2th July 2008.Visitors from the Netherlands

This week Ankie and Raoel visited us. They came to Yogya especially for us and it felt really good to speak “brabants” again. Even more since Ankie is really talkative! They promised to visit us once we are in Papua. For now we are looking forward to new visitors, Harold's family is coming at the end of July and are planning to have a great time together.

28th June 2008.Birthday at 2965 meters

This birthday was really special. On the evening of 27th of June we started our trip to clime the Merapi vulcano. We were with 7 participants and 4 guides and the clime was rough enough for Harold and me. We walked up the mountain for 5 and a half hours (1400 meters) and reached the top at around 5AM in the morning. In a strange way Harold and I ended up to be the latest reached the top???The walk was hard for us and we felt the weak couple in the team ;)
But once on the top it was wonderful. A beautiful sunrise, beautiful views and the guides made some delicious nasi goreng for us.
But as it goes with climbing mountains we also had to go down. Harold was nock out and really could not walk anymore....But we reached the “finish” safely. Although it was the longest trip downwards we ever experienced.

26th June pre-deploymenttraining

For three days we had our training to prepare us for our work in Papua.

21th June 2008.Cycling to Kaliurang

Because we study very hard during the weekdays we really need some relaxing in the weekends. On Saturday morning at 5am we started to cycle up the hills of Kaliurang. As people from the Netherlands, no mountains!, it was quit a hard trip. But our new bikes were great and after 3 hours we arrived in Kaliurang (mountainvillage) were we could enjoy a great view of the Mount Merapi.

We also visited the famous Budha tempel Borobudur and watched sunset and sunrise overthere.

14th June 2008.Teaching in Yogya

For the first time of my life I (Meriam)teached English to children!It was a real nice experience but is also took a lot of preparation since I am not a native speaker. At this picture there was a end of the schoolyear ceremony with all the teachers and me.

Back in Yogya 18 juni 2008