Lunch in Magelang

My family is coming to visit next week and my whole school is excited. Today the administrative staff wanted to test out a restaurant to make sure it was adequate for festivities when my family arrives. So away we went for lunch. We had delicious gurame bakar and gurame goreng (grilled fish and fried fish), tofu, kalkung, sambals, and of course white rice.

This is Pak Pur, one of my very favorite people in Indonesia. He is the head of the automotive department and an assistant principal. He always has a smile on his face just like the one in the picture. I like him because he is happy but in a calm and soothing way. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the teachers at school because they can be very "aggressive" [loud voices and close physical proximity] in their attempts to communicate with me. Not Pak Pur. We have "gentle" conversations. He is patient and kind and he always makes me laugh. He is one of the people I will miss most from Magelang.

An offer of free lunch means lots of people will join in. Our group included: head of automotive department, a guidance counselor, a building teacher, a vice principal, a gym teacher, an automotive teacher, a computer teacher, a man who I see all the time and have no idea what he does, Song Young the teacher from Korea, and me.
The best part of lunch was the location. Look at this! We ate in little bungalows suspended above the rice paddy. Between the bungalows you could look down and see the fish that everyone around you was waiting to eat!
After lunch we threw our scraps into the rice paddy and the lele came to eat them! Catfish fight! I've never seen such disturbingly large catfish. If I had dipped my toes in I have no doubt that they could have bitten them off.