It was time to drive home, drop Kadek Ayu off and pick up mom before going off to the airport. I have to say, I’m proud of Kadek Ayu. After helping her get out of her financial rut and back in college to finish her final year, she has already accepted an offer to teach a special high school class once a week. Today is her first day teaching (= Way to go Kadek Ayu! She’s come a long way in these last few months. It’s such a blessing to see talent freed to follow paths to brighter futures when loosed from the constraints of a limited family income.

The flight home was smooth & uneventful. Another opportunity to get through 80 pages or so in my book (=
There’s a lot to love about Indonesia. The more I learn and understand, the easier it is to feel frustrated about the less-than-positive things that have happened here. I’m in the chapter that deals with the turbulence of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-98, and the ugly events which happened between May ‘98 (when President Suharto was finally kicked out of office after 31 years) and November ‘98 (when political and scape-goat seeking ethnic tensions snapped, causing a dramatic backlash against the wealthy Chinese community here).