September 25, 2006
Time flies. We have been working on posting things to this blog for quite a few weeks now. We had a few technical setbacks to deal with, though. Our internet connection was down for about 2 weeks. We have a “high speed” connection (for Jakarta, that is) through the cable company. Like many things in Jakarta, though, it ended up being more complicated than we thought it should be. When we started having problems we contacted Uninet, our internet service provider, who tried to troubleshoot the problem over the phone. When that didn’t work, they sent a service tech to the house who concluded there wasn’t anything wrong with his company’s part of it. So, he made an appointment for the cable company to come to the house to take a look. Three or four days later, the cable company came and changed some of the connectors in the house, and now it seems to be working fine. We’re not sure exactly what he did, because our internet service has been, for the most part, OK for over a year and we’re not sure why it just stopped working.
Heidi wrote and we posted a synopsis of her trip to Scotland. It is funny to me how she failed to mention that we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary over 7,000 miles apart. Somehow, we both seemed to survive and we were able to go out for anniversary the following weekend.
Things are in full swing with school and all of the activities the boys are involved in. Grant and Luke both came home with interesting pottery pieces from their ceramics class. They are both enjoying their soccer teams, too. Nash is really enjoying middle school and all of the activities he is involved in. He goes to track 3 times per week, and he has shown a real talent for running. He is one of the fastest kids in grade 6, and usually is able to keep pace with the 8th graders during practice. They only have two meets – one this Friday and another one the following weekend. Every person on the team was allowed to select 3 events to compete in, and then Nash was chosen to participate in an extra event – the medley relay (2 students run 100 meters each, then 1 student runs 200 meters, then Nash will run 400 meters). Nash has also been going to the drama club, which meets once a week after school. They have been preparing the kids for auditions for a small group to go to Beijing in November for 5 days. Nash found out last week that he was chosen to go, and he was so excited. He is one of 4 students from grade 6 (there will be 20 students in total from the JIS middle school) who will go to an annual event in Beijing where they do a bunch of acting / drama classes, workshops, and performances with 5 or 6 other international schools. They’ll also go to a few sights around Beijing, including the Great Wall. We are all jealous of Nash that he gets to go, and we are even trying to figure out if some or all of us can go with him. If not, we will definitely go another time with the whole family.
Millers in Shanghai
