The weekly list

• I've had a cough for three weeks now. It's getting old. It's annoying. It's sinus-related. I have no idea what to do about it other than hack my way through class and wait it out. They say there is such a thing as a 100-day cough in Indonesia...I'm beginning to believe it.
• This is the last week of my first unit of language study! Yay! I'm encouraged, though it is a looooong process and I've only just begun. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to volunteer to learn a FOURTH language....
• Paige is getting downright adorable these days. She loves looking at books and pointing to and naming animals. She's getting pretty good at it! She also is an expert at saying "stop," "don't", and "no!" She says "mau" whenever she wants something - that's Indonesian for "want."
  
• Maddie turns four years old this week. I'm not sure how to feel about that. She's growing up so fast - too fast. I love her sweet little personality and her skinny butt. (She really is skinny - that did not come from my side of the family.) She's a joy. I just can't fathom that it has already been four years since that night my Maddie-Cakes was born - I remember it so vividly!
  
• We just started getting a regular delivery of fresh juice at our house. Every Monday, a young gentleman brings us all different kinds of juice - mango, guava, sirsop, melon, orange, etc. It's the best juice I've ever had - made straight from the real, fresh fruit - and ridiculously cheap. Yes, this is one of the reasons I love living in the tropics!
  
• I don't cook much here. It's just too much with all the other stuff going on in our life. It's been extremely humbling. I love to cook and I pride myself on being able to cook tasty, healthy meals for my family. Suddenly, that has been taken away. It's near-impossible to find the right ingredients for the kind of food I'm used to making and things have to be made from scratch. I don't have time now that I'm in class and studying language all day. So, our helpers fix our lunch and dinner for us. Or we order in or eat out. We eat Indonesian food every day. And, to be honest, we all love it. It's an adjustment for me, but I'm getting better at letting our helpers...um, help.
  
• We do enjoy Indonesian food a great deal. We also miss good ole American fare...and don't get me started on Mexican food. I've attempted to make some of the foods I always cooked back home. Enchiladas? The cheese here is too funky. Hamburgers? Not so much. I have learned to make a mean pizza, though.
  
• I'd heard of tempeh but never tasted it until we came to Indonesia. We love the stuff! Our helper makes the best sauteed green beans and tempe. Good stuff. I'm slightly addicted to it. Sure, it's not a Santa Fe Burrito from Calvillo's but it's earned it's place on my list of favorite foods ;-)
  
• We have...transportation! Over the weekend we bought a beautiful, black Suzuki Skywave scooter. I cannot tell you what a game-changer this is for our family. We can get around so much faster, get to places that are farther away that we've normally just not bothered going to, and get everybody to school without arriving dripping wet with sweat. Our family of five just barely fits on the thing, so it isn't exactly something that we'll use for long family trips, but to get us to school and around the neighborhood and town, it's been wonderful. Don't worry, we never go fast - I think our top speed is about 25 mph. All 125 cc's actually do pretty well for us at this elevation and at the speeds we're going. Our ride isn't exactly a "'hog," so we've affectionately named it our "piglet." (By the way, this is the largest scooter available here.)