Monday Memories ... 1
Last year I had all my photo negatives turned into cds (with the help of sweet Cleary) ... so here's my plan. I'm going to stick one of the cd's into my computer, pull up a random picture or two and then tell the memory attached to that picture. Many of these will be my Irian pictures because, well, I love Irian.
For those that don't know, I spent 3 years in Irian Jaya, Indonesia {now Papua, Indonesia} as a teacher to missionary kids. An amazing, AMAZING experience. My hope is to begin blogging more regularly about that experience and the impact it had on my life.
Okay, so here we go .... random picture 25 02
Left to right ~~ Jon, Jared, Brad, Justina
Ahhh, Justina's 16th birthday! On our Outdoor Education {OE} trip to the Bird's Head, 1998 or 1999. Someone remember which one this is?
The high school had 50ish kids ... and every year they went on a two week trip into the interior of Irian Jaya ... hailed as the most remote place on the planet. And I have to say, the books were right. Wait til you see future post pics!
This particular year we boarded a passenger boat from Jayapura and headed 24 hours west and north to the Bird's Head of Irian Jaya. Ummm, that's a story all unto its own post but let's just say I took a lot of drugs so I wasn't puking the whole time and our definition of a passenger boat and their definition of a passenger boat are vastly, vastly different. Who knows what the kids were up to, gallivanting around the ship ... all I know was I was on the top bunk sleeping and every so often I would wake up to see Joan on her bunk reading magazines and Suzy was probably doing something sporty like kicking the soccer ball around with the kids on deck. She was good like that.
The kids were divided up into 3 big groups and each teacher was assigned to a group of those kids. This particular year I got the pleasure of being the leader for the "couples" group ... oh mercy. 'Nuf said. Fortunately I had Ailie and Kat to help commandeer the troops - not sure I would have made it without them along!
I digress. {I'm sure I'll have to go into greater detail when other pictures are randomly selected but for now let's just say while the kids were all great, the hormones were a pain in the pa-tootie. Any-hoo.}
We planned ahead and brought party stuff with us, which is no small feat if you've ever been to IJ ... I think we somehow even managed to make a cake. I'm sure Ailie and Kat made that happen. 
We were at this little Indonesian Bible school in Manokwari (I think) and the girls were sleeping in the girls dorm and I remember when they found out it was Justina's birthday they so wanted to participate in the party so they got shaving cream and totally nailed her with it. Not sure where they got the shaving cream but somehow they did and it was so fun to celebrate with them. I have pictures somewhere but they're not on this disk. Rats.
So that's random Monday Memory #1 ... This might end up being more meaningful to my Irian connections, but hopefully you'll enjoy getting to know this piece of my life through these random pictures in the coming weeks.
And my guess is, this will be more than just once a week - this was very fun to begin reminiscing. Great times. Great kids. Great memories.