1 month in, and still going strong!

My language training group (back left) Sam, Melanie, Tammy, Mike (front left) myself and Lea!

Hello all! I have so much to share now that I have had some down time to thing more, but alas I have not typed it up ahead of time! I will commit to doing so in the next 2 weeks and then make a blog post. Here are some pictures to peruse while you wait for my deep thoughts later!

Da boys and Pak Hengky. This captures Hengky in the best way possible, because he is always laughing like a crazy man!

Sidomulyo, always prepared for photos....

Still smiling on top of Panderman hill (mountain to me!) with mbak Opi, the cultural facilitator for Bumiaji. Her first hike EVER and she went 3.5 hours up, 1.75 hours down. Way to be Opi!

Peace Corps' cultural facilitators, who are AMAZING! Especially that guy front and center, my cultural facilitator and great friend, Teguh!

Mike on the straight climb up Panderman "Hill"

Sam, giving the typical Sam look, Mas Teguh, and myself

We made it to the top of Panderman Hill! Brian Hakk, Steve Zitzow and David Walker, remember that weird time that I made you all take a Prather family picture at the Superbowl Party since you had the same names as my family members?! GUESS WHAT these guys' names are? Brian and David. YES! (I didn't tell them about this though, I think it's still too soon to be that weird!)

Liz demonstrating how intense this hike is!

The ladies on the day of the Fun Bike with Universitas Mohammidiyah Malang! I think that we tripled the number of girls involved in this bike trip...

A shot of the bike race. Look how intensely dressed this Indo men were! That's why it was so much funnier when they would hop off their bikes to walk up every hill. That would never happen in the US! And then I almost puked from trying to bike up a hill, and was humbled to walk up the next hill with them!

Some fun quick comments:

~ To prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs in your mandi, by a guppy fish! Or "goopy" fish, as our Indonesian doctors says!

~ While asking students to describe their families, we got the following notes back:

"If I had 1 million Rupiah, I would buy a shank." Wow, watch out for thank kid! Maybe he/she meant snake?? Shark???

"My mom likes to noodle and my dad likes to vegetable." Is that a dance?? : )