Ten years. Seven years.
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 everybody else who was sitting around waiting.
So very, very familiar. The whole afternoon was bearable - and even laughable - but only because we've done this so may times before. Amazing how similar some things can be even when Indonesia and Ecuador are sooooo different in other ways!
But we got it done!
After that, we went to the mall. All by ourselves! We managed.
Then it was time to get a taxi home. Yeah....we're desperately aware of how little we really know! We're learning, for sure, but not having the language puts us at a huge disadvantage! Somehow we got home. I don't know how. I do know that the taxi driver got a very confused look on his face when Sean started telling him how to get to the guesthouse in Spanish. Doh! We both keep doing that.
We're very motivated to learn Indonesian.
It rained last night. I have never seen rain like that before. And I once lived in the Amazon! It was really coming down. Amazing.
Today is Brooklyn's 7th birthday! Unfortunately, all of her presents are in our luggage which is on its way to Salatiga already. Fortunately, we're leaving for Salatiga ourselves in just a few hours so even if she doesn't get to open presents today she will get to very soon! And if I'm really good, I'll (figure out how to) get the stuff to make her a cake sometime in the next week or two ;-)
We should be able to get Internet fairly quickly after arriving to our house in Salatiga, so I'll be blogging from there soon as I can.
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 everybody else who was sitting around waiting.
So very, very familiar. The whole afternoon was bearable - and even laughable - but only because we've done this so may times before. Amazing how similar some things can be even when Indonesia and Ecuador are sooooo different in other ways!
But we got it done!
After that, we went to the mall. All by ourselves! We managed.
Then it was time to get a taxi home. Yeah....we're desperately aware of how little we really know! We're learning, for sure, but not having the language puts us at a huge disadvantage! Somehow we got home. I don't know how. I do know that the taxi driver got a very confused look on his face when Sean started telling him how to get to the guesthouse in Spanish. Doh! We both keep doing that.
We're very motivated to learn Indonesian.
It rained last night. I have never seen rain like that before. And I once lived in the Amazon! It was really coming down. Amazing.
Today is Brooklyn's 7th birthday! Unfortunately, all of her presents are in our luggage which is on its way to Salatiga already. Fortunately, we're leaving for Salatiga ourselves in just a few hours so even if she doesn't get to open presents today she will get to very soon! And if I'm really good, I'll (figure out how to) get the stuff to make her a cake sometime in the next week or two ;-)
We should be able to get Internet fairly quickly after arriving to our house in Salatiga, so I'll be blogging from there soon as I can.
Such good memories! You just can't make stuff like this up...it's a wonderful life! :)
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