Time to catch you up

I do not quite recall where I left off, but I believe it was just before parent-teacher conferences. Those went off without incident. Most of the parents spoke to me through a translator, anyway.
The following day was the dress rehearsal for the Christmas concert. This took place, as did the actual concert, in the ball room atop the Capital Building (just a tall building, no other significance to the name). The Chinese Restaurant on the ground floor is owned by our School's director. For the dress rehearsal we were allotted neithor overhead lights nor air conditioning which made a tedious affair even moreso. They were unable to provide working microphones and so it was difficult to tell at that point how I was going to be heard with my acoustic guitar beyond the first row of seating. They promised to deliver another guitar which could be plugged into the sound board and broadcast over speakers. I was not holding my breath.

That evening I picked my father up at the airport. He looked a little tired and shook. We rode in the taxi home where J. had cooked chicken and rice, ate and shortly thereafter went to bed. In the morning I took him on a walk around the neighborhood and later to a Japanese restaurant. He was able to take a becak but I don't think he much cared for the experience or traffic insanity that is Medan's signature. He opted to attend the entire Christmas concert which meant he watched the primary concert, waited through the two hour plus interim, and then finally sat through the upper primary and secondary show in which my class "performed."

They provided me with a cheap and frequently out of tune electric guitar. I soldiered on with it though neither I nor my class could really hear the guitar which exacerbated their poor singing and rendered it often out of time. We closed the set with a song I had written. I started the opening chords, stopped thinking that I really needed to tune, and then just decided to go for it. That song went much better.

The next morning we flew out of Medan to Yogyakarta via Jakarta--which is where we are now. On the first night, we went to one of the many local markets. These offer clothing and other souvenirs at outrageously cheap prices. Yogyakarta is home to a great many artists whose style is labeled Batik and suffice it to say it is quite intricate. We all purchased local art. The next day we went to Borobudur--an enormous Buddhist temple constructed in the late 8th century. Photos will be posted in the next few days on the multiply site. If you don't have a multiply account, send me your email so that I can invite you. Some pictures can be seen without an account. Leaving Borobudur we were swarmed and harrassed by vendors whose only means of making a living is to give new meaning to the phrase "hard sell." They followed us in droves shoving their wares in our faces and offering us the "special morning price." We did buy a few things but the requests never stopped. That evening we went to a hindu ballet that I will describe later. We later visited a Hindu temple, also built in the 8th century, called Pramanbanan. Tomorrow we are off to Singapore. All this, I will elaborate upon in the next few days. Sorry to be overly concise. There is much to tell, but I need a little more time to do it all justice. The island of Java, and Yogyakarta (pronounced Jog-ja-karta; with a long 'o') in particular is rather more culturally preserved than Medan. Solo, a town about two hours away which is home to another school in our system, is similar. It's more relaxed with less traffic and pollution and more artists. We are, in both places, not far from the Indian Ocean not to mention the infamous Mt. Merapi.