Mr. Bradford goes to London

Two Muslim girls who were kind enough to take my picture. Friday I had the opportunity to visit the Candi Badut, one of the oldest temples in Indonesia. This is a Hindu temple that it literally 4 blocks from where I am staying and I had to go down an alley way to find it. This isn't how the temple has always worked, it was restored back to what they think it looks like, but it is a beautiful piece of Indonesian history. I then had time to wander around the back streets and get a feel for what the neighborhood was like. This is an example of one of their local building supply stores. All the tools you need to repair a crumpling infrastructure  I have to say that Indonesians really like their birds.  Where I would be tempted to hang a plant, Indonesians will hang 2 birds. These cages can be found everywhere. Where do they get all these birds?  Well, from the local pet market.  Imagine an area of about 2-4 blocks filled with birds and fish shacks pack...

Yesterday was was another interesting time of learning about Malong. I worked with another teacher in the afternoon about curriculum planning.  Wesley has a lot of new teachers this year, with varying degrees of experience. Also, because they come from different countries, the techniques, expectations and experience levels are varied as well. They have a computer lab, but it lacks the server infrastructure that most of the schools in the States would have. In the end, I'd be almost tempted to buy a Raspberry Pie for every student and just have the students run Rasbian Linux for the majority of the classes. After the school day Mike and I went for a run around the neighborhood. I'm still healing and recovering from my plantar factitious, so i'm both out of running shape and trying to figure out if running is helpful, harmful, or doesn't matter either way. Considering 2 out of 3 of those let me run, i'm going to continue to cautiously run.  On the run we got ...

I promised Zumba, due to me still trying to figure out the blogger interface/HTML, I am going to just post it as it's own link.  I never thought I'd be followed by Reggaeton to SEA.  I thought it would only haunt me in Chile and other South American countries. But hey, it's Reggaeton, why not share it with the world.

I am currently at Mike's house and sitting at the kitchen table while their house keeper is cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. It's kind of strange to have a small, old Indonesian lady just puttering around the house. Part of me wants to strike up a conversation with her, but from what I've picked up from Indonesian culture, she's here to do a job and it would be strange to bother her when she has work to do. Update from last post. Landed in Taipei and was put up in a hotel for the night, we would be leaving at 2 pm the next day. Mike and I passed out in a small, clean, Hotel 6 like room and got up the next morning.  We went out for a walk, did some window shopping and then returned back to the hotel and checked out.  Picked up by a van and dropped off at the Taipei airport.  Wandered the Taipei airport terminal, which looked like a giant strip mall, full of expensive designer clothing and overpriced duty free alcohol.  Got on the plain and flew to Sin...

Met up with Mike only to find out that we had a 12 hour delay because of the typhoon in Taipei so everything's backed up now. We slept in the airport and finally got our flight ready along with a meal voucher and we did something like a 1518 hour flight to Taipei we are currently in Taipei and are being put up at a hotel until we get our next flight tomorrow at 1 it is currently 8 at night and then we'll go from Taipei to Singapore to Surabaya on the flight to Taipei I was able to watch about five movies Deadpool, Wolverine, Logan, and I don't even know how many others but i'm trying to sleep starve myself so that I can go ahead and get on the new time schedule. So far Mike and I are doing well nobody wants to kill the other person and hopefully that will continue for the rest of the group.

I think that one of the worst parts of a trip is the travel to get there. I'm not talking about a road trip, but the cattle car like transportation that the airlines in the U.S. provide. I know that it costs money to fly and that the airlines are trying to save as much money as they can, but it seems like it is an attempt to make the travel so bad, that your are happy when you arrive at your destination. The Security Circus doesn't help either. I'm currently in my flight to LA from Portland, a after taking a puddle jumper from Seattle to Poland. I had a nice 2 hour layover in Portland. I like Portland, it's what I imagine Seattle would be like if everyone just went to community college and stopped caring about being cool. After I get to LA, I should be meeting up with my Brother-in-law Mike. From there we will travel to our final destination of Malong, Indonesia. That flight will start at about 1am and should start our real 30 hour trip. 

So it's time to fire up the blog again. Last time I left the country was over 8 years ago. That was 2 kids, 2 job changes and a new dog. This time I will be returning to SEA, this time to Indonesia. For any of you that are following along or reading this in the future, the Dunn is about to start!