Hello Jakarta!

On Sunday all the teachers had a day off from the induction conference. Several teachers have become ill with various common travelling ailments including fever, food poisoning, and the unfortunate traveller's diarrhea. I took advantage of the day off and grabbed a cab into Jakarta with some of the other teachers. 

From Left to right we have Aaron (A first year teacher from Tennessee who in addition to teaching grade 7-8 will be helping to coach the national water skiing team in Jakarta), Cindy (A classmate at Queen's who will be teaching chemistry here at BBS), and Jeremy and his non-teaching wife Kasandra (From the US and Venezuela respectively. Jeremy is teaching high school biology at the Jakarta campus and is a dive master and huge into body boarding. Some dive trips to the various islands here will be happening in the near future.).

Squeezing five people in a cab is no big deal, and so far from my keen observations of Jakarta driving laws I believe the only rule to the road is "yield when absolutely necessary" and anything else goes. The most interesting and scariest part is that there are at least as many motor cycles on the road as cars and they are constantly weaving around the vehicles. Crossing the streets is a nightmare and much like a game of frogger but Aaron and I have a theory that if you walk in a predictable trajectory and don't change pace or direction the "yield when absolutely necessary" law will be easier for cars to follow and therefore we will not get hit.

Our 30 minute cab ride cost 50 000 rupiah, which translates to about $5. So we happily paid $1 each for a 30 minute ride. Our plan for the day was to get a massage. At the massage place they also had several japanese restaurants so we got some sushi.

I don't know what most of this stuff was but it was phenomenal. In the top right of the bento box there is some octopus and the sneaky white one in the middle of the bottom right corner was the chewiest thing I have ever eaten in my life. This made me miss the Jina Sushi crew in Kingston (Sarah, Eric, Kim, Jared, Laura, Thea, Rachael, Caitlin, Katie, Taylor Swiftee E).

After lunch we spent the next couple hours relaxing and getting body scrub massages. For 1.5 hours it was only $22. I will definitely be returning there once the stress of teaching starts but perhaps will choose a different option than "body scrub" because although my massage was fantastic, a few of the others found their massages to be a little abrasive. Also mid way through the massage Aaron got a sketchy whisper about money. And although it was lost in translation we can't quite decide if it was her encouraging him to tip well, or her negotiating a price for a "special" massage.

Fed and relaxed we went for a walk around the city. Just by chance we stumbled onto the busiest street corner I have ever seen and everyone was waiting for something. This is what we saw next:

The pictures don't do justice to the beauty of the costumes and there was tons of musical instruments being played throughout the parade including some really cool drum circles (Lynsey Yates). It wasn't until later that we found out the parade was celebrating the anniversary of Jakarta (not sure how many years). 

Funniest experience of the day however; the hundreds of photos that were taken of us. It ranged from people sneakily taking photos, to openly taking photos, to asking us if they could take a photo of us, to asking them if their friend could take a photo of them standing with us. Everyone who took a photo was always very thankful and extremely thrilled which made it very fun. My favourite time was when the five of us stopped and posed near a particularly flashy float to take a group shot and tens of locals swooped in and took their own photos of our group shot. It felt like we could have stood there all day and the inflow of cameras never would have stopped. Think about how extravagant and picture worthy all of those costumes and floats are, but all the locals wanted to take photos of were us. Which logic tells me that we look as far fetched to them as anything in the parade looks to us. My second theory, which is consistent with what I get told a lot in Canada, is that everyone in this country takes photos of us because they think I am Matt Damon.