Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baru!

6:17 P.M. on a Wednesday evening. I am at the beginning of the longest marathon blog-updating session I have ever tried to complete, and it will be followed by lesson plans till the break of dawn. This is what happens when work piles up due to lack of planning and organization. Yet, some people back home actually know me as "organized." I had many high hopes for the six blog postings I will have to do to bring everyone up to date on all that I have done and seen these past two months since the TEFLIN conference in Bandung. Bandung, I guess, is a good point of beginning for all I have to tell. It was there and then that my attention was drawn to the fact that Paul seemed a little "down" at the prospect of spending Christmas and New Year's Day alone in Palembang, without much to do there. So, I invited him to come to Pontianak on Christmas weekend, and to my surprise, he accepted. A weekend quickly turned into a week when we discovered that my counterpart really wanted him to present his critical thinking workshop during his stay here, and scheduled this event for the 28th. I soon realized that I would have several days to show Paul as much of West Kalimantan as he might wish to see, and knew that I would have to rely on the many friends I have made here for help in making it happen. As a non-cooker, I am a poor host, and an even worse tour guide! The workshop was a big hit with all the teachers from the local schools who attended. So was the regular Thursday night "open house" at my place, especially since all the guys from the OMIT LMC dormitory came over, along with my students from UPT Bahasa, plus Willy, Jimmy, Argo, Lenny, and her friend, Mark, from USAID. There must have been 30 people in the house, and Paul and Willy commandeered the kitchen with positively no resistance from me, as they cooked spaghetti for everyone. Mark and I amazed everyone with how different two Americans could be in their ideas about language, and I hope he understood he's invited back every Thursday that he's in town. OMIT LMC members love to practice English with my students and me. But now that Paul has moved on, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about food on Thursdays :( The mall was open on Christmas Day, the one thing that distinguished it from American malls in the U.S., which would be closed at about 6 every Christmas Eve. We spent Christmas Eve at Olaf's house. He's from Switzerland and cuts me no slack about being a non-cooker, especially since the party at his house was "bring your own stuff to grill." In exchange for doing an interview for the Pontianak Post, I was able to score a ride on the back of Dina's motorbike so that I could go to Hypermart after the party had already started and buy chicken and fish for Olaf to grill. I still haven't seen the article, which I'm told appeared on the 26th, and I'm almost afraid to look. In keeping with the Kalbar tradition, Paul and I visited three homes on Christmas Day, including Ibu Sumarni's house (lunch at a Japanese restaurant) Pak Bunau's house (early dinner), and Michele's place (snacks again). It was at Michele's that Paul met Willy and Jimmy for the first time, and our escape from Pontianak for New Year's weekend was planned. After all, we couldn't just hang around the mall all frickin' week, even if there was live music...right? I never saw an artificial Christmas tree larger than the one on the provincial governor's (Catholic, not Muslim) front lawn... Nobody ever sang "Silent Night" as well as Judyanto, even if the damn file will not upload! I never had more fun being "interviewed" than at Excellence English Club. And I never before spent a Christmas week with both feet firmly planted on the Equator, and my mind as thoroughly in two different hemispheres as this year. The area around the Tugu Khatulistiwa - Equator Monument - is swampy, but beautiful. And English is the language to learn, especially for the staff at the biggest tourist attraction in the province. At left is Pak Zainal, the lecturer with whom I team teach extensive reading.