We’ve got a blog! Pass it on!

Hello World!

We’ve got a blog. Pass it on.

We’ll probably be posting pretty spontaneously, but we’ll try to keep you updated as best we can on our adventures, so keep checking back.

On Monday, we leave for our debrief at Gitten’s Lodge. And then on Wednesday we’ll be flying out of Halifax to Toronto and then tada, a new chapter begins.

A quick thank you to the Fair Trade cafe for filling our bellies with a delicious turkey dinner and the rest of the Truro community for coming out to our farewell party. We’ll miss you!

From all corners,

Le gang

Home sweet, bitter goodbyes

Today we said goodbye for the last time. Done is our goodbye to the Selat Baru host community, goodbye to our Indonesian teammates, to Kuala Lampur, to Hong Kong and then to our five day debrief in Toronto for all of the Canadian participants. Today we all headed our separate ways. We’ve jumped, backpacks full of new experiences and knowledge, best friends and a colourful parachute with memories etched all over it. Thank you! Terima Kasih! Merci!

Bonne chance, saya cinta kamu, keep rockin’ the free world,

Otiena

P.S. Please visit  adipramono.com and otienaellwand.com for more text and photos!

Walking on an island at sea

5Hello all, We are in Bengkalis today for the Bupati’s daughter’s wedding. The Bupati is the head hancho of this entire island/regency and he has chosen us to be the honorary family members. We are probably going to be dressed up, asked to dance and stuffed with food, but all in good fun. Six of us walked the 20km from our village of Selat Baru to the city starting in the dark of morn’ at 5:30am. Everyone thought we were a little crazy, but stopping for fresh pineapple by the side of the road definitely made it all the more novel. Our voyage ended at the California Fried Chicken chain. Delicious.

This week may be our last week at these particular work placements and then we will be switching. Some people to teach at new schools, others will be working in agriculture etc…

So far our personal projects are chugging along. The solar oven that Antoine is building is almost complete, the waste management project is collecting a ton of empty water bottles to recycle and the library/reading project started this past Sunday to huge applause from the kids.

Time is flying by and we’re trying to make the mostof itWe are leaving on mid-project eval next weekend and we’re going off theisland.

Much love and gong xi fa chai!

Otiena

Hello All!

Sorry for the delay. It is a lot harder to get to a computer or to get internet access than I would have thought. But before I bog you down with that, let me get to the meat of the day.

So we are currently in Bengkalis which is the largest city on our island. It isn’t much of a big city, but at least here there is a tiny  bit of anonimity compared to our village.

Our village is truly something- how everyone works together to help each other out, the generosity and hospitality that seems never to run dry. We’ve made pretty good friends with the village youth who we practice volleyball with on most afternoons.

We are starting our work placements- many of them teaching English at the schools- on Jan 5th and we’ve finished our proposal for our individiual projects, including water testing and treament, solar ovens, waste management/recycling, hygiene and other health workshops, and sports tournaments.

Tonight we will be bringing in 2009 with the Bupati. He’s like the head hauncho of the island and seems to have taken a liking to us, probably because we put on a pretty good party what with all of the dancing and singing we do. We celebrated Islamic new year’s a few days ago at my house… drumming until midnight, then another meal (soup), then talking and cards until 2 am and then a movie at 3am. Oddly enough, there were no young woman there except for us. It seems the girls are always AWOL which is somethting the boys keep on remarking.

Happy New Year’s to you all. We’re going to beat you to 2009, but we’ll see you there soon.

Love,

Otiena and everyone.

P.S. Thank you for the comments. It’s good to know that people are actually reading.

A note from a hot & spicy land

I am sitting on the roof of the hotel in Pekanbaru, boiling hot and sweating at 10:11pm. We just got back from the Governor’s welcome supper. It was an elaborate event and we met the host parents that we will stay with for our two nights in Pekanbaru.

We Canadians got to stay at an amazing 4 or 5-star hotel in Kuala Lampur. There was a pool and palm trees (and blessed air conditioning); everything you could imagine from a resort magazine.  It spoiled us, especially breakfast.  All manner of fresh mango, guava, papaya, orange juices and probably our last taste of Western fare. I saw my first tropical rainstorm. Big drops, but it didn’t really cool anything down.

We met a few lovely people along the way: a Malaysian man who’d been to Montreal for a skills-competition and the 18-year-old flight attendant who couldn’t believe we hadn’t gone out partying on a Friday night. Instead we’d eaten at a Malaysian buffet restaurant, watched a traditional Malaysian dance performance and took pictures of the glittering ice cake-like Petronas towers all the while trying to fight off our jet-lag.

When we got to the airport in Pekanbaru we were greated by a HUGE party: dancers, children holding Canadian and Indonesian flags and we were reunited with our Indonesian counterparts who’d traveled through Jakarta from Hong Kong.

We’re being treated like royalty over here.

Much love and cool weather (do I dare say that?)  

Otiena