My feet are now stepping in Balikpapan.

Hello from Balikpapan... yes I've finally moved in here! The only reason I postpone my moving for one week is because of workshop that I was asked to do for the best of UK festival, held by British Council. I never held any workshop before, and not that I have followed many workshops in my life. Hence the preparation was a lil bit stressful, cause I also should prepare for the moving, remember? But it's finally passed... so relief!

I'm not gonna talk about the workshop here, but you can have a peek here!

And now, the moving... Oh yess, as I expected.. uh, no wait.. What did I expect?? Well in short, after all the goodbyes with the whole family at Cengkareng Airport we finally arrived at Balikpapan on Monday night (December 12th), picked up by my uncle who lives here. After not-too-long-dinner and chat we then made it to La Grandeur Hotel, our temporary home until.... yeah, I'm questioning it too, I'm still not sure until when! :p


The good thing is that my son thinks that we're on holiday, he's so excited and keep asking where is the horse so he can ride one. The bad news is that there is no horse here in Balikpapan... I suppose. Hopefully we can move to our new home at least this weekend, living in a hotel is good but not for too long. Besides, this so-called-five-stars-hotel doesn't seem to deserve its rate. The only thing that makes this hotel more sophisticated then others is its private beach but that's all. You can not even swim at the beach, I'm not sure why, but no body swim there as far as I know, and there's no life guard either so I won't risk my self and son to swim there.


And how about the city? It is good! You can spin around the city from one point to another and still have your afternoon to lazying on your room. The traffic is a looottttt friendlier then Jakarta's, the people are slow and relax, no body are in rush here, the sky is blue (though the temperature is pretty hot at day.... well, what can you expect when you live near the sea at a tropical country?!), most places are pretty clean.. The bad thing that you can get here is the waitress(es) might be not as friendly as in Jakarta. When you go to a restaurant or a shop at Jakarta, the waitress(es) or salesman(girl) will satisfy you with their very nice service.... that doesn't usually happen here. But at some places I still got a satisfaction service though! :p


Although I know that some of my friends live here, I still haven't meet anyone yet. Knowing that I still haven't got any friend yet can sometimes makes me feel a little bit lonely. On our first days at the hotel I met an Australian mom who lives in Sangatta. I met her when having breakfast with my son, her 3 y o son asked my son to seat beside him. I was happy knowing that my son and I can have new friends but it doesn't last long as they have to go back to Sangatta just 3 days after. I hope I can get  friend who also have child at my son's age, wont it be awesome?! That's why I'm trying to put my son to toddler school here, at least he can have new friends there. The school hunting is my main priority right now, and we're gonna do it tomorrow! Wish us luck???