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! 

I'm thinking about getting back into blogging again, mostly because things have been crazy. I firmly believe that it is the crazy times of life that really let us know who we are and let us appreciate the non crazy times as well. This picture is another reason that I need/want to start this blog up again. This is Tre, actually, Doss Charles Bradford the Third, but that's a bit too much to yell down out on the playground, so we decided to keep it short. I believe that if he continues to grow as fast as he has the past 8 (almost) months, then I will be forgetting a lot of things, things that I don't want to forget. So here is to a new start, and the hope that this blog will actually update correctly.

It has been a couple of days sense I have updated the blog, but we have been pretty busy, and in all honesty, we are a little tired. For me, it's mostly the fact that I haven't had a day off in quite a while. This has made me a little low on energy. Tami is going strong, but I think she misses cheese. I was able to add a couple more foods to my bucket list that I haven't eaten before; duck blood, not to be confused with pig blood, or pig blood cake, and duck feet. I have to say, I didn't see the duck feet coming. That is the one thing that I would have assumed they would have given up on and decided that enough was enough. After all, they don't eat the feathers.....at least I don't think so. The duck's feet were pickled, and basically tasted like pickled cartilage. How do I know what pickled cartilage taste like? Don't ask. All of this was served to us by the father of our host family. He took the time to make us a traditional home-made meal. Ev...

Today is Saturday, and we are working. Not that I mind that, but we will be pulling something like nine days straight without a break. Originally we were planning on having a break over the weekend, but due to scheduling conflicts we had to go with the current plan. Tami and I went out for our morning run after we woke up and because the streets were less crowded than they usually are, we decided to run around the neighborhood. It was interesting to see that food stands we usually ran past were closed up, or not even there. As we ran we found a string of parks that seemed to stretch east to west through the city. They would be broken up with random apartment buildings, but as we ran, we would come across another park with people doing tai-chi or walking. Overall, a very nice way to start our morning. Tonight we are getting together with the rest of the Footsteps crew and having an American meal together. It should be nice but I will miss my frogs, squid and eels

Yep.... That's eel. Kind of like a slimy snake. But I'll be able to confirm that once we eat snake. I'm guessing that will be next week. In all honesty, it was really good, except for one little bit of gristle in each bite.

Today was a pretty good day at school. I'm able go keep the children busy enough during the class, that when I give them study time, they work quietly at their desk. At the end of the day Tiffany picked us up and we went to have our next culinary adventure. Today it was frogs, eel and something much more mundane, squid. Once again, I was very proud of Tami, who actually had seconds of the frog. The eel was good, the frog tasted more like like chicken than anything else. I believe the secret of eating in Taiwan is to follow two simple rules. Rule one, don't look too closely at the exactly what you are eating. Rule two, remember rule one. I really believe that we have tried pretty much everything there is to eat so far, but I'm sure that I will be amazed!