A mostly awesome long weekend

Happy Birthday Jess!

If the past week reflects my blogging practices for the next few months there is no way I'm going to reach my blog target (see "9 things to do before 2009"). So I will get cracking.

This weekend past I had a million visitors. It was one of the most fun weekends I've had in Aceh yet. A bunch of AYADs from around Indonesia came for the long weekend, and Benjamin dropped in from Thailand so we headed to Pulau Weh, the island off the coast of Banda Aceh. The weekend involved diving and non-stop action for some, and snorkeling and sitting on the beach for others (place Sarah in camp B). It was great to be reminded of the tropical paradise a one hour ferry ride away from my office. My friends were shocked that I'd only been there once before.

I also took the guys on a tsunami tour to see the giant generator ship, the boat on the roof and the gazillions of identical houses built by NGOs lined up in rows. It's always interesting to do this tour because I am yet to grasp the magnitude of the tsunami, so it's a good time to reflect and try to figure out what happened that day in 2004.

A dampener to the great weekend was that my friend's camera and cash from her wallet were stolen from my house. We can't figure out when or how someone came in, but we think someone quietly came in when a few of us were at the beach and the others were having breakfast on Tuesday morning. We've turned out house into Fort Knox as a result.

AYAD Chris from Jakarta is a clever cookie. He put together some footage of the weekend and put it on Youtube. Don't get too jealous about the beaches, just come and visit me.