Typical Saturday

This morning Josh got up at 6:00 and was at a friend's house by 6:30 to go for a bike ride (bicycle). They drove for approximately 2 hours. Josh said that he was able to see one of "our" mountains from the other side from the place they decided to turn around.

While he was gone, I was sleeping and the kids were watching a Looney Tunes DVD (thanks, Jodi!). When he got home, we were eating breakfast. Then we "called" Nana & Papa (my folks) on Skype and talked for a bit.

When we were done, we took public transportation to the pool and did some swimming practice with the boys and Julia. Spencer is doing really well with swimming, and Mitchell started "paddling" with his hands today! Yay! He was kicking really well but still sinking a lot. The deep end is 4 feet deep or so. Julia is mostly fearless in the water, so we'd love for her to start to swim soon too!

We came home for lunch and now they're all down for a nap. Might do some homework today so I can relax tomorrow. I also bought some butter the other day (expensive here but available some places) to make some leaf-shaped sugar cookies. I know fall is mostly over at home, but we can't tell here, so I'm still going to do it!!

Anyway, here's a picture of Josh and a classmate role-playing the day's text. One of our pelatihs (pronounced "pilates", translation:instructors) are standing by explaining something.

Unit 2 - Halfway Through!

Hello! In case you all got a bunch of emails from us - sorry - I was cleaning up the blog. I wasn't sure if it would send them or not.
Anyway, it's a hot & muggy afternoon here. It looks like rain, so I hope Josh remembers to pick up ponchos for himself and for Mitchell, who went out with him on the moped to run errands.

Yes, we finally have wheels - 2 wheels total! We bought a Yamaha moped last week. Another step in blending in and living like local people (we can't do anything about Josh's height or coloring). It's incredible to us to see all of the bikes everywhere! They outnumber cars and truck by far!! And what's even more funny is the amount of people they fit on just one bike!! We've seen up to 4 adults, or 5 people if it's a family (the mom holding the baby in her arms). Josh has taken all 3 kids out at the same time but I don't plan on trying that for a long time. The kids are really cute in their helmets. As for me, I don't like the helmet much (so hot to wear), though I do wear it. It's already got makeup all over it, but the other day when I was driving in a downpour I was glad for the visor. (Too bad the visors don't come with windshield wipers! The downpours are like taking a shower!) I haven't gone too far from home on the bike yet, but I'm becoming more and more comfortable driving it. I still have to think about which side of the road I should be on when I take turns.

We are already halfway finished unit 2!! We continue to learn an incredible amount of vocabulary, though we're into grammar now as well. (More of a struggle for me as I was never good at grammar in English - but Josh is in his element!) Each morning we have to give an oral presentation. It used to take quite some time to prepare them, as we had to look up many words in the dictionary. Now we are not allowed to read them, so rather than prep, we just get up to the front of the class and improvise. It's good in that it helps us to think on our feet.
Anyway, I need to get studying. A classmate is coming over later to study vocabulary with me so I have to get my homework done this afternoon! Have a great day and thanks for praying for us. Overall we're doing well, with a little homesickness here and there. Thanks to all of you who send notes. We love to hear from you!!

Unit 1 Update

I just realized it's been almost a month since we updated the blog, so here's an excerpt from a letter I sent to a friend last weekend...

We're doing well here. We have completed the first 2 weeks of Unit 1 in language study. I have really been enjoying classes. I missed 2 days the first week due to some parasite (we think), so it was good to be able to attend them all this week. I've been cataloging the vocab we've learned and we're at over 500 words in 2 weeks. Josh and I have been quizzing each other, but there are a lot of words that aren't in our "instant recall" yet (nor are they expected to be)! We do a lot of text role-play and drills in class.

In our unit we have 3 Koreans, an Aussie and 3 Americans (including us). They split the Asians and the Westerners up as we have different challenges in learning the language. Our class has a lot of fun together, but we're very diverse. Josh is the only male student, then there's a 29 year old single lady from AZ, a mom of older teens (the Aussie) and me.

So that's the current situation. We have 2 more weeks in this unit and then we have evaluations. I'm looking forward to seeing how the pilates (instructors) think I'm doing. Thanks for your prayers for us during this time. It would be easy to be overwhelmed but so far we're not, and we're so thankful.

TPR - Total Physical Response

We went to the pasar (market) Thursday and had some TPR - Total Physical Response time on Friday - basically we point at a picture we took during the cultural excursion and ask the helper "Apa ini" or what's that? Then they say what it is. We ask a number of times and just listen to the national person say what it is. Then they say in the trade language - "Point to the ....." and then we point to whatever they say. Then they say, take the ....... and put it (on top of, underneath, to the right of, to the left of) this item. So we do that, Josh and I taking turns to follow the instructions. So far we are not expected to try to say the word - they just want us to get used to hearing the language. But we do say the words when we practice at home - at least in our heads if not aloud. We also take time with the language helper to record their voice saying each item correctly, so we listen to that over and over at home. We've learned a lot of words this way already. The main topics so far have been transportation and things related to transportation and the market and food you'd find there.

We have one more week of this National Culture & Language Acquisition (NCLA), and then on Fri. Sept 15 we have language school orientation. The following Monday we start our first unit.

Josh and I have been walking to NCLA every day and back home again - 15 minutes each way. Church this morning was a short walk. We're not allowed to drive for several months for various reasons including the different traffic patterns here, so we have to walk, have someone drive us, take Josh's bicycle or take public transportation (which is safe and convenient but doesn't run after sunset (around 5:45) and sometimes is quicker to walk).

There are 3 mountains surrounding our town here. We can see 1 or 2 from our front porch depending on how hazy or cloudy it is - we haven't had too many clear days. It's hard to get a good picture of the mountains from this distance.

OK - tried twice (at 15 minutes each) to post pics, so will skip that for now and put the kids down for their naps. Thanks for your prayers. We continue to be encouraged and excited to learn the language here.

New Photos Posted

Just an FYI - we posted new photos in the Our Photos section. To see them, please click on the link to the right called "Our Photos". We continue with orientation and begin some pre-language study next Monday. We are feeling mostly settled, though we still need some furniture, which I hope to find today! Thanks for praying! We'll keep you posted!

PS - While you're looking at the right hand column, you may be interested in subscribing to our blog. What this means is that every time we update the blog, you get an email, so you will always have the most current info without having to remember to check!

Posting Pictures

Here are some recent pics for the grandparents to enjoy....

Our New Home

Dining room -door to right leads to kitchen












I'm very fortunate to have a stove with an actual oven. Often the students here have a box they have to put on top of the burners to bake.
We are thankful for a water heater!! It does get cool here in the evening, at least relatively cool! :)

Getting Acclimated

This was a post from August 10th that didn't make it on.

Well, we made it to ________ on Sunday afternoon. Visa paperwork was started on Monday morning and will continue throughout the week as things are ready to move to the next step.

We are so thankful for a safe trip, no lost luggage and an easy time through customs and immigration. In fact, we praise God for going above and beyond our expectations. We thought that we had it all covered with our luggage, but as novice world travelers, we didn’t know to choose the flight that had shorter layovers. As a result, when we checked in they told us that we couldn’t check our 22 pieces of baggage through to the capitol city. We had already paid excess baggage fees and thought it was covered. But God…(isn’t that a great phrase??) But God had His man in place in Milwaukee, overseeing the handling of our baggage. What an encouragement and provision he was for us. He made some calls while we were in flight and had our 16 action packers stored for us at San Francisco which allowed us to take some time to go to a hotel with the kids for our 10 hour layover – to relax, swim and have a nice meal and a short nap before we continued with our journey!!

Our time in the capitol was both relaxing and a good time to start learning. The diversity was amazing to me – from 4 storey malls to tiny “warungs” (convenience stores) at the end of the streets.

We got an idea of how the money works – you give it to them and they take it! Just kidding – it’s fairly easy and yet confusing to me at times. 1 million rupiah is about 110 USD, so if I spent 200.000 on groceries (which I did yesterday), you take off 4 zeros and you get 20 dollars – that’s the approximate conversion. The main bills you use are 100000, 50000, 20000, 10000, 5000, and 1000. My problem is the many thousands and that the colors on the 100000 and the 10000 are similar. So, when I see the total on the cash register is 193.175, I have to figure out if it’s 10 thousand or 100 thousand that I need to give her. At one place where I was buying some flip flops for the boys, the lady finally said – “blue one” – which I didn’t have! But we had it straightened out pretty quickly!!

We’ve had some great local meals here already. One meal of note was Beef “Bakso”. It’s a soup with greens and noodles, bean curd cakes, beef meatballs and tripe. It tasted excellent. Being a texture person, I probably would leave the tripe out if I was cooking it, but overall it was a good soup!

Anyway, we are overflowing with thankfulness to the God who goes before us and yet never leaves us. Thanks for your prayers as we learn, learn, learn!!

We're in our new home!

So sorry it's been so long since we last posted. We have not been able to log in to blogger.com to post. It's been a bit frustrating, but we're glad to be back on!

We have moved into our home and are getting settled. It was good to see a bit of "home" come out of our action packers. The quilt on our bed (made by my aunt with patchwork pieces of my life as far back as I remember), the kid's toys (almost Christmas! They hadn't seen their toys since the end of May!) and all my Tupperware!! On the other hand, it seems that we're shopping constantly! First groceries and now all the other "stuff" you need to live here - converters for our plugs, jugs and basins, a washer, you name it. Definitely not like shopping at Wal-Mart or Target!

We had dinner with some fellow language-learners tonight - a couple from Germany! They're about 2 months ahead of us in the study, so they were able to give us some tips. They speak English quite well and it was fun for me (Josie) to recognize words and phrases from my studies in Elementary and Secondary schools! They have 2 young boys, the youngest the same age as Julia.

Well, I'm on dial-up here and I want to post some pics so I'll get to uploading them. They'll be shots from our visa city as we haven't taken too many here yet. Thanks for praying for us! God sure is being faithful to us.

OK - the photo upload didn't take - will try again sometime soon.

Tim Tams for Tam

Our pantry - check out how low the door frame is - Josh said he wasn't planning to spend a lot of time going in and out of that room! He's holding some ABC Soy Sauce and some Extra Hot Sambal (hot pepper sauce that you get everywhere here).














These are some treats that my sister Tamara loved when she was in PNG. I finally got to experience them...Tam, wipe the drool off of your keyboard! :)

You Shall Lie Down and Your Sleep Shall Be Sweet

We laugh each night as we go check on our kids. Often Mitch is sleeping sideways and Julia with her head at the foot of the bed. Spencer is usually the only one sleeping the direction he lay down. They all do well sleeping here. In fact, there wasn't any waking in the middle of the night as is common with jet lag, so we're thankful for that.

Flying To Our New Home

Visa City

Here are some shots of the kids hanging out in Visa City. We had to come here first to finish visa paperwork before flying back to start Language Study.  Julia is really enjoying an unripe starfruit which grew on a tree in the yard here at the Guest Home.

First Durian Ever

The infamous durian fruit - we actually didn't mind it much!









kids enjoying the swing set at the restaurant













Daddy and Daughter enjoying dinner out.

Good Morning from Taipei!

I just sent this email to our families - thought you might be checking on us - so here's the latest...

Hello, dear family! I am sitting here watching the sun come up in Taipei. It's just after 5:30 in the morning and we arrived about 15 minutes ago. The flights so far have gone well - one left and then customs with our ton of stuff.
Well, things did not go as well as we thought with our overweight/excess baggage costs (though it's not horrible or anything). When we checked in to China Airlines, we were charged an additional 1100 dollars (in addition to the 600 we paid in Milwaukee). As we mentioned to you (Dycks), our action packers WERE checked all the way through to the capitol (due to the efforts of a believer who was the supervisor of the luggage handlers in MKE), so we didn't have to deal with them in SF (that was a huge blessing), but we did have our 6 suitcases and our 6 carryons, which we took with us to the hotel (the poor shuttle driver - we tipped him well!).
We had a nice meal, some time in the pool and hot tub and a short nap at the hotel as we had arranged, and then left the hotel at 10:30 - 3 hours before our flight. Good thing we did as it took some time to check in with our excess baggage fiasco.
The kids have done well on the flights, getting some sleep (though not a LOT). They need some decompression time - they're a bit wired with all the sitting around.
Anyway, we fly to the capitol in 3 hours and should arrive there at 1:35 pm (1:35 AM Wisconsin time). We won't call when we get there. Bill Cork will meet us at the airport and has given us specific instructions on what to do when we get there.

OK - gotta go let the kids run around! Thanks for praying for us!
Love, Josie