Telunas

Last week Jack was gone all week on a school trip to Telunas Resort with several grades from his school.  Telunas is a rustic retreat where all the rooms are built over the water.  In addition to regular vacays, they also host team-building retreats.  Two families closely affiliated with the school own Telunas, which is how all this came to be.  The trip was five day, four nights with NO PARENTS!

The no parents thing really freaked a couple of of my friends here.  Fortunately in Jack's previous school I knew an overnight class trip was coming for 5th grade, so he and I both knew he had to be ready to go by this year.   Of course that trip is to Camp Allen, a place that doesn't look much like Telunas (but is still wonderful).

I sent my camera with Jack, but he only managed to get 6 pictures the whole week.  I'm still waiting to see what pics the teachers got, hopefully over the long weekend coming they can share.  Oh and Happy Chinese New Year, welcome The Year of the Snake!  Jack is off two days for the holiday, and Cassie has a week off.

The "Bus".  A wooden boat with a canvas cover and outboard motor.

To get to this retreat the kids headed to a ferry terminal terminal and took a Telunas boat to the island.  The boat ride took an hour.  Indonesia is composed of 17,000 islands.  Thousand!  The resort is on a nearby island.  By the way the families who own the resort are American.  They landed in Batam a decade ago looking for business opportunities.  Now ten years later both families each have four kids, share two businesses (beginning a third) and have been fantastic helpers for all us newer expats.

The "Dorm".  Thanks to having been to Camp Ozark for three years, staying here for four nights was easy-breezy for Jack. 

View from his dorm.  

The pier.

The "Classroom".

While on Telunas, the students had literature circle, Jack and his group read A Swiss Family Robinson (all 348 pages!).  They also went hiking, once to an inland waterfall that emptied into a pool full of minerals making the water black.  They also built beach bonfires and went shrimping after dark, eating what they caught for dinner (after the kitchen staff cleaned and fried the shrimp).  

A Native.

We missed Jack while he was gone, as we always do.  Cassie and I were very excited to head back to pick him up at the ferry terminal.  As you can see, there is no rail to keep one from tumbling into the water!  I was very attentive to my little firecracker.  

Finally here they came!  I took this with my iPad, which has no zoom (sorry!).  His boat is slightly right of center.  For the return trip the boat rolled up the canvas sides.  When Jack finally got to us, his (too long) hair was standing on end from all the salt water picked up on the trip home.  He was tired and tan.  And also too tall, he's 5'2" these days.   I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of Jack and his buds at the terminal, I was just so excited to see him and distracted by everyone's amazing stories.

It was a wonderful experience, and even though there are people and conveniences we miss in the states, trips like this is why we uprooted our lives.  And my apprehensive expat girlfriends all ended up so glad their kids went along.