the Indonesia-Liverpool exhibition of the "Indonesia" chant (video below). Hope you enjoy. I am off to Thailand on Saturday (pending me getting my Kitas from the Indonesian government). I have been assured that I will have it, but it could be as late as Friday afternoon. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. If for some reason it does not happen, I will be bummed. But no sense in thinking that way. I am excited for more international travels and I look forward to sharing my experiences with all of you. As always, thank you so much for reading the blog. The support means so much. If you ever need to get a hold of me, shoot me an e-mail at mattsphillips@cox.net