It’s been a very unusual year! In October Mary-Jane Duffy, my colleague on the Whitireia Writing Programme, and I spent two weeks in Indonesia. This is part of a literary project aimed at producing more picture books for Indonesian kids which show things familiar to them. Most of the time we spent in Semarang, in Central Java, running a writing workshop for about 30, mostly early childhood teachers. It’s hard to imagine a group with more enthusiasm or a greater sense of humour. They were funny, great story-tellers, and worked really hard. It was very hot, very interesting, a lot of fun, and very exhausting. Such a lot I could say about that. It’s an ongoing project, so there might be more to come!