Thanks for the comments

I have received loads of nice comments from anonymous sources. My tendency is to believe they come from persons familiar to me who are too shy to leave their names, but perhaps a readership is growing. At any rate the comments are encouraging.

Indonesia has now surpassed Vietnam as the world's leader in known cases of avian flu. No one here seems too concerned, including expats. I rode with another teacher in a Becak earlier today. The sidecar could not hold the two of us side by side so he rode on the front end of the car facing me but with his back to the oncoming traffic. I thought that a fitting metaphor for life in Indonesia. Your back's faced away from the oncoming traffic and you travel on anyway.

There just isn't enough money here to build a proper infrastructure and one has to bear in mind that as chaotic as our school can be, it is still far better than much of this nation can offer. Nevertheless, life here is not unpleasant. What one loses in amenities one gains back (at least partially) from the generosity, humor and just general pleasantness of the general population.

The students are of mixed abilities, from very high to quite low--the latter simply have less experience speaking english. Everyone, from janitor to security guard, teaching assistant to principal, driver to the smallest student greets me with a smile and "Hello, sir." When I enter a class the students rise as if I were a judge and greet me in unison. For the first two days I kept forgetting to give them permission to sit down again. Frankly, I'm not so comfortable with that part, but they've been told to do it and I'm not about to untrain them, not yet.

I'm too tired to proofread this, not that I ever do so thoroughly.

Again, thanks for sending comments to my email, very nice to know that someone is reading.