In Our New Home...Not For Long!

Five weeks...that's how long we've been in our new home. Five weeks of unpacking, organizing, getting to know our new island and just settling in.

One week...that's how long it is before we take our suitcases BACK to the airport and fly away. I'm praying for "No Madness" during this season of "Nomad-Ness."

We are headed to Texas where I hope I'll find my sanity. Perhaps it's waiting for me in a basket of warm tortilla chips with a large bowl of salsa beside it. That's where I'm thinking it is...which is why we have requested lunch at El Fenix on the way home from the airport.

We have a few mixed feelings about the next five months. We are beyond excited to see our State-side family and friends again! We are looking forward to the opportunities to meet with partners in various cities and churches! We are a little reluctant to leave our new home that we just spent five weeks setting up! But you know what?...that's a good spot to be in. The Lord has already been providing so much for us here. It will be fun to return in January. And we know He has so much already lined up for us during our time in the good 'ole USA. So who wouldn't rejoice about that!?

God is so good! How has He shown His goodness to you lately?

Get Out the Drill...It's Time to Work!

This past weekend I decided it was time to get to work on hanging stuff...with cement walls, that require more than a hammer and nail.  I had to break out the drill.  Here's the result (plus a lot of dust and dirt!)

Shower curtain for our one tub...

Working on the kitchen cabinets.  All but the actual shelving is from Ikea, one of my favorite stores.  I shopped at the Ikea in Singapore and brought it all in our luggage.

Watch out folks, she has a drill and is not afraid to use it!

Yes, even my "L's" are from Ikea, I love that place!

Mostly finished kitchen

Here it is!

And Now for the Inside

We've had fun picking out furniture for our home. All the wooden furniture is from Teak wood and is actually imported from Java and sold in stores here.  We don't have curtains or pictures up yet, but here is what it looks like so far.

This is the first room when you come in the front door.  It is the "ruang tamu" or the guest sitting room.

The opposite end of the room is our dining room.  Aaron is facing Seth & Joel's room and his room is the door behind him on the other side of the dining table.  A bathroom and Kris' office is in the little hall the Aaron is headed for.

Our family room is just through the open doorway from the dining room.  We have books and curios (sp?) in the bookshelf now, and a TV on the wooden TV cabinet.  The door next to the sink goes into the kitchen.

Here it is from a different angle, taken from the kitchen door.  The room behind the couch is the homeschooling room and on the other side of that is the master bedroom.

Here is part of our front yard.  Newly planted grass, a very strangely shaped pine tree, and my new 3 color bougainvillea  plant!

And don't forget my awesome newly tiled kitchen!  Kris and I picked out these fun colors for the counters and back-splash.  It's kind of hard to see, but there is a border between the two that is white with lots of colors.  So all my dishes, pots and pans and even utensils are bright colors to match the border :)

This is the other side of the kitchen.  The stairs go up to a guest room with an amazing terrace the overlooks the neighborhood.  The window behind the fridge goes to my second kitchen!  Yep, a second one with a sink and more counter space!  I am loving it!

Here is Seth standing on the terrace outside the guest room.  Did I mention the guest room?  It needs guests, so come visit us!

Our New Home!

A month ago we arrived in our new city with 10 suitcases and our carry-ons.  We spent the next weeks searching for a house to rent, looking for furniture to buy and learning our way around this populous city.  The Lord graciously led us to this house!  It was not marked "for Rent" but it looked empty and we asked the neighbors about it.  We were able to find the owner and he agreed to rent it to us!  It has been empty for a few years but he recently had it renovated for a renter who backed out.  We feel so blessed because it is in a good neighborhood and has everything we need.  Thank You, Lord!

  Even though it was recently renovated, there was still lots of work to do.  Again, the Lord provided a hard working and honest man who has worked for several weeks to do all the things that were needed to make the house ready.  As I write this, he is finishing repairs in the kitchen!  

As we have traveled about town, we've seen and done some fun stuff.  Come take a mini-journey!

Here are piles of dried beans, corn, onions and other items for sale by weight at the grocery store.

Eating Padang food.  Famous for it's spicy-ness, but oh-so-yummy.  Plus, you get to eat with your hands.  What could be more fun?

Whoa!  Do you think I should buy this living room set?  It is spray painted gold!  This is one of the stores we went to.  I couldn't help taking a picture of this!

One day we played tourist and went to see the big soccer stadium with some friends.  Our city is getting ready to host the SEA Games in November.

Here's a fun little restaurant that we ate at. The boys had their own little "pondok" to eat in!

Want some squid?

How about a fried fish head?

The boys helped some volunteers prepare gift bags for an orphanage.

And now for a break from rice.  Crispy chicken, awesome!  Whoa, better not fill up on that big 'ole stack of fries!

Every day we discover something new, different, funny, sometimes hard or weird, but always very interesting!

A Closer Look...

We are in our new town!  Woohoo!  What’s next?  Find a house!  What does that mean?  Well, believe it or not, we actually used Century 21 that just opened a branch here!  We looked at a few options with the agent.  Mostly, however, we just drove around neighborhoods looking for houses that looked empty!  Sometimes there is a “for rent” sign but not always.  Sometimes there is a number on the “for rent” sign, but not always.  Sometimes you just knock on a neighbor’s door and ask if the empty looking house is for rent.  Our first and second day we looked at or looked in about 25-30 houses!  No joke!  Most were too big, too small, wrong location, run down, water damaged etc.  But we did find some possibilities.  We are in the middle of negotiating with the landlord of a potential house (one of those that had no sign, just looked empty).  We had to wait a few days to let him check on some renovations.  What do you do while you wait?  Well, thankfully we have some friends already living here.  Yesterday we went to the zoo, the mall, and ended the day with Pizza Hut delivery.  That sounds like a normal summer day in America, right?  Well, read the “closer look” and see if you still agree!

A Closer Look

We went to the zoo!   Can you call it that?  It was a park in a pretty forest.  One part was a zoo, one was carnival type rides, there were picnic areas around, and a pond with paddle boats.  As for the zoo, I am not sure who came to see who.  Us foreigners looked at the animals and the national people looked at us (and took lots of pictures of us)!  The animals in the zoo were crocodiles (with a rickety “baby gate” to keep the onlookers protected!), sun bears, a cassowarie (did you know it can kill it’s prey with one kick of it’s foot?), a bored looking oranghutan (did you know that is an Indonesian word meaning “man of the forest?), some other monkeys including gibbons, eagles and hawks and a vulture, pigeons (who were being visited by identical wild pigeons who tried to get their attention from outside the cage!), a chicken (but perhaps he was just waiting to be fed to Mr. Crocodile), a snake, hamsters (in a zoo?),  guinea pigs, 3 cous cous (not to be confused with the Moroccan food) and some other birds.  The “zoo keeper” was this guy who smoked (puffing smoke into the animal cages, great) and kept agitating the animals to get them to “perform” for us.  So we had to keep moving to the next cage so that he’d leave the poor animals alone.   After being photographed more than the animals themselves (at one point, the troup master of a large group of girl scouts had to call them off with his megaphone to get them to quit posing for pictures with some from our group), we left and went to the mall. 

The kids had KFC but the adults opted for Japanese Fastfood across the hall.  I gave Aaron money to get them something to eat (come to think of it, I haven’t gotten my change back from him...).  Then one of the moms took all the kids back to their house while 4 of us ladies went to the grocery store.  We went to the seafood section and decided those animals had better living conditions than the zoo animals, even if their life span was shorter!  There was a huge aquarium of long, icky squirmy balut (eels, a delicacy here), there were other aquariums of live fish.  There was a bin full of huge crabs.  What would you do if you saw a bin of huge crabs in your grocery store?  Well, you’d probably do exactly what we did!  Whip out your camera and take pictures of yourselves holding them up by the strings that held their claws shut, of course!  We named that section of the store the petting zoo.  It was much more pleasant than the real one!  

Back at the house where the kids were, Joel found two hammocks that, when not hung, look like long nylon ropes.  They have hoops on each end.  And there was a second level in the house that had railing at the top.  Well, what do you do when you have a rope with a hoop on the end and a second-level rail?  Well, hang the rope down and swing on it of course.  And since there are two of them, why not have two rope swings?  Joel’s not the only one who thought it was a good idea.  By the end of the evening, most of us had tried it out .

Now for the pizza.  Pizza Hut delivers!  Our friend ordered 6 large cheese pizzas with pepperoni.  As a side note:  Pizza Hut does not have “Pepperoni Pizza,” but you can order “Cheese Pizza” and ask for pepperoni as an addition.  Same thing you say?  Well, if you ask for Pepperoni pizza they will tell you they don’t have it.  So don’t forget to just order cheese pizza and ask for pepperoni as an addition.  The lady even repeated this order to make sure she had it right.  But apparently she did not write it down and she forgot what the order was when she told the cook.  So half an hour later we got 6 large “potato and pepperoni” pizzas.  And for the pizza sauce on the “potato (large chunks) and pepperoni” pizza...generous amounts of Thousand Island dressing.  It was more like potato salad on a pizza crust.  I don’t even like Thousand Island dressing on salad.  Let’s just say the pizza was NOT a hit!  When we bowed to pray, the guy who was praying had trouble finding the right words to say to thank the Lord for 6 disgusting pizzas!!  But as he prayed, a friend of theirs showed up at the door with Indonesian food that she had cooked and brought over!  We’re saved!  Actually, we did eat some of the pizza.  It was stuffed crust, so at least the crust was yummy J

And that was our day!  But I didn’t even mention the crazy parking attendant, the roach that crawled under one ladies’ long dress (and the cat that followed the roach and caught it) or the fish spa at the mall.  

MOVING! (Part Two): Ending Well

Part of moving is "ending well."  That is the stage we are in.  The boys have just a few days left of school and are trying to "end well" with good grades and great time with friends.  Kris and I are trying to do some last minute things as well.  I have a list.  I have done most of them!  Last minute shopping at outlets (that this town is well known for), getting new glasses for Seth and me, buying all the things that Seth and Aaron need for Camp, getting family pictures taken, etc.  This week I got to go to Jakarta to meet up with two childhood friends who are also back in Indonesia.  One of them was a bridesmaid in my wedding and that is the last time I saw her...18 years ago!!  We had a great few days together!  Here is a picture of us, please excuse the background as we were in a Mexican restaurant and that was the decor!!

MOVING! (Part One)

Moving from one island to another...we have finished language study and are headed to a new island.  As of this post, our moving date is in 1 month and 5 days.  Actually, I think it might be even less than that!  Yikes!  Time to start packing.  What should we bring?  According to friends who live in our new home, we should have bed sheets made.  Why?  I'm glad you asked! Apparently it is easy to find fitted bedsheets, but not flat sheets.  Weird huh?  I thought so.  So I had matching sheet sets made.  They are pretty and I like them.  Here they are:

And here is where I got them:

OK, sheets bought.  Check.  What next?  Well, apparently there isn't much more we need to bring with us, except just the stuff we own.  10 suitcases full of stuff that has been making their way out of the suitcases and into every nook and cranny of this house we have been living in for the past year.  What happens when all your junk does that?  Answer:  it multiplies and fills up shelves and desks and tables with...more JUNK!  I really should start by cleaning up my desk:

Scary I know.What if I disappear into all that junk and am never seen or heard from again?  And how about this one, the boys' desk:

Maybe it doesn't look so bad, but it actually is pretty messy.  I will be nice and NOT post a picture of Kris' desk.  So, with all this packing to do and not much time to do it, what did I decide to do?

Well, enjoy the beautiful scenery, OBVIOUSLY!  Who wouldn't want to sit on their sofa with a good book and a beautiful garden?  I mean really, I should take advantage of this since I only have 1 month and 5 days left!!!

Now What?

Kris and I are finished with language study!  Woohoo!  Well, "official" language study that is.  My language study buddies accuse me of spending my time eating bon bons and watching Indonesian soap operas all day now.  Thanks guys.  In addition to those gripping "sinetron" episodes, we are also getting ready for our big move.  Did you see the countdown over there on the right side of the page? Yup, the countdown is on.

This week Kris is attending a training so he is gone all week.  He is on a steep learning curve, but is loving it.  I am the sole captain of the ship this week which, I have discovered, is much easier now that the kids are older.  My only problem so far is keeping enough food around to fill up three boys' bellies.  Don't they ever tire of eating?  Today I am going to the grocery store to load up.

So this week while Kris is gone, I have dedicated my time to preparing for homeschooling next year.  Nope, folks, I have never homeschooled before.  Well, I did homeschool A while we were in the States for 7 months, but that was it.  This time I will be diving in with all three boys at once.  Grades 7, 5 and 3.  I am a research junkie, so I cannot be accused of not researching the topic enough.  In fact, several years ago I thought we'd be moving to the middle of the desert (that's a long story for any of you who don't know our history) and that I would be homeschooling.  I did TONS of research back then.  So I am not starting at square one in the information department.  At any rate, here's what I've done to get myself prepared:

1.  HOURS of research online, asking friends, perusing catalogs and lots of prayer for wisdom.
2.  Hours of changing my mind on curriculum and going back to #1 again.
3.  Finally choosing a curriculum (well, several) and ordering ALOT of material.
4.  Asking my parents to bring all that "ALOT"ness from #3 when they came last month (thanks Mom and Dad!)
5.  Receiving the material, getting all giddy with excitement, stamping the books with my handy dandy new "homeschool material" stamp, then repacking alot of it into boxes to be shipped to our new home in a few months.
6.  Figuring out how I am going to organize myself once school gets started.  That included a general "plan of action" and I even made my own Excel spreadsheet that calculates the grades for all subjects by 6 week periods and then puts the final grade on a seperate "report card" sheet.  I know, I'm a nerd.
7.  I think I am ready.  You know why I did all of this so early?  Well, our schedule is insanely crazy between now and August and I wasn't sure I'd have time for preparation before it is time for school to start.  I like to be prepared.  Now I am.

The other things we need to do in the next couple of months is to get our paperwork in order (visa to stay here), pack up our belongings (and weed through all the stuff we've collected since we moved here last year), and find a house to move into in July.  I suspect Kris will be spending much of his time studying and getting up to speed on what he needs to know for his new assignment.  He is excited about it, so this is definitely not "drudgery" for him.

So that's it in a nutshell.  That's what we are doing when we aren't eating bon bons and watching soaps! :)