So Long Ordinary

The week is already half over and I'm just barely getting a chance to tell you about our busy Sunday! Our original plans for Sunday included a relaxing day and a visit with friends for some worship and listening to a sermon together but our friends wound up with a sick kid...so, our day ended up looking quite a bit different than we expected! We went to downtown Salatiga as a family for the first time. I wish I could express to you what a trip downtown looks like here. What it feels like and smells like and sounds like. We didn't bother bringing our camera along for this first trip - it was stressful enough just ensuring that our three children were accounted for! Our trip started with a 10 minute walk up the hill to catch an angkota - basically a van with bench seats that serves as public transportation here. We stuffed ourselves into the available seats on the Nomor 9 angkota and held on for the ride. It was hot, stuffy, smoky, but a nice slow ride. The other passengers...

Please pray for a new friend of mine. Pray a lot and pray hard. I won't give many details here at the moment, but.... this is a matter of eternity. When I think of what God could do with this situation to glorify Himself and draw my friend to Himself, I get goosebumps - let's pray He does just that!

Funny how to us it seems we barely brought any toys at all, while to the little ones next door we have the most amazing and exciting things to play with. It's all about perspective.

So, we've been in Indonesia for a grand total of 4 weeks. Or close to it, anyway. And some of the initial excitement and newness is wearing off. We've had our fair share of frustrations and mishaps already. A man I didn't know (I don't think!) came by the house yesterday afternoon when Sean was gone on his drive up the mountain. He seemed nice and was saying something to me but I wasn't catching one word that he said. So I stood there looking dumb and finally sputtered out something along the lines of "I'm sorry? Once again?" (in Indonesian) What followed was one of the most awkward moments I've had in Indonesia so far. He didn't repeat a thing or try to say anything more. Just stared dumbly at me while I stared dumbly at him. We're not talking about a few seconds of awkward staring, we're talking minutes of standing there looking at each other with stupid looks on our faces. Finally, he just shrugged and turned around and lef...

How about a little home tour? This is our home in Salatiga. We live on Jalan Abiyoso....If you were to stand on our street and look to the east, this is what you would see. The neighborhood mosque is about a block away and there are several others within a few more blocks in every direction. Being that it is Ramadan (a holy month set aside for fasting during daylight hours) this tends to be a pretty noisy time. I have to say, though, that living in Latin America across from a bar really prepared us for the noise here. Honestly, I find it much quieter here than anywhere we lived in Latin America! We've learned that having the fans on is very helpful in muting the sound of the 4:30 a.m. call to prayer - I don't even hear it any more! This is our front room. According to local Indonesian culture, this room is reserved for hosting any guests that come to visit us in our home. Our dining room The Kitchen. The kitchen is very small and so we had these neat shelves put in for...

Somehow, life is much more busy here than it ever was before. I'm devastated after realizing that Sean is well ahead of me with the blog posts. He's just had lots of good pictures to share with you! I have to admit, I look at those pictures, and even though I'm seeing the same thing in real life, I have a hard time believing we really do live in such an exotic and foreign place! It is truly that beautiful here. And that foreign! We're into our third week in Salatiga, our fourth in Indonesia! It really feels like we've been here much, much longer. Sean and I get frustrated when we can't communicate better in Indonesian - and then we realize we've only been working at it for two weeks. Phew! In light of that, we really are doing okay. We can sure dig ourselves into a hole quickly here. I've been known to attack a more complicated sentence or explanation only to realize a few words in that I do not know the word for green or tall or far away. Doh! ...

Geckos? I don't mind them at all. Ants? All part of the life. Cockroaches? Learning not to freak out when I see them. (Which I manage about half the time, now!) Skinks ? No Deal. No. I don't like them. Who needs a snake with legs, I ask you? Who? Not me.

Tuesday was Indonesia's Independence Day. Sean shared on his blog about our little outing on our "day off." We really had a great time lounging by the pool (which we paid all of $6 for our whole family to swim in). We felt as spoiled as any Hollywood celebrity. And, just to make us feel that much more famous, we were approached by a young couple taking their wedding pictures at the hotel. They wanted our girls to pose with them! For a picture. A picture in their wedding album. We didn't know them. They didn't know us. That didn't matter! People here really do get a kick out of white kids! My girls get their cheeks pinched daily by doting women of all ages. I've seen women stumbling all over themselves just for a chance to touch Maddie's near-white hair. It's kinda how I feel about the kids here with their snappy dark brown eyes and smooth brown skin, though I haven't pinched any cheeks. Yet. I'm finally in a place where such a th...

Yikes! It's been a week since I blogged?! Sorry. Our internet has been terrible but I think we've got it fixed now. We're still settling in here in Salatiga. Sean started language classes on Monday. I'll be meeting with a tutor for the next month while we arrange a babysitter for our younger girls and get our house set up. We're very glad to be here! And we're also very anxious to get some more language under our belt so we can express ourselves better. I fumble around trying to talk to our house helper. Here's how it goes: I look up what I want to say and I practice a million times before I work up the nerve to try it on my helper. I'm so excited because I've got this thing figured out! I find her, interrupt what she's doing and fumble around a few terms that obviously aren't the Indonesian I thought they were. She shakes her head at me in confusion. Then the Spanish words start pouring forth from my mouth. Then I stop myself, take ...

Whew! I have to tell you about our afternoon yesterday. First of all, I should mention that yesterday was our 10-year anniversary. We celebrated by coming to Indonesia! Hee.hee. Anyway, we went to immigration yesterday afternoon to finalize our visas here. We were very glad to have one of our Indonesian MAF guys, Yohanes, there to help us around. We don't even know how to say "yes" or "no" or, most importantly, "bathroom" in Indonesian, so we needed some serious help! Thankfully, Yohanes does know some English and a few of the workers at the immigration office knew a few words. It ended up being a long wait before we were able to get in to have our pictures taken and fingerprints done. The girls were at the end of their rope and it was hot and we had no clue what was going on and Paige threw raisins all over the place and we sat in hard chairs watching the strangest television show about a magic pigeon and we were the main entertainment for ev...

Good morning! The Alliance Guesthouse where we are staying in Jakarta. Selamat pagi! That means "good morning." See? I'm already picking up Indonesian! That's about all I can say...but we're getting somewhere. We're still in Jakarta, trying to get over jet lag and activating our visas. We've been out of the guest house only a little bit - to the mall and out to eat mostly. We were grateful that Nathan and Becky Fagerlie were in Jakarta to help us around some. They just finished language study and they happened to be coming through Jakarta on their way to Papua. It was fun to get to know them and also encouraging to see how well they've learned the language...they tell us it is possible! (Thanks again for all the help, guys!) So what are my impressions of Jakarta and Indonesia so far? Well, I'm glad you asked.... It's warm here, but not unbearably hot. I'm not miserable - that surprised me! It is very humid, so we're sticky m...

I've been working on this for two days and I'm still not sure it makes sense. Chalk all the run-on sentences and bad English to jet lag. Thank you. We have made it to Jakarta!!!! I have to say, it's pretty stinking amazing to discover that this "Indonesia" place does exist. Our 36 plus hours of traveling went remarkably well. The girls had their moments (as did their parents) but it was nothing we don't handle on a daily basis anyway ;-) I am glad it's over, though! Thank you for praying, I know it helped. You can stop reading now unless you are my mother, in which case you can read it and then read it again and read it one more time.... We flew from Boise to San Fransisco, where we had a pretty long layover. That layover was hard because it was well past bedtime for the girls and they were exhausted but there wasn't really any place to sleep. They finally fell asleep sitting straight up (or on the hard floor) just before we were called to board...