Arrival!

Hello everyone! I arrived in Indonesia last night at 10:30 (local time). Let me update you first on my trip here. As some of you might remember me saying, I was a little nervous about the layover in Taiwan because it was 12 and 1/2 hours! Well, it turned out really well. I met a couple of people on a free tour that the airport offered for those with long layovers. The tour was such an answer to prayer! The first lady I met was Susan and she was on her way back to Korea. She was on the flight from Newark with me, so we went through customs in Taiwan and waited for the tour together.
The tour was pretty neat. We got to see an old city street and a temple and then a street where they were selling ceramics. I bought a bowl. :) Taiwan reminded me a lot of Thailand. There were even a few 7-11s!
After finding my gate, another girl from the tour, Claire, came over and talked to me. She is a world traveler herself and was coming back from vacation in Indonesia! She was encouraging me about this new experience. It was a cool gift from God to be able to talk to someone who had just come from here.
When I got to Indonesia Ms. Angie and Nila from the school met me and took me to my apartment. It turns out I am living in Country Heritage Resorts which is a hotel but you can live long term too. Before you get too excited about the word resort, let me just tell you that it is not perfect! But I think I will enjoy living here, even though it is 45 minutes from school! :( Which means I will have to leave at 6 a.m. every morning!
It took me until 4 a.m. to fall asleep last night, so I had a lot of time to think about being here for two years. Since everything always seems worse in the middle of the night, I was kind of depressed for a little while. But I know God is with me and it will be all right here. It will just take some getting used to.
Today Ms. Angie and two other teachers from IPH: Mae and Mavik took me shopping at Carrefour, a store they also have in Thailand! There are a lot of things available here, which is nice! The only thing I couldn't find is laundry stain remover. We met another teacher, Ella, from a different school there. She ended up helping me the most because she didn't have any shopping to do.
After that we had lunch at KFC :), and then went to an electronics store where I bought a cell phone! (yay!) Then we went to Supermall (which in the words of Ella, "it's a mall, but super") where we saw the movie "Prince of Persia". When we got outside again it was 6:30 p.m. and I was disappointed to see that it was dark already. Apparently Indonesian nights start earlier than the ones back home.
When they dropped me off at the aparment, I met three other teachers who live in the apartments right now. Two of them are moving out of the apartment that I will later occupy after they leave. They took me to two convience stores nearby and then to a restaurant where we had dinner.
So, it's been a long and full day. It's been good to keep busy, mainly so I could stay awake all day. Speaking of that, I'd better go to sleep because I am going to the school tomorrow and everyone is leaving at 6:15. I will write more later!