some pics from September

Here's John on our motorbike in front of our team house in Banda Aceh

This is our fruit stand in Banda Aceh- isn't it pretty? John's buying apples (you can see his shorts and shirt through the fruit)

John just got back from a week in Nias- an island off Sumatra that is known for surfing. It was hit pretty hard by an aftershock of the earthquake that caused the tsunami but even without that it is strikingly more in need of development than Aceh. Malnutrition, super low immunization rates, few latrines, poor access to clean drinking water etc. I've been there a few times doing assessment and project planning, so John was there working on renting houses for our office and staff when our project begins in October. He's so good at his job.

This picture is from the road towards the beach south of us- about a 30 minute drive to a beautiful beach. We can see mountains that look like this from our office too though- it's so pretty here.

This is from Sabang- our tropical island getaway spot :-) It's about a 45 minute ferry ride and a 40 minute van ride from our place to this beautiful spot. We've gone about once every two months this past year- we got our SCUBA certifications here in February and March and have had a work retreat and a trip for John's soccer team too. As you can tell- it's lovely- the only problem is that because of the ferry schedule and our work schedules- we've never been there for more than a day and a half.