What do you do on a Menno nite?

Tonight as we were eating dinner (leftover night), Spencer had a bowl of local-type soup and Josh had a bowl of Beet Borscht. I asked Spencer which was his favorite - local or Mennonite (food). Julia replied first: "I like Menno nite and Movie nite!" We had a good laugh over that! For those of you who don't know, my roots are Mennonite, as are some of Josh's. :)One thing I love about that is that he appreciates the various Mennonite dishes I love to cook.

Kicking And Screaming

Have you ever dragged yourself somewhere kicking and screaming? I have – last night. Actually the kicking and screaming happened on the inside where “normal” adults do their protesting when it’s something you HAVE to do and CAN’T get out of. It’s quieter that way.

This being the holiday (and visiting) week of Idul Fitri (like the week between Christmas & New Years for us, only Muslim) we have the responsibility (and privilege?!) of visiting our Muslim neighbors’ homes for a short chat to maintain relationships. You basically go in, chat a bit, are handed a plate which you use to load up and nibble on an assortment of finger foods (mostly little cookies, cakes, nuts, that kind of stuff). They also serve you a beverage – a juice or something. You chat a bit, then excuse yourself and go to the next house. (A Muslim person doing the visit they would also ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoings “intentional or unintentional” from the past year.) Well, this year was the first time for us, as last year this time we couldn’t do it- we didn’t know enough language to visit anyone. Our neighborhood is not one where people sit around a lot and just chat (which is usual in villages). We wave when we pass by each others’ homes but everyone is pretty busy and the homes aren’t set too closely together so our lives aren’t as intertwined. I actually haven’t met our RT (neighborhood head) yet, though I will in the next day or two.

You might think: Why the stress? It’s just a chat! The reason for the kicking and screaming was really that I was uncomfortable with going into an neighbor’s home who’s a relative stranger– they are SO formal and I would SO hate to be disrespectful (the ones we know are friends and understand that we didn’t grow up with their traditions so if we mess up we’re ok). On top of that, if they don’t use the care that we do to clean dishes and cook food, we all could get pretty sick but to refuse the food isn’t too polite either! Talk about pins and needles! And then there’s the language thing – we are still learning so often there is conversation that we can’t follow – not too comfortable!

Last night we did the first of the visitations recommended by the people whose home we’re living in for the time that they’re in the US. It was a lot easier than I expected. We visited a man named Mr. Dodol (or something like that) and his family. We’d never formally met them but we walked up the path, took off our shoes and walked into the house. The kids paved the way – of course Julia got comments that she looked just like a doll (the blond hair always inspires comments like that), we were asked all kinds of questions about our kids (Julia at just under 3 years old is the same height as their 7-year old) and about the things they’re observing going on at the guest home. Then Mitchell took the cake – literally. There were probably 8 different “snacky” things sitting on the coffee table in the sitting room and he kept asking for more – I’d say, “No, you’ve had enough” and the hostess would say, “Silakan ambil” or “Go ahead, take more!”. This happened half a dozen times! (Talk about embarrassing if we’d been at home in the US but here kids –and especially foreign kids- can pretty much get away with whatever!) At one point in the conversation the man of the house asked Josh what his name was! Crazy! Well, it turns out their oldest daughter had lived in Singapore for 3 years and was looking for someone to maintain her English with so I was glad to extend the invitation for her to come and chat sometime. Though it was hard to “get glad” that I had to do this visitation thing, I AM glad I went and will do it more willingly next year. (Of course by this time next year it could be ANOTHER new neighborhood!) :)

Crazy life!

Wow, it’s Friday again. Has it really been over 2 weeks since I posted? Time flies. A few days after my last post, I left for a few days in a nearby Asian country. A co-worker was going for medical reasons and her husband was not joining her on the trip so I volunteered to join her. We hadn’t been there yet but the city we went to is where we would go with more serious medical concerns so we wanted at least one of us to have been there and checked out the “lay of the land”. It was a quick trip but I was able to accomplish a lot in a few days, including finding some sandals that fit (PTL on that one- I can only buy men’s shoes here and in our city the quality is not great so I was thrilled to find a Hush Puppies store. I still bought men’s sandals but the fit was great and they weren’t TOO masculine – and they were LEATHER!). We visited the clinic, a number of the hotels and the Christian bookstore, not to mention the mall. This was the first time I’ve been out of the country since August 3, 2006. I was in a bit of culture shock seeing a city that was still on the same island as ours, but clean, well organized and the people spoke ENGLISH!! Wow!

I got home on a Sunday around 11 and Josh left that same day at 3 in the afternoon for a trip to another region for leadership meetings.

Some starchy stuff that's standard food in the other region.

Checking out the view - Josh on the far right.

He was gone until Thursday, and then Friday we had 2 kids join us for 6 days (their parents had some language checks in the village where they live interior and their house was not big enough for the checkers AND the kids). They left this week Wednesday and we’re just getting back into a normal routine…so that’s why the blog silence. Crazy life!

Hanging out with Julia one morning...

A date, 2 missed photo ops and an adventure!

Josh took me on a date tonight. We went for dinner and then headed home for a movie. On the way home I saw two things I would have loved to have gotten photos of:

First: our rainy season seems to have taken a hiatus and we’re back to dry season again – dry enough to burn. We actually have ash bits floating in the air. As we were driving by the mosque on the way to the restaurant, Josh suddenly said, “It’s like Christmas!” Sure enough, the mosque, which was decorated for Ramadan with what we call Christmas lights, combined with the falling ash flakes illuminated in our headlights, looked like a light snow falling in winter! Go figure! It was probably 80 degrees out!

Second: Since we’ve been having all these problems with power outages, I guess there are problems for the small stores that are everywhere – as they can’t afford a generator to run power for them. Tonight as we were driving past the banana stand (cause we needed to buy some- but it was closed) I actually saw a small store with a girl behind the counter and a guy at the counter shopping with a flash light!!

Then there was another adventure on this date: The boys needed jump ropes for gym class later this week so we stopped at a sporting goods store (which also sells musical instruments including tambourines! Can you see the connection there??). Back at the car, Josh went to my door and was unlocking it for me when the keys slipped out of his hands. Unfortunately, he’d parked over a (ok, this is hard to explain but bear with me) ditch type trench with was part of the parking lot with a cover made of approx 2” wide bars of metal with at least an inch space between them. We were parked at least 6 feet from the edge. The keys easily slipped through the bars into water/mud/who-knows-what-sludge in the ditch below. Some guys who “help with the parking” (for money of course) were sitting around in the parking lot and saw what happened. They gathered around (which worried me a bit because frankly we can’t be mistaken for local people and since we have a vehicle, though old, it’s still better than what they’ve got - not that we had the keys or anything) and we talked about our dilemma. Josh had called our house helper to ask him to come bring the spare set of keys, but we still had to wait till he got there. Suddenly I had the idea that maybe these guys had fished keys out of there before and maybe they’d do it for us if we offered a reward. I whispered the idea to Josh, Josh offered the reward (Rp 50,000) and in a split second one of the 3 guys was taking off his shoes, socks, rolling up their pant legs and with a tiny flashlight, went down into the trench, UNDERNEATH the bridge-type thing, found and returned the keys. Unbelievable! (I think the other two guys were wishing they’d acted more quickly because the offer was quite generous!) We quickly paid the reward money and got out of there!

Life is never boring here!