I've been in Indonesia for about two and a half weeks now. So far so good.

We are staying at an unbelievably beautiful hotel. I have the nicest bathroom that I'll probably have for many years to come, along with people who clean my room for me and do my laundry, so I'm feeling very spoiled and very lucky.

My training program has been a Monday thru Saturday experience of intensive Bahasa Indonesia classes, teacher training, and all sorts of useful cultural training. We've had some amazing lectures about the diverse topics of Indonesian history, politics, and culture; how the education system works here; general healthcare; and lots of conversations about general safety (avoiding motorbikes, surviving earthquakes, etc.). I feel like it is giving me a good background of information that will tie into many aspects of trying to live and work in Indonesia. It has been fun to feel a bit like a college student again, sitting down to an interesting lecture and trying to take notes.

Along with all the important educational aspects of the past couple weeks, this has been a wonderful chance to meet incredible people. There are 50 ETAs in Indonesia this year (the program has been hugely expanded) and we're all together for this training program. We hang out between sessions and go out to dinner in the evenings. We've had time for some small adventures outside the hotel. I went hiking to see some local caves and waterfalls the first weekend here. We saw an amazing performance of wayang puppetry, dance, and angklung music (bamboo tubes of different sizes, that the musicians shake to make different notes) this past weekend.

All in all, I'm feeling very happy and so excited to move to Samarinda next week. It feels a bit like I'm living in a bubble, surrounded by English-speaking Americans and a wonderful hotel staff who feed us every couple hours and let me practice my childlike bahasa skills on them without laughing (at least, without laughing directly at me).

I'm sure that moving to my site will be a big change. I'll have to navigate thru the first moments of meeting my neighbors and the people who work at my school. I'll have to teach my first classes (and I'm not sure how effective the tricks of teaching 3 yr olds or playing Camouflage in the woods are going to be). I suppose I'll even have to figure out where on earth I can get a good cup of coffee.

But, I am incredibly excited.