Rural school project

 Last week we visited a project up in the mountains of Eastern Java.  To get there we got on a plane and flew an hour and a half.  We grabbed a car and driver at the airport and drove south for another hour and a half before leaving the main road and heading up into the hills.  The road we were on kept getting smaller and smaller (see Pic #1) until we came to a car parked alongside the road, which completely blocked us from getting past.  Fortunately this was right in front of the school.  Pic #2 shows the view from the school - the city in the distance is where we turned off the main road. 

This school is on the side of a mountain so that every time it rained water and mud would flow through the classrooms making a mess and moving the school a little further downhill.  We helped them to build a retaining wall to keep their fields in place (Pic #3), a diversion ditch and barrier to protect the classrooms (#4),  and some new bathrooms for the teachers (#5), because even teachers deserve a private place to think.  

You're probably wondering how this project was even found.  We sure were, so we did some research.  The couple that started this project walked into a local education professor's office and said "We're here to help rural schools. Do you know of any that need us?"  He did and introduced them to the school's leaders.   

After being shown around and checking that everything was completed to spec, they fed us some lunch (#6 for all you foodies).  I had prepared a little speech in my meager Indonesian.  I told them that in America I was a math teacher, and that American classrooms and Indonesian classrooms had a lot of similarities.  I was going to talk about desks, and books, and teachers that loved their students, but I took a breath first.  The headmaster spoke up and repeated in Indonesian everything I had just said in Indonesian.  I looked at him and asked "Didn't I just say that?"  "Oh.  I was worried that my staff might think you were speaking English".  I winced and said "Ow" and everybody laughed, but I did hear one or two comments along the lines of "I wasn't sure what he was speaking".   I definitely need to practice my language more.