Dave's new office

Yes, I've been here a little over a month now, and here's my office. :-)
Some things happen slowly here.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Tujubelas Agustus - August 17 (Indonesia's Independence Day)

Dave was asked to give an assembly at the expat school last Tuesday demonstrating how on August 17, 1945 The Dutch East Indies became the nation of Indonesia. His compatriot is Ibu Benise, the school's Bahasa (language) Indonesia teacher.

The kiddos joined in the celebrations by wearing the Indonesian colors of red & white!

What a great teacher!

After tearing off the lower blue portion of the Dutch flag to make the Indonesian flag, Ibu Benise beautifully sang the national anthem. 

Here's a piece from the international school's weekly newsletter.

(picture by Leslie)

Exploring the rainforest

We've been doing some jungle exploration on our days off...

On Wednesday, after the Independence Day celebrations, we tried to find a big waterfall we'd heard about. Instead, we found a weekend getaway camp established by local middle-schoolers.

We followed a little trail up, up, up for about an hour and then gave up. The jungle became too thick and the trail fizzled out. Leslie is standing in the middle of the trail. That's the trail behind her. I would've called it bushwhacking except for the occasional machete cuts and chopped branches we found along the way.

Our local transportation

Here's our local transportation!
After the yellow chopper lands, keep watching.  You'll briefly see Leslie in the hanger.  Then the big Russian chopper will take off.  When the big Russian takes off, notice what happens:  it doesn't take off by going up.  It takes off by immediately going DOWN.
(disappears below the heli-pad and flies down the valley)
I shot this video when we had just gotten off the big Russian chopper.  It was our first ride!!!

Indonesia - Back like never before!

"Amole" - the name of a Tembag. neighborhood, as well as a greeting in the local language.

Selamat Datang! Welcome to our blog! There is so much to tell... the difficulty is deciding where to begin. The main purpose of this blog is to introduce and share our life here in Tembagapura with family and friends, but of course not to exclude any wandering blog-a-bonds taking interest in the goings on of Papua Indonesia.
Although we enjoy greeting the local Papuans in their native tongue, we do not live in the Amole neighborhood. Our "new" spacious townhouse is in the quiet and very muddy West 1 neighborhood. 

We live up stairs in TH 4!

We have yet to meet our neighbors. Our plan for taking evening walks to meet them has been thwarted by rains, but we are hopeful for opportunities in the near future.


Check out some of the locals we have been getting familiar with: 

The views are really something to see as well:

The valley where the helicopters fly up and down. You can also see the "barracks", or trailers, where many of the workers live. 

There are many creeks and rivers that run and fall down through Tembag.

The buses around here are no joke!!!