A Teacher's Vacation

Yesterday was my birthday and today was Mercedes’. She turned 16 today. My god, how hard to believe that I have a 16 year old daughter and a soon-to-be 36 year old son and a grandchild on the way. Time turns quickly.

So sixteen is no the big birthday for girls here – 17 is and Mercedes is already coming up with wild plans for her 17th birthday. Today was fairly tame but highly enjoyed by all. I took the kids to the Bali Tree Top up in Bedugal. I’ve been there before when I brought my students on a field trip to Bali almost a year ago, and I figured that the kids would really enjoy climbing around. It turned out that they did, but not just them, six of the adults took part and they didn’t want to stop. It was a rather expensive afternoon, but the kids will remember this for a long time.

I spent all of the time filming or doing ground control work so I didn’t get a chance to do this again. Maybe next time.
So far this vacation is fairly on schedule for what we wanted to get done in a relatively short period of time. Things done: 1) We enrolled our eldest daughter in a good high school. If she does well, she should be able to get in a good college; 2) We got our second daughter a new American passport so she’s good now until she’s 18 and needs to decide on what citizenship she is going to take – Indonesian or American; 3) We bought the eldest daughter a new handphone so she can keep in touch with us, and perhaps more importantly, we can keep in touch with her; 4) We retiled the second floor bathroom and put in a new toilet; 5) We put a new toilet in the downstairs bathroom; 6) I fixed the phone connection on the third floor (after waiting six months for the family to get a repairman to do it); 7) I’ve finished updating half of the cyberbali site; 8) I answered a lot of back emails; 9) We showed our guest, friend, and handyman around part of Bali; 10) We had a birthday party for Mercedes and Rebecca; 11) I bought Sam a new handset for his PlayStation; 12) We bought Meredith some new Barbie things; 13) I managed to see my old friend once so far. Not bad for the first week.

We have another 12 days to try to finish up the rest which includes: 1) renewing and adding to our retirement time deposit account; 2) opening a bank account for Mercedes and getting her an ATM so we can keep her supplied with money; 3) fixing two windows in the bathrooms; 4) fixing a window on the third floor so that it doesn’t fall off during the rainy season; 5) opening a haj account for my wife; 6) opening student savings accounts for three of the kids; 7) talking to a visa agent about what my visa options are next year when I retire; 9) finishing the cyberbali update; 10) finishing some social studies lessons for next term; 11) reading the PEW study on American Muslims which I downloaded and printed; 12) rereading the Nine Parts of Desire and write a review; 13) learning about the physical requirements of setting up a network; 14) and there’s some more but I don’t have my plan book available at the time.