Time Zones, Side of the Road, Jet Lag

 I have been mentioning some of the things we just did not check on in the rush of leaving for Indonesia.  Usually we would at least look up the country on Wikipedia, and we had not even done that. Rick and I had discussions as to what time zone we might be in and were mainly trying to relate to which city that we knew was Indonesia south of. We decided it probably was south of Beijing. We got that part right, at least for Jakarta, but Papua is closer to being south of Japan. So we are 12 hours ahead of the East Coast of the US now, but will be 10 hours difference when we get to our location. Who cares? Well our family does because we recieve many calls from our children and it is hard to be sure we are not waking each other up or calling during work hours. We also watch news and football on our computer and they are on US schedule. It is one of the first things Peace and Purity asked us.  Wonderful to have kids who know what you need to deal with when communicating overseas. Peace had also looked up what language was here. Good for her.

I have mentioned how important it was to have checked if we could drink the water before we got here, but there was another important question, we did not even begin to consider checking on. As we were driving down the deserted streets of Jakarta on New Year's Eve, we realized that we were on the wrong side of the road!! Again, who really cares if you are not planninng on driivng a car? But we lived in Zambia and have visited the UK. It is DANGEROUS when the cars are coming at you from the opposite direction. You consistently try to enter the vehicle on the wrong side. But more importantly, you do not look the correct way right before you step off the curb!  It is very easy to be hit.  You may not think this is a big factor, but until you get used to checking your near lane, it is very disconcerting. Who would have thunk it, that Indonesia is on the other side. It was mainly Dutch East India Company colonization, not Britain but this is where it ended up.

Our jet lag has been not very bothersome this time, but it is because we have just been sleeping day and night because we were tired, but also because we have no where we have to be at specific times, so we have not noticed. I am up now at 3:30 a.m. though, watching the NY/Jets game on my computer and checking email. We have our last covid test this morning at 9:10, and had to leave the hotel in the middle of the night to find an ATM machine close, because the hotel ATM and lobby were out of money.  If everything goes well, then we should be on our way to Papua tomorrow at 10 p.m.