Tuesday 16. Aug 2005

July 3, 2004

Time for an update with some new photos. Everyone is on vacation now. The last few days have been filled with all sorts of stuff. My vacation is now half over - Already?! Mercedes turned 13 a few days ago - just after I turned 55. The kids have all passed their end of the year examinations (well except for Meredith who is still in Kinder) and will be promoted to the next grade. We actually knew that the kids were going to be promoted; we just hadn't received official information about it. Two days ago the school had the separation ceremony for the 6th grade class who will now begin Junior High.The photos below all come from that ceremony.

Merediths' class did a very cute little dance. The highlighted links are to movies of the dances. The third grade class also did a traditional dance from Sumbawa. Mercedes was selected to give the keynoote speech; unfortunately I did not have enough juice in the batteries to do a movie of her speech. She was the keynote speaker because she ended up being ranked first in her class due to her regular grades and her scores on the national exams. Sam and Rebecca also did well - both of them were in the top 20% of their class - so Su and I are thrilled after several years of very poor grades when they were in school in Bali. For some reason they are much more motivated here - part of that I think is not living in a single parent family anymore and thus not being able to skip doing their homework. Rebecca was picked as one of the three award presenters so she spent a lot of time on stage. As usual, when I walked in to the room where school assemblies are held, I was immediately ushered up to the front row where the mayor and all of the other top government officials from the area sit. It's one of those things of being the only bule with kids in the school. My academic credentials and position also count for something here - not quite like Pakistan and India where you get the Professor Doctor thing, but similar.

Tomorrow we are having Mercedes' birthday party here so next week there will be photos of that. Despite my thrill during Sam's party in May of thinking that it would be the last party that we would have here at Yoyo's, we are going to have another one here. I have no idea how much longer it is going to take to finish the house, and I am more than frustrated with the slow pace of construction. Well, more next week.

I put a little guestbook here so you can leave a message here for us if you are having trouble reaching us by email. Thanks for the messages in the guestbook. I like hearing from you all.