The internet is fast today! This page loaded in only two minutes! This is made slightly ironic by this little lying bubble that keeps popping up in the far right corner telling me that since I haven't downloaded any spyware scan tools, my internet speed is decreased by 39%. I guess from now on, when choosing a computer, I should look for one with that bubble, which is probably there to fool people - although it's in English, so out of Jayapura's 200,000-odd people, it's only fooling about 10.

Honestly, about 10. I read on the internet somewhere before I got here that there were 4 expats in the city, and they were all ex-missionaries. I saw one today while waiting for the taksi. I stared, like everyone else. It's a reflex. He stared back at me. The Indonesians around us stared at us staring at each other. One dropped a lychee. It rolled into the street, was immediately squashed by a motorbike.

I floated at Base G on Sunday, like I wanted. We've been 'there' once before, on a rainy Saturday with an especially swindling taksi driver, who, as it turned out, didn't take us to Base G at all, even though that's where he said we were. He turned off the main road at a church, bounced down a dirt road past a bunch of warring roosters and staring Papuan children, and then past all of that to a still more bumpy completely deserted road, staying there for about ten minutes before he finally let us out in front of a gigantic expanse of shallow coral. Then he demanded 20,000rp. There was nobody around. I was going to just throw him the actual fare, 4,000, and get out - that's what the other teachers do when they're overcharged - but then Nick opened his wallet, showing for all the world to see that we had just changed a bunch of money at the bank.

Anyway, it wasn't Base G - it was cool and beautiful and quiet and full of curious villagers hiding in their houses and peeking out the windows - but it wasn't Base G. We didn't know this until Sunday, when another driver let us out someplace completely foreign, saying 'Base G, Base G'. This turned out actually to be Base G, but we thought the other place was Base G and that this cab driver was playing a prank on us, so, arguing, we followed the forming crowd towards what we worked out to be northeast, arguing more as the road got hotter and bicyclists drove by in the opposite direction with ice cream carts trailing behind them, until finally the road dipped and suddenly there were big arches and screaming naked splashing children, and bakso (meatball soup) carts and rujek (sliced fruit, cucumber, and peanut/chili sauce) carts and mie (noodle) carts and a crazy drunk New Guinean man who set his sights on us from the moment we walked in. This was Base G.

The drunk crazy New Guinean had a mullet, and the back part of his mullet was braided into two long messy braids that ran halfway down his back. He latched onto us at the rujek stand, introducing first himself and then everyone who walked by as his best friend, all of whom would take care of us and be our tour guides and be our friends and make sure nobody cheated us and help us find the least rocky places on the beach and prepare log benches for us to sit on as we ate our rujek. The fact that nobody paid attention to him should have been our first clue, but we sat down on the nearest bench he indicated, as he stood in front of us, repeatedly telling us that the mountains across the bay were Papua New Guinea, singing 'America the Beautiful', and assuring us that he could find us a perfect hotel. For a half an hour. And then he told us that we needed to pay him 100,000rp for sitting on 'his' log bench.

This may have been, and will continue to be, the only time when we will have been saved by locals with cameraphones, but as we jumped off the log bench (without paying) and began making our way across the beach, families everywhere nervously jumped up, approached us, and mimed taking a picture. If we nodded, and we did, because we wanted, at that moment, to be surrounded, everyone in the person's family would come over and act like we were all best friends until the camera flashed, then be suddenly struck with debilitating shyness and run away.

After everyone on the beach, it seemed, had been our best friend for five seconds apiece, we were able to fade comfortably away onto a shady log on the south side of the beach. The tide was rising faster than I've ever seen it. The moon, too, was quickly rising. 'Hey, you think anyone would mind if I got naked?' Nick asked me. So I didn't have to see the answer to that question (yes, everyone would mind; nobody even wears swimsuits here: they just swim in their clothes) I jumped in the ocean, which was hot, completely clear, and filled with wonders like sea snakes and bright blue starfish. Often, swimming here is more like visiting an aquarium than swimming. You walk through the water, which never gets much above your waist, because the waves all break way far out at the reef, and the whole time you can see your feet displacing entire ecosystems. Schools of fish dart around rocks and settle mere feet away, only to have to dart again as you keep walking. The sea snakes contract to 1/8 of their original size if the water around them is disturbed. This happens every time a wave comes in, every two seconds or so. As the tide comes up, more water is able to make it over the reef and the waves get bigger, almost to the point of being able to bodysurf (if you don't mind being dashed upon the rocks at the shore when you're dragged in).

I have been drawing a lot. Because of our electrical crisis (the 'converter' we bought in the states fried my speakers immediately upon being plugged in, so I'm not about to plug my camera or my computer or my iPod in and risk the same fate) I can't take pictures, so I have to make them instead. I thought I'd be angry, but it's kind of nice - I'm not a great artist by any means, but I can depict what I see to a certain degree. When I get home and show photos, they'll all be in blurry pastel. There's one of Base G that shows a terribly colored palm tree - I need to learn my greens and yellows - but shows the water and coastline exactly how it is. I'll have to pick and choose from each picture what to show people it's like. Maybe there'll be one full picture by the end.

Daniel, the teacher who's leaving tomorrow, summarizes his year here like this: 'It's blurry.'
I can see that. How many days have passed? I've been counting, but lately I've been forgetting. There are the laundry-by-hand days, the days with so many classes that there's no time to think, the internet days, the hot days with umbrellas, the rainy days with umbrellas, the guilty days where I realize how many people I haven't yet emailed, the days soaked with color and fruit, the days soaked with regret that I chose Jayapura, the days where I assure myself that I'll be stronger at the end. They come in equal numbers.