Year 3 begins here

I may eventually backpost a bunch to last year, but it's time to move forward. Last year's plan - writing about important stuff instead of daily, didn't work. But daily still seems like a bad idea. Thus, I'm going to try to send out a weekly Sunday email including a picture and some thoughts, sometimes long, sometimes not, depending on what the week calls for and time allows. It starts now:

I got back to indonesia on August 15th, and things are going well enough thus far. I've been losing a bunch of weight due to fasting, carrying baggage everywhere, and my inevitable one night of fiery diarrhea (which I've conquered by now, thankfully) that always occurs within the first week of arriving in Indonesia. Today I checked into the Sheraton in Bandung, where I'll be staying there for three weeks. Doesn't that sound boss.
Banda Aceh is going to be a very interesting experience. It's pluses are starting to become more apparent. Aceh is beautiful, being set between the ocean and mountains that ring the city to the south. The roads are in pretty good shape by even our standards, thanks in no small part to the fact that many of them were rebuilt by USAID (and in fact, the American ambassador will be coming up to christen one such road soon!). A lot of Acehnese people have been awarded Fulbright scholarships (including my counterpart, the secretary of my department, and the Assistant to the Rector for Cultural Affairs), meaning I am surrounded by people who understand my cultural context rather well. With Aceh as home base, I also have three ETAs to work with - one did end up getting placed in Aceh, and he is a renewal ETA (they allowed 4 to come back), which means he's already clued in and knows some of the language. The two that will be in Medan (where I lived last year) seem down.
Of course, there are minuses, and they were on display while I was there. My housing hadn't been selected due to some political wrangling at my institution, though that seems to be working itself out as I meet people and they take kindly to me (the fasting and Fulbrightism certainly helps in that regard). I hear a lot of Bahasa Aceh being spoken, and the strong presence of a third language means people can talk over my heads purposefully (or do it accidentally). Also, while at the immigration office, I witnessed something semi-disconcerting: a truck driving down the street with people in the back of it wearing white yelling into bullhorns. Hanging off the truck were white flags with arabic lettering on them. I couldn't understand what was being said because it was in Acehnese, but my counterpart said it amounted to them reminding people to continue their fast on independence day, because Islam is more important than national unity.
That separatist sentiment is one of two things Aceh is known for, the other being marijuana. I would rather have encountered the latter.
The highlight of the week would be this gorgeous little girl, who is the daughter of the head of the English department at my school. The carrots are my favorite part.

She says she has a cat jilbab, too.