The Elements Unearthed

Jakarta Day 7: Sunday, July 30, 2017

Traffic in Jakarta as seen from the Le Meridien Hotel. I had gotten used to clear skies and stars in Banjarmasin, and Jakarta seemed very crowded and smoggy now that I was back.

Our flight back to Jakarta was uneventful. We landed and pulled in toward the terminal building, but there was no room at the jetways so buses came and got us to the terminal. I was separated from Craig because the bus door closed right behind me, but we met again at the baggage claim. I got a luggage cart (I’m beginning to know where everything is in Terminal 3) and we got our bags. We were met by a taxi driver with our names on an iPad, and we walked with him up the elevator to the parking garage. Our ride had been arranged in advance by Sarah Sever. She’s really good at the details.

On our way to dinner after our return to Jakarta. We had a lot of stories to tell about our nine days in the field.

We drove back to the Le Meridién Hotel and got our new rooms. I’m on the 8^th floor in room 820 this time. We had several hours before our reunion/welcome back dinner, so I laid down and tried to sleep but wasn’t very tired. Plus they were doing some construction work on a nearby room and it was noisy with hammers and buzz saws. I worked on these blog posts and uploaded photos. I went downstairs and got the TGC bag out of the Concierge room.

Another photo of us walking to dinner. We were anxious to talk and share our experiences now that we were back together.

At 5:00 we met in the lobby downstairs and were all excited to share our experiences. Matt and Doug were the last ones to arrive after another eight hour drive. They and some others had been to Borobudur yesterday with long drives, and another long drive today. My trip to Loksado didn’t seem so bad now.

Nikki, Sarah, Novianti, and Anu at our Italian dinner.

We boarded a Pariwisata bus and traveled to an Italian restaurant. All the other teachers have been using an app called WhatsApp as they all have smart phones (except Anu and I) to communicate with each other and send photos while we’ve been on our field experiences. As they talked about some of the funny things they’ve been saying back and forth, I felt a bit left out of the loop, as I had known none of this. Yes, I do need to get a smart phone and join the revolution.

Our cohort group at the Italian restaurant upon our return to Jakarta.

I had crab linguini and wasn’t expecting to have it actually stuffed into a crab shell. It was not quite as good as I had hoped, as it didn’t really taste very Italian to me. Matt’s birthday had been two days before, so we sang happy birthday and had cake. He got some black and white balloons.

The atmosphere was very relaxed and fun. I talked with Jenn who was sitting to my left. She is from northern Louisiana and actually knows the people who star in Duck Dynasty – they live just down the road, but their house is much nicer than the one shown in the show. I’ve never watched it, and have no desire to do so.

My crab linguini. I wasn’t expecting it to come complete with crab shell, and was a bit more spicy than I thought.

We walked back through the lobby of the plaza where the restaurant is located and re-boarded the bus. Our trip back to the hotel was fairly short for Jakarta. Although I still didn’t feel like going to my room, I didn’t see anything else to do, so I called it a night.